Dan

A free blast in a Zed, how could I refuse I'll buy lunch.

I'm wanting to take my employees ( and myself of course ) on a track day as a reward for their efforts. I've done a google search and there are loads of different companies offering track experiences so I was wondering if anyone could recommend one to me. I'm looking for one that supplies half a dozen different cars for us to play in. Thanks in advance.

Yeah, you would do well to pick up a 407 for £4500. Another couple of grand and you would get one but don't bother with the 1.6 HDi, it needs to be the 2.0 litre.

Aftermarket oversized wheels ruin the handling of most cars. The manufacturers spend millions on R+D developing the cars suspension geometry around factory wheels and tyre sizes and when the owner suddenly decides he knows better all that hard work goes out the window. The same goes for messing with the suspension. I've had loads of boy racer cars wearing big wheels and tyres and with lowered "uprated" suspension and they all tramline severely and not one of them steered correctly. In short, they didn't drive anywhere near as well as a standard car. They look great though

A TDi Golf at £4500 will be a bit of shed. On 04 plate Laguna in a nice metallic colour will look the part, and will create the right impression with your clients. I'm sure you realise turning up at your customers in the Gallardo will definitely create the WRONG impression Before I bought this Nissan Dealership I used to have a little used car pitch selling bangers. It was really busy, we did over 30 units month in month out for over 5 years. Pretty soon I was running around in a Bentley and took it to work for a few days. I overhead a customer saying they are making far too much money here if they can run around in that car, we'll go somewhere else. I never bought it for "posing", I just really love cars but from then on the Toy stayed at home

So it looks as though its specifically targetting people who work in the City centre and commute at those times ! Why would they do that ?

If your looking at German it's going to be quite long in the tooth at that price range. You would get something much fresher if you went French and French Diesels are very good. Laguna DCi 6 speed is a very good car and £4500 will get you an 03/04 with less than 50k at Auction. These cars are good for 50mpg and cruise the motorways very comfortably as well as being a practical, roomy and comfortable family car and they come with all mod cons if you avoid poverty spec models. That would be my recommendation

Narrow power band, all or nothing power delivery, noise, greasy crud all over your hands every time you fill up, can you tell I don't like Diesels I buy them because they sell, but I wouldn't drive one myself. For me they belong in 4x4s, Commercial Vehicles, PSVs and Reps motorway hacks. Even then, the 4.2TD in my Land Cruiser completely ruins the car and I would much rather have it with a big quiet V8 petrol engine. Having said that the 2.7 Twin Turbo Diesel in the S-Type ( and Discovery 3 ) is a superb engine and I just sold a 2.5 V6 TDi A4 Avant and that was pretty good too. Still not a patch on a good petrol engine though and there a 3 other factors to bear in mind : 1> Modern petrol engines are superb on fuel. 2> Diesel is more expensive than Petrol. 3> You pay a premium for the Diesel engined version of most cars. Those 3 added together negates the whole point of buying a Diesel in the first place. If you do your sums you have to be doing a tremendously high mileage to be better off with the Oil burner. P.S. I have an A3 2.0 TDi just now and while it is pretty nippy I really can't see it worrying a 350z.

I've written off 13 cars in my youth, mainly Minis. I was a very keen driver ( ie, a bit of a nutter ) and learned the hard way On the bright side my accidents never involved other vehicles, I would lose control on country roads and hit trees, walls or other such roadside furniture ! I've never worn a seat belt and never been injured in an accident. I was once a passenger in my own Mini when my mate rolled it. It went over 3 or 4 times down a grass banking and came to rest on it's roof in a field. I remember grabbing the base of the seat and holding myself in place. When the car came to rest I climbed out through the window completely unhurt. My mate was pinned in the car by the seatbelt and was screaming in agony because it had broken his collar bone. I had to fiddle about and release the seat belt for him before he could get out. God forbid if the car went up in flames the seat belt would have killed him. I used to work in the Insurance industry and I've seen many injuries which were caused by seat belts. It depends entirely on the circumstances of the accident whether a seat belt is a good thing or not. Personally I think it should come down to personal choice whether you wear a belt or not, but like I said in the vast majority of cars I find them very uncomfortable and just can't wear one. It's probably down to me being a funny shape - the avatar is me - and seat belts being a one size fits all type of device.

Whats the idea behind this then ? What do they think will happen to the economy if people stop going into the City centres ? It must take a particularly dense and extremely short sighted individual to come up with a plan like this. Not that it affects me in the slightest. I've been to London once in my life, I've been to Manchester a couple of times but I'm definitely a country boy. I avoid city centres like the plague but I can see what a stupid idea it is, especially to the poor souls who work there and are therefore going to have to pay this charge to get to work...

I have been told that once my no claims bonus is finally re-instated I will get the difference in the premium back. But I have also been told by an insurance assesor that accidents on roundabouts are almost always settled 50:50, and in that event I won't get my no claims bonus back. What really bugs me is that the woman that hit us had only just passed her test and bought a little Suzuki dollop of shxte with free Insurance. Her car was repaired free of charge within days of the accident whereas our car would still be driving around damaged right now if I hadn't paid to get it repaired myself. It's just so frustrating that she has got away with this simply by denying responsibilty. It's basically a stalemate and could go on forever. There were plenty of witnesses at the scene but it seemed so cut and dried to me that I never took any names and addresses, but then you would expect any decent person to have admitted it was her mistake and not lied about it. My wife occasionally gets wound up and starts crying over it out of frustration and I just tell her to forget all about it. One day a cheque might drop through the letterbox but I'm not going to hold my breath. I just think it's outrageous that something like this can be allowed to drag on so long.

My Wife currently runs a 206cc and the kids fit nicely in the back. Without the rear seats she couldn't have had the car because she does the School run. I agree about space in the front though. I have driven it once, my chin was on my knees and my shins started to ache in moments due to the angle of the pedals which was a shame as it was good fun to blatt about in. When I worked for Peugeot they sent us to Oulton Park for the launch of the 206GTi and I got to thrash one round the track all day long

Thats just disgraceful. Insurance companies think they are a law unto themselves, there ought to be some governing body who they have to answer to in cases like this. They won't wait 4 years to collect your premium ! All you can do is change companies, thats what I did at my last renewal. The biggest thing for me was that I'm on a trade insurance policy and when we lost 2 years no claims bonus due to no fault of our own the premium went up by £2,000, so it not only cost me £1,500 to repair our damage but it cost my business an extra £2,000 at renewal. Total cost of that woman driving into us was £3,500 and there was absolutely nothing we could have done to avoid her hitting us. It's a total farce.

I find seat belts acutely uncomfortable in just about every car, so I just never wear them. I think it's more dangerous to be constantly distracted by the seat belt instead of being comfortable and paying attention to my driving. I can't remember how long it is since the seat belt law came in but I have never been done for not wearing it. Then again, speed cameras can't get you for that sort of stuff

Looks a nasty smash mate, lucky you weren't hurt. Insurance is a total scam. About 18 months ago I was travelling with the wife and kids, wife driving in her 328i Convertible. Half way around a roundabout a woman pulls out of a side road right into the side of us. I was in the passenger seat and saw the woman just completely fail to see us and drive right at us without braking. She collided with our passenger side rear quarter. She denied liability and claimed we had cut across her path - how could we have cut across her path on a roundabout when she was waiting at a side road ? The highway code states you give way to traffic coming from your right, and also that traffic already on a roundabout has right of way, so she had no business pulling out until we had passed. Anyway, long story short, after about 6 weeks of messing about with insurance companies I paid for my wifes damage because she had owned the car for 1 week. It was her pride and joy, she had saved her wages etc and paid £8000 for the car and I just couldn't see her driving around with £1500 worth of damage, so I fixed it for her expecting a cheque from the Insurance company soon after. 18 months later we are still waiting to be paid out, the woman is still denying it was her fault and we have had solicitors on the case right from the start. We actually sold the car about a year ago !!! This is the first time I have ever tried to claim off my car insurance in 23 years. It's just total bxllxcks and I wouldn't bother buying Insurance any more if it wasn't a legal requirement.

This is not good news Nixy, I hope it turns out ok for you. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the biggest problem with this type of thing is that water gets into the electrics and wiring starting corrosion, which can cause you problems months or years down the line, this is why most flood damaged cars are written off. I obviously don't know how badly your car has been affected but I would get an independent assesment of the damage and try and take a long term view of things. I know this car is your pride and joy but if you think water has got into the wiring loom etc then I would push for a write off. I really hope it doesn't come to that and I'm really sorry this has happened to you.

I still live in a field according to both ms live and google earth ! On Google Earth my wife's car is on the driveway of our old house - AND it's outside her Dad's house too which is kinda cool. It's the worlds only omnipotent Peugeot.

Yeah thats right, they were like a factory sanctioned Grey Import. They hold their money very well too.

A nasty man came and bought my Skyline yesterday, which was a shame as I was really quite enjoying it. Anyway, I will go looking for another but this got me wondering why Nissan never officially imported any Skylines into the UK. There are several good Jap cars that never came here ( Skyine, Soarer, Stagea, Legnum VR4 etc ) and I would love to know why. Any body got any ideas ???

Bloody hell thats cheap ! In fact it's cheaper than me

We had heavy rain for several days. I got caught out with the Dogs in a thunderstorm and proper papped myself - the lightning was directly overhead and I was desperately trying to remember all the things they tell you to do in those circumstances but opted for pegging it instead which is no mean feat with my waistline I live right next to a lake, it's about 50 feet from my front door but yesterday it was only about 25 feet ! We had visions of moving everything upstairs in a big hurry but thankfully there must be some sort of overflow because the level didn't get any higher. We got off lightly with the look of those photographs Chesterfield posted.

I WANT ONE ! How funny would that be Reminds me of my younger days when I ran a 130 bhp Mini. The car looked bog standard, except for the large bore exhaust pipe, but it was running a 130 bhp A series with a 7000rpm red line, built by Mini Sport. Upset a lot of people that car did. A lot thought it was hilarious and gave me the thumbs up but quite a few were not happy at all. No sense of humour some people

PMSL, I think they all do that, it's a standard feature My next door but one neighbour bought a brand new Gallardo, absolutely gorgeous thing in Silver. You would think it would be reliable with all the Audi input but it spent more time on the back of the recovery truck than it did on the road. He eventually handed it back to the dealer and is sueing them for the monthly payments he made while the car was off the road ( he bought it on finance at nearly £2k a month, muppet ). He now runs a Land Cruiser !

It's an enthusiasts car, the "ultimate M3" that might one day become collectable... There are probably more under sheets in garages than have been on the track

Boring stuff, 3 Micras, 2 Almeras, 1 Primera, 1 Mondeo Diesel, 1 Fiesta and a Rover 45, all arriving tommorow. Not much fun, but decent stock.