Be Excellent To Each Other

That's an incredible motor there, Gazchap. (How the hell did I miss that, going on about my hire A1 )

Fantastic - LOVE IT.

one of the Forza club cars that we use, a tribute

Insurance time again, managed to get a quote of £250 fully comp off Direct Line, which isn't bad at all for a Group 20 Impreza STi

Quite odd though, Direct Line were my insurer when I had my last car (a Focus C-Max), but I binned them off as their quotes for the Scooby were stupidly high, and yet now two years down the line they're the cheapest by quite some margin.

(My current insurer, Adrian Flux, wants £298, although if they can match Direct Line's quote I'll stay with them.)

comparethemarket and confused.com weren't much use, a lot of the insurers they list for simply refused to quote, and of those that did the best price was £389.

I've found Direct Line to be buggers in the past though, they have a habit of coming up with a great price for the first year's insurance, and then it goes through the roof thereafter. There was a period of about three years that I was with them where I had to cancel my policy every year and start again as a new customer to get a good price, and when I spoke to them on the phone they flat out refused (albeit politely) to match the price as an existing customer that I could get as a new customer.

That's quite surprisingly cheap. You're on the IoM aren't you? I'd have thought that most people on there who buy fast cars will end up crashing them backwards through dry stone walls. Otherwise what's the point of having no speed limits?

I think the cheapness is probably down to the fact that there's basically zero car crime over here, plus we have very little in the way of insurance fraud either.

Going back about ten years, UK insurers didn't seem to weight their policies for the IOM properly and you were always better off with a local insurer, but they've gradually caught on over the years and the situation is largely reversed now, especially if you've got a high performance car.

We do now have emissions-based road tax, but only for newly purchased cars or cars being newly registered on the IOM, so fortunately my Scooby is still done on engine capacity, hence tax is only £192. If it were done on emissions it'd be nearly £500

A local garage had a really nice Jag X-Type 2.5L in, the owner was basically having to give the thing away as it fell foul of the new emissions based tax and it was going to cost the best part of £500 to get a tax disc on it.

Back when I was driving "normal" cars, Direct Line were consistently the cheapest for me, by quite a margin. Since I've been driving Jap turbo nutters, they refuse to even quote. This despite me having almost 8 years NCB with 4 years experience of driving these cars. Won't even quote without modifications.

For a laugh I sometimes put exactly the same car details into the price comparison websites, but use my old postcode in Manchester instead of my IOM postcode.

Generally speaking I just get a massive list of DECLINES TO QUOTE along with a couple of quotes for £2000

I think one year a quote came back for nearly £3000, although admittedly that was based on a Jap import Prelude Type-S being kept on a dodgy back street in Radcliffe.....

I still miss the Type-S, fucking amazing car that was, then Mrs AE got pregnant so I felt the need to get something more sensible

I think I pay between £3-400 to insure the Malimobile.

Insurance Premium Tax also doesn't apply to residents of the IoM. AE, you should check with your insurers that they're deducting it, especially if they're UK-based insurance firms.

I have not bought car insurance for 6 years..

I've never heard of that.

Cheers for the heads-up, is it a substantial amount or just like a fiver or something?

5%, so worthwhile.

Actually, probably not that worthwhile on £250.

Twingo's up, I was looking the other week and it appears I can get the AXA renewal even lower than the new quotes on comparison sites. I decided to wait until after the credit card payment rollover though, so hopefully I've not missed the boat. Will be £340-ish. Not bad!

This makes Perkies very happy:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kW7OBXsXck

Yep, £344.44 - done, with no speaking to a human or waiting for bits of paper to pass on or anything. Not bad when confused returned precisely two polices less than that (cheapest £330).

Oddly, AXA quoted £460 in that query.

OH FUCK YES

Although I object to "The Bandit". The car's called Trigger (or Son of Trigger in the sequel).

I love the Dodge Charger.

Got to be black and chrome though, with a fuck-off Holley 4-barrel carb/butterfly valves sticking out the bonnet though:



FILTH

thats a REAL supercharger.

THAT'S a roof rack

I'm getting old. Saw the advert for the new Mondeo (or was it Focus?) with the self parking, self stopping and sign reading, and thought "I wouldn't mind one of those"

Can you brew beer in that?

It happens.

We've had a mild winter but even so, I found myself missing the heated seats that the C-Max had. Plus I was lusting after a heated steering wheel like one of Mrs AE's friend's cars has.

Ten years ago I was of the mindset 'anything in a car that's heated is for old fuckers'.

Craster. Re insurance on a lease car - is it your name on the V5? Does it significantly increase your premiums it it isn't?

Renewal time soon so I ran a comparison site - many declines to quote, the ones who did were charging twice what I paid last year on the focus (and changing the policy in September to add the new car only added £100) so something feels out of kilter. I may also need to check with Admiral that they have my details correct, if the V5 thing has that much of an impact, my premium seems too low to have been taken into account.

Insurance is paid for me, as it would be with a hire car. My name isn't on the v5. Nor do I possess the v5.

if your car has a supercharger and no bonnet, chances are you can brew beer in anything

Gaz, your car looks the fucking nuts, I love it.

Although, when you are driving it Boringville*, do you find you get a lot of odd looks...? Does it make you feel uncomfortable?

*No slight meant on your location, it's more that you don't often see cars on the road in racing livery, most cars are dull-o silver it seems anyway.

Good fun playing in wookie's exotic garage yesterday. The kit car with 427 short block made the best noise, rawr.

I can't say I've noticed really.

Had an amusing happening yesterday though. I was driving home from work and was stuck in traffic, and a businessman all suited-and-booted walked past on the pavement opposite. I had my window down and he shouted across "Alright mate, nice car!" so I gave a nod of appreciation. Then he said "Shame it got banned!" and walked off

Can't really fault a heckle like that

That'll happen - especially if you have no windows at all

I've had such classics as "Not much mud in London, mate" to "I think it needs a clean!".

I was especially upset with one chant of the latter, as it had been washed the day before

Day four of driving up to work with the fuel gauge sat on zero. I really should stick a tenner's worth in. It might have struggled slightly as I got into work, but I think I'm going to crack and go to the petrol station. The clock and temperature gauge has stopped working (again) and the passenger door trim is now falling out. The tracking needs doing as there is stupid tyre wear on the edges of the tyres and the spare wheel is inacessible, as the cradle seems to be stuck.

My fuel gauge appears to be annoyingly non-linear. It'll drop from full to half really quick, then hover around half for ages, and then drop to the red, where it stays for ages again. Might be me projecting, but it's a pain if it is the case.

Tank is a pyramid shape?

My Scooby is a bit like that, within the first 10 miles of brimming the tank, the needle has moved from 'F' to about half way down to 3/4, and then it stays there for around another 30 miles.

From then on down to E it's pretty linear and behaves itself.

The first time I filled it up and observed this behaviour I was like 'ZOMG this fucking thing is going to do about 100 miles to a tank!'.

Compare and contrast with the Peugeot 106 1.5 'tractor' style diesel I once had, whereby the needle hardly moved from F for nearly 100 miles, turns out that this was actually correct since it was possible to eek out just over 600 miles from a tank. I worked it out once to achieving an amazing 66.7MPG. (Didn't go much faster than about 75mph though, with a following wind, and felt like it might explode Ant Hill Mob style at any second.)

My maths suggests 620 miles from a tank, but I keep forgetting to hit the trip reset button. SO, I stick a tenner into it every now and again. I got 60+mpg in France due to the 65mph driving, savings we spent in a hotel bar.

Seem to have bought a Focus. Oops.

A Focus is a decent car.

Meanwhile, I think the big Falcon has a problem with the cooling system. The fan never seems to come on, and the temperature gauge on the dash never really moves up that much. But when I'm driving I can feel the heat from the front on my hand as I hang it out the window, trucker-stylee. And when I park, I can feel that it is bastard hot just as I walk past.

Yes, there is water in the tank this time. I'm wondering about the thermostat, so might replace that. Oh, and Lady T bashed the driver side wing mirror off as she reversed it out of the garage. I'm enjoying the feeling of liberty that having an old banger as a local runabout gives me.

Well done on passing your test btw.

Yeah well done Malabar, I only passed mine the summer before last but it makes life so much easier.

RS?

RS500, obv.

I dunno, new house and a new car. You'll be shopping for curtains and soft furnishing next.

And paint. See if you can tell the difference between spring white and apple white.

I would get reamed so hard if I got one of them.

It’s an 05 2.0 TDCi Titanium 3-door. S’quite nice.

And thank, Myp & Gill

Nice car, Malabelm. I'd like to change mine this year if I can.

The Focus is a fantastic car. The police over here use the normal ones as their 'workhorse' cars and the ST/RS ones as their super-duper pursuit cars (not that we have much in the way of high speed pursuits but they come in handy over TT to keep in range of 'enthusiastic' German bikers).

Needless to say they achieve starship mileages, and with very little effort too.

On top of that the Focus C-Max I had (same basic car as the Focus II) was pretty much the best car I've ever had, really liked it.

They always seem to be pretty highly regarded, and you get a fair bit for your money, it seems. Had a drive of it last night, and aside from my being a bit wobbly in my first diesel, it felt smooth, responsive and definitely had enough power to hold its own. Full service history, one owner, 49k miles… really can’t complain.

Just gotta sort out being shafted as a first-time driver on the insurance, and then pick it up on Friday, perfectly timed to avoid having to tackle the horrendously sporadic public transport in the village I’m moving to.

I remember a few years ago the reviewer Honest John in The Telegraph basically wrote words to the effect of 'If you can set aside the badge-prejudice people often have against Fords, this is a far better car than a Golf, for a lot less cash.' (This was about the second-gen Focus, of which yours will be one. Mind you, prices on new Fords are a lot higher now than they were back then, as it seems the price of the car is now more in line with its quality. Used they're still a bargain though as the other marques tend to hold their value better.)

The 2.0TDCI in yours is exactly the same engine as my C-Max had in it (138bhp IIRC), I averaged around 45MPG out of mine, although the C-Max is a bit bigger and heaver (despite being on the same floorplan) so you may get better.

Yours is a higher spec though, mine was only 'Ghia', they didn't do Titanium for the C-Max for my model year, although the Ghia had just about every trick in the book so yours must be fully loaded.

A very nice choice overall Mal, you should get some good motoring out of it, with bugger all expense beyond routine servicing and wear and tear.

You forgot about insurance.

I like my Golf... But it is not worth £25k, that was the list price.