Be Excellent To Each Other

It was a joke, because i'm future trooper and....

Ah, forget it

Each to his own I guess, but fuck me that Scooby puts the f in fugly.

Ach, sorry mate, don't listen to me, I like girls cars. Only got the Cayman under orders; I'd have had another Boxster.

Sure it's an awesome thing; I just don't like the looks.

Here's my baby

If I see you on the Cheshire roads, I'll move over.

Promise

That's a fine looking motor Cavey and fair play to anyone who can afford such a beast

I guess what I liked so much about my Scooby was the way it brought awesome performance and handling into the price bracket of someone on a more humble budget such as myself. IIRC I checked out the numbers at the time and my Scooby was as fast as a Cayman, you had to get the Cayman S to get the drop on it.

I'm not pretending for one second that a Scooby has the pedigree and finesse of a Porsche, plus I know you'd wax lyrical about the Porsche's handling characteristics and suchlike, and I'd not pretend for one second that the Scooby wasn't a bit of a cheap-ass car on the inside (even in the STi guise which I had).

The thing with Scoobies is that they were borne of a pretty standard saloon car turned into something a bit mental, and I liked that sort of scrappy underdog mentality they had about them.

The new STi is under £30K, which whilst not cheap of course, isn't a massive wedge of cash for a car with the performance and handling that it delivers (and by all accounts they've spent more than £6.86 on the interior now as well). Last time I checked a brand new Porsche with STi speed would run you to something like £60-£80K.

If I had £30K to spend, I'd probably get a brand new Impreza STi as opposed to a really nice used Porsche, but then again I look at the new STi and think it's rather a handsome oddball sort of beast

Don't be daft, man.
Why move over for a hapless old tosspot like me with no lead left in the pencil? I get loads of admiring glances from the Cheshire laydees in that...... until they see who is driving

Hey mate, there can be no doubting the Scooby's awesome petrolhead credentials; it's a superb piece of engineering and its talents as a very fast road car, with rally pedigree, are beyond doubt. Yes, the Porsche is also superb but so it bloody well should be at double the price (and no faster in real world conditions).

Plus, your average Porker driver is a poseur, whereas people buy Scoobies for one reason alone - to drive 'em like they stole 'em.

<looks at Forester>
<looks sad>

The new shape Cayman is The Balls. It looks lovely. Even in Pimpin' White.

Why would anyone buy a 911 these days? I hope that you're happy with it chap. When I saw it and the Spyder at Goodwood they we're stand out cars for me (them and the Tesla S)

Cheers mate.

I really have no idea why anyone would choose a 911 Carrera over a Cayman S (or indeed, a Boxster S over a 911 Cabriolet, come to that). The Cayman S is just as fast, lighter, more agile, a better handler (in fact arguably THE best handling car, period) - and costs £20k less....? No brainer.

The 911 is more refined, but if I wanted refinement I'd have bought a fucking Jag. Since when has a 911 been a GT car?

I loved the 997 GTS I drove for a few days. Now THAT is what I call a car; a snorting, wriggling, squirming beast of a motor. The 991, though, was an anaemic facsimile, wouldn't say boo to a goose. Very "impressive" in its own way and the missus loved it - that says it all.

The Cayman S is equally a right handful, loves to bite back and is as pointy sharp as you like. Love it; it's everything a junior sportscar should be; feels like a miniaturised hypercar. What a machine; never in my wildest dreams did I dare to hope I'd be driving a motorcar this good. I adore it.

Sally:

'Enter in rear'

*Chortle*

Is that your 'Stang, Cras?
Awesome, love it.

Brum brum.

Take a picture of the engine!

In car buying news: It's been ages since I bought a car. What do you do about tax if you get it from the dealers and want to drive it home?

Normally they tax it on your behalf and you pay them the VED on top of the balance of the car (unless you're canny enough to get it included in the deal.)

Get a cover note and the other documents and go to the post office is all I did.

I don't know if I want to buy it yet, though.

I figured they'd probably do it for me. Then you ring the one-day insurance people while you're driving home, right?

Some places give you a week free insurance.

I'm not convinced this place does.

Mine was from a local place so I gave them the deposit one day and then went back the next to give them the rest of the cash and pick up the car. In may case the dealers had their own arrangement with some insurers just for this sort of thing so the week's free insurance was sorted through them they just put me on the phone to them while they ran through some details with me.

Just looked at their stock. I'm guessing that your head has been turned by the Cat D Clio 1.2 or the Kia Picanto, right? And not the big Jag.

PICANTO 4 LIFE BRO

It's a bit far away for me to want to go twice, though.

If i'm going to pick up a car on the day, and haven't already done a deal so they can tax in advance, I just make sure i'm picking it up when the post office is open and get them to point me to the nearest one.

It's a minor risk that you will get caught on the way, but that just adds excitement to the life of a middle aged and married suburbanite...

I've just found out that it's only £40 if you do get caught, so I doubt I'll even bother.

We have a 2005 Vauxhall Zafira, Parkers online search suggests it's probably worth £2500 - £3500, however, our car isn't ideal, we've had it 5-6 years and 4 kids have done their worse to the insides (damaged handles, ripped fabric etc) and a couple of low speed scrapes on the outside (along with marks where someone has tried to jemmy the rear passenger side door) The interiror electrics are not brilliant (the charging points are not very chargy, the passenger side front window doesn't open smoothly - you have to press it multiple times, and it opens/closes about an inch each time). So it's probably worth much less than that.

Now recently it's been crap, with power cutting out all over the shop. It's in for a look at the garage. At the moment it's in peices and we've been told it needs a new ECU, and a second hand one cannot be located at the moment, so it's probably going to cost the best part of £1,000 for a new one. plus labour (of which there will be some costs already accrued here).

What's our best option here? To suck up the cost? To sell the car in it's kaput state? To scrap it?

Then as for a replacement? We need something with at least 6 seats, but ideally we need something that can sit that many, and still have plenty of space for luggage (somethign we struggle with at the moment) We've even contemplated a smaller minibus for this!

Any suggestions? Oh yeah,and a price? as little as possible, we could really do without the expense of this right now!

Thanks

Malc

Oh, and to add, I am 6ft3 tall, my two eldest son's are 5ft11 (and aged 13 and 15 so likely to get much bigger!)

so it needs to be big enough to accomodate some big chaps!

Malc

Is the garage also a car sales place? Ask what they'll trade it in for, if so.

A 12-seater minibus is by far the most practical thing I ever owned. I loved the shit out of it.
Fiat Ducato Maxi, Minibus fans

Get it put back together and trade it in to a dealer for something else.

I don't think this one is actually.

Malc

Get it fixed, then.

Find out how convinced they are that the ECU will fix the problem first, though.

If you can wait a bit, grab a second-hand ECU yourself: http://www.1stchoice.co.uk/

Not quite in the same league, but pending confirmation of my pay rise later this week, I'm getting a datsun come new lease time.

What are you getting, a Go? I used to have a Datsun Cherry. It was powerful shit.

I'd love a restored 620, though.

[edit]Or is it the Top Gear version of a Datsun (which I think was a Lexus LFA)?

The new nissan x trail. But I refuse to call Nissan anything other than Datsun.

Its a well reviewed, reasonably lease priced and excessively large car for our needs but FUCK YOU I WANT TO DO FACEBOOK ON MY SATNAV

I think something like a VW Transporter is a good size, not too big for daily use as your main car and it seats 8 with flexible seating so would have room for luggage and shopping and trips to Ikea. We have a Santa Fe and that seats 7 but nothing else will fit in when all the seats are up. The five regular seats are great and plenty roomy but I wouldn't like to be overweight or over 5'7 and try to fit in the back 2.

I once managed to fit in the rear mini seats of a Citroen Picasso with my wife and mother in law.

It wasn't comfy.

I'm 5'11''

Better punchline requested.

ROAR!

Fuck off you red nosed bastard!

Better. The way mother in law jokes should end in the modern world.

This documentry about the first female Arab race team looks interesting: https://vimeo.com/67320083

The TT is upon us, today is the first day of Practice Week (first practice isn't until 6pm). They make the mountain road (which is already derestricted i.e. no speed limit) one way for the fortnight as well, the idea being to reduce the number of head-on collisions.

Needless to say lots of folks like to go up there for a blast, although I wasn't expecting to see this line-up. They're waiting here because the road is closed following an accident this morning, not sure if there are any fatalities or not but it's not unusual on the first day. Once they've cleaned up the mess it'll open again.

So here we have a Porsche GT3 RS, a McLaren something or other, and a Ferrari 430 Scuderia.

Back when I had the Scooby I'd be availing myself of a drive or two over, doesn't seem much point in a Honda Accord, although I expect my drives to work to be quicker than usual for the next two weeks.....

997.1 GT3 RS.......... filth!!!!

Has to be Viper Green for me though. One day...

The chaps in the cars were really pleasant, I asked them if they'd mind me taking a few pictures and they said to go ahead.

The TT is a quite remarkable festival, it's often said that it pretty much polices itself, despite the massive number of extra people that come to the island for the fortnight. I did have the stats once but I think in terms of extra people vs police presence it's one of the easiest to police festivals in the world.

I do rather miss my Scooby for these two weeks, it has to be said, racing a Noble over the mountain mile was pretty exciting

First world problem: my car is so big it takes ages to clean

Looks like we're going for a 2008 Ford Torneo with 9 seats! bit heavy on the mileage, but on the whole not too bad.

!

Malc