gangzoom

Hope everyone is having a good 2015. In a few months we'll be taking delivery of a brand new car (Lexus), which is a first for us. We'll be keeping the car 5-10 years, so I started looking at various paint protection products around. The paint on the Lexus is suppose to be soft, and if its anything like the paint on our Honda, and my old 350Z it's not going to survive well against stone chips. So far there seem to be two options. 1: M3 protection film clear wrap, provides front end protection against stone chips 2: CarPro Cquartz coatings, seem to provide a semi-permeant clear coat, but need to be professionally applied. Both products will cost in the region of £500-1000 to apply, so not a small sum of money. Has anyone used these products?? I'm tempted by the M3 film, since it's a do-it once job, where as the Cquartz requires maintenance etc. Happy new year all.

Happy new year.....resolution of the year, no more spending on car mods....no sure how long that'll last

They are suppose to be immense, on par with the DC2 Integra R...so a proper Type R, none of this EP3/FN2 mass market rubbish Check 5th gear syncros, but they must be pretty cheap these days.

Did think about replacing my ageing Canon 550D this Xmas, but after looking at some of the shots I got on a recent trip to India cannot honestly say I need to....Amazing just how sharp the images are given it's now a 5 year old design. The camera on the iPhone also continues to amaze me....taken from a moving car

This thread doesn't seem to have been updated much... Some shots taken with my iPhone after going on a quick Sunday morning drive....So let's see your winter pics

Snowing outside, not looking like its settling though.....At work tomorrow, but winter wheels have been on the BMW for the last month.....Last time I had to go to work with snow on the ground I ended up losing control of the car in the car park for about 1 minute which resulted in several donut shaped tyre marks in the snow :lol: .....Actually cannot wait to go to work tomorrow.

Personally i've always thought of houses as a home first and investment second. I bought my first house at the peak of the property bubble in 2008, and 'lost' £20K on it when I sold it in 2010 after buying a house with my wife. But we were able to knock down the asking price of our current house by over £30K because the market was so depressed at the time, so in affect it didnt matter I sold my first house for less than what I paid for it. Luckly we don't have to move for another 3-4 years yet, and house prices in our area have not really recovered much, so we should be able to get a decent deposit down. The whole ecnomony does seem geared to enable those who have large incomes/money to grow their wealth quicket than those without money. For example if you can drop a big 40% deposit your pay less interest than someone who can only afford a 10% deposit, so by definition those at the top of the ladder will continue to extend their wealth compared to those at the bottom. But actually if you can afford a 40% deposit you can probably afford to pay more interest than someone who can only afford a 10% deposit..... Even with cars, if you can afford £60K on a Tesla S, you can currently re-charge it for 'free' on Tesla superchargers, pay no road tax/congestion charge, and if you got a good accountant probably claim the VAT back on your tax returns. But than again we all know what happens ina turely equal world....After all 'all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others'

Happy holidays to all!! Just one and half hours to go before I can head off work

Are you looking in London? Around Leicester/midlands prices are pretty static, our house is only worth roughly 10% more than what we paid back in 2009. If you need to live in London, well you are unlucky, my parents house in Enfield has more than double in price since the mid 2000s....and I cannot see it slowing down. Compared to places like HongKong, Singapore, NewYork, London prices are still cheap!!!

So this is why my commute to work was 20 min quicker yesterday.....must be a whole lot of you lucky gits who are now off I'm off xmas and boxing day, but working the weekend through till NewYears day....cannot really complain though have just had a 2 week holiday, and its better than the last 3 xmas days when I've been on call and the family had to listen to me discussing the function of gentleman's bits over the phone at dinner table . Hope every have a good holiday period!!

100% agree! My commuting days are numbered, 40 days and counting The diesel has been great for commuting, but cannot wait to get away from that idle rattle. Though I do confess is has been very economical.

Congrats on the car, almost identical mods to my 335i, must be a mental machine in this weather… There definitely needs to be a BMW sub forum on here Stick some aftermarket back boxes on and it doesn't sound half bad

Been using macs for 20 years, and dozens of macs, have only ever experienced 'no boot disc' once, due to hard drive failure. Since than I run two backs, one time-machine, and one is a bootable back up I keep updated every 1-2 months. If you have a time machine back up, you could try that first, but you may want to do fresh OSX install, but that might/will wipe the hard drive. Do you have any vital work on the computer??

Lovely looking car

The mark II is now 2 generations old?? I think it's usually only previous generation prices that get affected by new models. Also on some cars used prices have been very firm and actually going up!! WBAC will give me £1k more for my 2008 BMW 335i right now than what they would have done a year ago

All true, but servicing, running costs, and repairs costs nearly always add to a fraction of the money lost in deprecation. Even for my unreliable BMW thats actually had lost nearly 40-50% of its RRP when I bough it, in the last 3.5 years its carried on deprecating to the tune of about £10K. The sum total of what I've spent on servicing/repair costs over that period (no warranty) is less than half that value. But having a new car is a lovely feeling, hence we have gone down the buying new route for the wifes car, despite the fact it makes no sense as a financial decision. Leasing doesn't make it any cheaper, it simply means you don't have to stump up the total cash price up front....your still throwing away £££ per months for the privilege of been in a brand new car. Infact to lease the IS300H in the spec we want, will cost nearly £20K over 3 years, which is nearly exactly what the car will have depreciated by over list price in the same time period. So if we were to change cars again in 3 years for a new car that work out OK, but if we were to keep the same car for another 3 years, and assuming it will continue to depreciate at 50% over 3 years it would loss another £10K, so over 6 years we will have lost £25K in depreciation (purchase price is £35K, against list price of £40K). If we were to spend another £20K leasing a new car after 3 years, over 6 years leasing will have cost £40K...so £15K over 6 years is the additional cost associated with been able to drive a new car every 3 years compared to buying brand new with cash and sticking with the car.....That's a cost for we cannot justify.

Just reading a bit more about the V10 RS6, apparently quite reliable and 850bhp with uprated turbos. At around £30k these thing look like a steal, infact £5k cheaper than the slow/sensible Lexus we just bought...I might see if I can convince my wife to take up ownership of the BMW, and I'll keep the Civic inview of trading it in for a Audi estate for the sake of saving some money and not having to buy a brand new car

M cars are ok but if your after a 'super car' why not do it properly and get a real super car. I know a V10 RS6 is way over budget but surely the thought of having a proper super car engine in your day to day family wagon is worth saving up for a bit while longer... I only ever seen 3 on public roads but everytime I see one I just want one, and to be 100% honest if I could convince my wife I would PX my BMW for one in a instant.....apparently they remap to around 700bhp....that is proper super car stuff, M5/XFR, aren't those things some kind of supermarket shopping carts in comparison

Just remember most leases need 3-6 months down payment as initial payment. So a £300month lease over 24 months including 6 months initial payment is about £9000. At the end of the lease you give the car back and have nothing to show for it. Your struggle to find a £15k used car that will depreciate by £9k over 2-3 years. When I looked at the figures lease hire, it only made sense to a private buyer if you are wanting a brand new car every 2-3 years, in which case it's better than using cash because your not tying up a larger lump sum into the car. But having a new car every 2-3 years isn't cheap since deprecation is highest when new. Lease hire doesn't make running a new car any cheaper, your lease is simply paying for depreciation so that the lease company can than sell the car for a profit at the end of the lease period.

I would hold off for OLED price to fall further....12 months ago cheapest 55inch OLED was £5k, now down to £2k. Give it another 6-12 months and you be able to pick up a 55inch 4K OLED panel for £2k. If you haven't seen how good a OLED panel is in real life, pop down to your local John Lewis, and compare them side to side with a conventional LCD LED panel, the difference is night and day, I promise you wouldn't be disappointed by OLED picture quality. OLED isn't a marketing gimmick like LED LCD TVs, or 4K, it's brand new display technology that I remember seeing on tomorrow's world about 20 years ago , and overcomes the fundamental problem of LCD display technology, which is need for a backlight. Have a look at reviews of OLED TVs on the web, pretty much every review calls them the 'best' TVs every made interms of picture quality, even better than the might Pioneer Kuros.

Last 2 days finally got the paper work for the car order done, gone for top spec with advanced safety kit, so not cheap even with 15% discount, and due to rare colour/spec will be a factory order, so delivery not till March!! Last night whilst just chatting she mentions she will miss driving the 335i which she apparently calls the 'zoom zoom machine', and her only complaint about the Lexus is that it doesn't zoom everywhere like the 335i does when she accelerates. This is after I told her the 335i is costing £1.3/mile to run, more than double the running costs of the Lexus, even taking in the massive new car deprecation of the Lexus!!! Ahhh!!!!....She tells me this after we just order a £35k car which we are buying primarily for its economy....I knew I should have made her test drive a supercharged 3.0 V6 supercharged Jaguar XF petrol

Looks nice, see you gone for the L version If it wasn't so big my wife would have considered one....what engine is in yours?? Hope it's one that uses proper fuel

If your are seriously interested in a diesel Civic. Ours will be up for sale soon, 08 plate, Black, 5 door, 2.2 diesel. EX spec so top spec, SatNav, Bluetooth, voice control, xenons, electric folding mirrors, cruise control, rear parking sensors, aux-in port, currently longer average 49mpg. Totally standard, 85k maintained by Honda than Mitz, no issues at all, we've owned it since 3k, only selling due to wife wanting more luxury, so currently PX for a Lexus IS300H. Been offered a lowly £4.5k PX price for it, but given the lack of hassle in PX have pretty agreed. Rather it go to a good home though, so will let it to a member for not much more. PM me if seriously interested.

I've never seen Electronic Dampers on any 335i before. The photos from the car interior also don't show the EDC switches, which on the M3 is found next to the gear stick drivers side.....Than again I also have never seen a E90 that colour before

Have a good day!! Maybe even a day away from the garage