brillomaster

yeah about £6k sounds about right - though you'd probably be better off selling the suspension separately, it will be worth a bit more.

sainsburys super unleaded now 117.9p round my way fill the tank for under £80, get in.

hmm maybe I should stick with swoopy coupes while I still can - I don't need a practical car yet. the ability to occasionally take a few people on a short journey would be nice, but 95% of the time any back seats would be empty. I think i'm being swayed off the idea a bit now... since it would cost quite a bit to upgrade to an M3, but doesn't sound like it would give that many benefits that I would use - while rear seats and an 8000rpm redline and an extra 60bhp sound good on paper, an extra £5k is a lot for some features that will be unused for 95% of the time. whereas if I got a torquey V8 6 series, i'd use the torque every day on the motorway, and it would be an arguably nicer place to be! and they're cheaper!

thing is im definitely looking for refinement - as you know I've got a track car which is noisy, hot and uncomfortable, which means my roadcars are driven rather more sedately - for a roadcar, I want a nice comfy place to sit, an engine that makes a great noise, and is happiest at a brisk cruise along A roads with plenty of grunt to overtake. it also needs to be tolerable for my fiancé for weekends away! for this reason any real lightweight (lotus, caterham, s2000) is out, I need to be able to do the daily commute in it as well. 645ci with a manual gearbox is a good shout - less to go wrong as its less highly strung, and the way i'll be driving it, probably faster than an M3 as it'll have a lot more torque low down the rev range. and it looks better, and has a better interior... trouble is finding a manual 645ci that hasn't been to the moon and back already - its a lot easier to find a low mileage M3. but then again, I cant get over the prospect of owning a BMW M3 - after all, that's a car we all lusted after as a teenager, right?

I'll admit, im having impure thoughts about other cars... specifically the BMW E46 M3. I've had my zed coming up to 3 years now, and while its still great, I am getting itchy feet to try something else - the requirements for that are it must be faster than a 53 plate 350z, and have a manual gearbox. Why is it that most fast big engined stuff only has automatic gearboxes? My ideal car would be a BMW 650ci with a manual gearbox, but that just doesn't exist. which brings me neatly onto the BMW M3 - 3.2 litres, 338bhp, 0-60 in 5.1 seconds, comes with a manual! But has anyone driven one to compare? the things that appeal to me are a 8,000rpm redline, obviously more power, and a more refined place to sit, but on the other hand, the torque figure is very similar to a zeds, so would I have to redline it everywhere for it to feel any faster? also how does it drive compared to a zed? the zed to me feels rather heavy, and a bit lazy in turn in and roll, is the M3 better in this respect? i'm also being swayed by having a BMW 330ci already as a track car, and before we took everything out of it it was a great touring car - quiet and comfortable and felt expensive (even though it wasn't) would an M3 be more of the same, only faster? Lastly... i'm tempted by a flappy paddle SMG gearbox - are these any good? I like the idea of blatting up and down the box with the paddles like an F1 driver! I figure I can sell my zed for around £6k, put another £5k in and buy a decent M3 with less than 60,000 on the clock... sound good?

My fiancées Dads Chevrolet Matiz is a pretty hateful little car... but the winner is probably our old pool car at work, a mini countryman diesel - massive wallowy underpowered elephantitis thing, nasty.

i've got EBC redstuff pads on the front of my zed, had no problems with them - quiet and seem to work well, although i rarely brake hard on the road. as for discs, they'll need replacing once they reach minimum thickness - cant remember what that is though. best check you can do is feel if there is a lip developing on the edge of the disc - replace them if its very noticable. for reference, my car did ~60,000 miles on the front discs before needing replacing - the rears are still original and are now on 65,000 miles. so unless you're last of the late brakers or have a very aggressive pad fitted, your discs should be fine for a while yet!

ah maybe it was 117... but even so, im sure ive seen it for low as 112.9 now for standard!

Petrol prices dropping even lower! I'm sure I saw standard unleaded at a bargainous 107.9p per litre up in Derby at the weekend... thought it must have been an error, but perhaps not! Very much looking forward to the annual Christmas journey to visit family, 400mile round trip in the zed as long as the weather holds! Anyone else taking their zeds out of hibernation for their xmas travels?

thing is, there arent many flashy cars that are slow.... there are only a few i can think of, a delorean is woefully slow but looks nice, a mitsubishi FTO, maybe a latest gen toyota celica looks nice. perhaps maybe a BMW 630d could be considered a looker but no trousers, but even thats not exactly slow. of course if you're talking about an MR2 with a kit on to look like a ferrari 360, well thats just tragic. however given the choice i'd rather a 300hp polo than a Mitsubishi FTO, although i would like rwd... so i'll have a boggo spec BMW 320d (and badged as such) but with a 3 litre twin turbo under the bonnet, thanks.

3- brillomaster

bit optimistic selling a zed with 123,000 miles on for £6,800... probably worth about £5k i'd say!

or failing that, getting up on stage at a big work party and performing 'Forgot about Dre' with a mate in an x-factor style competition... won that event, and won two tickets to the brit awards that year and after party as well. that was a pretty awesome couple of nights!

hmmm best experience was probably winning the national student poker championship back in 2007 - the final was live in a London casino and it was being filmed for television and everything. And I didn't just win, I dominated... started with 18 players on two tables who'd qualified online, and by the time we went down to one table I had more than half the chips in play, so it was a formality that I would go on to win. Quite nice when two people go all in in front of you and then you look down at pocket kings... So that was a cool $20,000 payout for winning that, or about £10,600 at the time. used the winnings to buy the mother of al downhill mountain bikes, and my first car. and then a few years later, sold the bike and bought my first track car, which lead to a whole load of great experiences!

it also says this: 268 Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake. In congested conditions, where adjacent lanes of traffic are moving at similar speeds, traffic in left-hand lanes may sometimes be moving faster than traffic to the right. In these conditions you may keep up with the traffic in your lane even if this means passing traffic in the lane to your right. Do not weave in and out of lanes to overtake. I reckon that's pretty conclusive - rush hour motorways are congested conditions, all lanes moving around 60mph. in that case, if the leftmost lane is free, you can keep up with the traffic in it - and since i'm the only person in the lane, I am the traffic, and i'll choose to do the speed limit, ie 70!

theres no way i'm pulling into a queue of cars in the middle lane if the inside lane is empty for half a mile before an obstruction. besides, the highway code states: "stay in your lane if traffic is moving slowly in queues. If the queue on your right is moving more slowly than you are, you may pass on the left" ergo, cars queuing in the middle lane (albeit still doing 65mph), I may stay in my lane and pass on the left. also, I like to travel in lanes where there is a safe distance in front of me - joining a line of cars in the middle lane does not give me a safe distance (hence why they're always braking) so i'll stay in the empty inside lane, thanks!

As I recall you have already sat in the drivers seat though Defo get a day sorted for the summer happy to try snetterton on a warm day with no fog or the GT circuit at Bedford is a good one - if I can keep the noise down Me and Andy James are up for it and there may be a few others from this end that will come along that was when it wasn't moving! scared the bejezus out of me just firing it up yep we've already started looking at possible trackdays for next year - the first few months will be quite short notice bookings depending on weather but hoping to do snetterton at the end of January if possible. theres also a weekend date at Bedford at the end of march which would be perfect for the first official 2015 350z-uk trackday

yeah didn't think there was any saving it so just jumped straight on the clutch and the brakes. thankfully it stayed on the tarmac, shudder to think what the car would have looked like if we'd have hit the wet grass. Oulton is a great track, the camera doesn't really show the gradient and elevation change, but reminded me of cadwell park.

yep, this would look perfect on the trackday BMW!

^^^ should have responded with 'yeah, yours is far nicer...'

you wont be going anywhere near any multi storeys if you lower it, my non lowered zed already scraps the front coming off every ramp, most annoying!

that's a good start! if you're still having handling issues get the alignment modified for less front toe in, or put more front tyre width on - most bmws with staggered wheel widths are set to understeer out the factory for safety.

by the end of the day a dry line was starting to emerge, but stray from it and it was damp and greasy. will have to come back on a nice warm dry day, was a really good track and definitely want to do it again.

just had a look at the times from the videos... in the wet i was lapping around 2:35 -2:30 range, and then 2:25 in the dry following the Z4... Ken i dont have a full dry lap of yours on video (stopped on both occasions by redflags) but managed to time hairpin apex to hairpin apex and i think it was about a 2:28.

Heres a couple of dry laps behind a Z4... he had more traction out the tighter corners, but we were slightly better on the brakes... you can see him trying hard when he ABS'es and misses the odd apex! but then again i was trying too, had a few dab of oversteer to correct coming out of corners. Best lap was a 2:25... is that good round oulton?!?