gangzoom

I understand, but if you can't afford the extra £5K then you can't afford the car. This is why decent cars end up being run into the ground, because they get bought on the cheap and then maintained on peanuts, and then become teh sheds we all mock on eBay! The pound is quite strong at the moment which makes importing such much more attractive....but I totally agree with the concept that if you cannot afford the £5K price difference between a UK GTR and an imported one than your wasting your time dreaming about owning one. These are 500bhp machines that are on par with any Ferrari etc, and have running costs to go along with that, I've seriously looked into owning one and after looking at all the costs have come to the conclusion that theres just no way I could afford to run one....and thats with me spending on average £700/month on my 335i over the last 3 years, I reckon your be looking at close to £1K/month for a GTR, at least. Given that many GTRs here are also modified very nicely (and at great expense), I can only conclude owning a GTR is something that really reserved for those who have enough disposable income that they simply don't need to think about budgeting for running costs etc....which means I've accepted I'll never be able to run one ...Still it doesn't stop me from wanting one

Your need to triple OPs budget of £4-5k to get anything reassembling a half decent 335d, and than your need a spare £1-2k repair fund to keep the thing on the road. I really cannot fault our 2.2 Civic, as a commuter car it's perfect, am averaging 50mpg on a 70 mile daily commute over mixture of urban and A road traffic. The suspension isn't great but I've kept a E90 330D honest on a 'spirited' twisty A road drive, so it's got more than enough poke.....oh also in nearly 80K NOTHING has broken, which is what you want if your counting on the car to get you from A to B daily

£35k will easily get you a decent M3....why bother looking at all the pseudo M cars and just go for the real thing.

08 car, 50k, water pump and high pressure fuel pump failure, AT box transmission fluid leak, and coil pack failure all with in a 4 months window ....hopefully will be more reliable now that lots been sealed with

Just finalising our trip....Going to get AA European insurance just in case, the 335 isn't the most reliable car to take on a 2000 miles jaunt, wouldn't surprise me one bit if we end up doing half the trip in a rental car whilst the 335 gets sent back to see Mitz/Andy at the garage

Say your take home pay is £2.5K/months, and your end up with a £1.25k mortagage, so you have £1.25K 'spare' a month post mortagage. Essential bills: Council tax will be about £100/months, SKY/Internet £30-40/months, Phone contract £30/months, Gas/water/electric £150/months, home insurance £20/months, Car insurance £50/months, petrol £50-100/months, servicing etc £30/months, Food £200/months... So after all that your have a total of £580/months left to spend on everything else, that not a lot of money, <£20 a day....Now imagine whats going to happen if interest rates go up 1% and your mortgage payments go up £200/months and one day you get out to start the car and nothing hapeens

I wouldn't be in that much of a rush to get a big house. Big house = Big Mortgage = Big Council tax = Big Insurance = Big Bills. I see our house as home first and foremost, at some stage we'll be moving to something bigger but I cannot see the point of moving just for the sake of it. I really feel sorry for people in London though, even 500K will barely buy you a flat. I really cannot see how any one can afford to buy/live in London unless your joint household income is well over £150k+. As for % income to spend on the mortgage, remember currently interest rates are at a historical low and due to go up next year. I think roughly a 1% rise on a 300k mortgage can result in £200-300 rise in monthly payments....I certainly would not be comfortable if 50% of my post tax income is tied up with the mortgage it leaves you with very little wiggle room incase some unexpected bills tune up. I have been there before and can tell you first hand worrying about if you have enough in the bank to cover the mortgage repayment is not a nice thing to lie in bed worrying about!! Start small/cheap and work you way up.....

Looks great I've just booked leave for our trip to Spa/Swiz alps

I'll bring my camera (if I remember)

I'm working in Northamptom that morning, but things should be OK for me get back to Leicester by 12ish so i'll pop in than .... oh the oil cooler, suspension, and brakes are working beautifully together, can finally really push the car for the first time in months....Biggest concern I have now is losing my licence

I wouldn't recommend a 335i if your doing regular 100mile commutes. I have one and yes you can see 35-40mpg on M ways if you keep your speed down but there's too much temptation to use the power...and if you do it's not better than the 350Z on fuel, and on top your have the headache worrying about what's going to break next (and things will break...a lot). I'm constantly listening/watching out for rattles, shakes, smoke...is it a turbo seal about to go or maybe finally the wastegates have gone, another fluid leak from somewhere, are the injectors about to go....it's not really a good car if you need it to cover big miles every day. Our 2.2 diesel Civic on the other hand is more than fast enough for every day use, munches through the miles, starts every time/day (where as in the 335 I had to be towed to the garage once), oh and does 50mpg regardless how hard I drive it

Looks fab and enjoy it!! Have a thought for the rest of us who are paying x5-10 what you are for fuel

Best looking GTR I've seen....so tempted to get one, but than I realise if I did I'll have no money left for food

To be fair it's only that much if I was to PX the car in the car now for trade value. The actual car only cost me £13k + trade in for my 350Z 3 years ago, and my budget was for a E90 M3, so the 335 came in at way under budget, hence my justification for going mad with mods Been driving the car this weekend on some lovely roads, love it, worth every penny...Life is for living, and am lucky enough that money I've spent on the car has not had any impact on more important things (holidays/mortgage etc)....I would love a GTR but their running costs are in a different league which I simply cannot ever see my self affording

Overall the car is pretty practical, BMWs specific with to spec just about everything is an optional extra so when your looking for one don't assume any thing As for the brakes, the 335s brake are pretty good once you get uprated pads. Even the M3 brakes apparently aren't all that good if your going to track the car....there's no way round it, regarding brakes if you want top end performance you have to pay the price

Brakes sizes are standard, but just had new EBC Ultimax discs/Yellow stuff pads fitted. If i was seriously going to track the car I've considered the AP big brake kit, but total costs would be at least £3-4K even without fitting, which is too much for me to justify. Mine is an auto, manuals are really rare, and to be honest I wouldn't go back to manual if all autos are as good as the ZF box in the 335. In day to day driving you simply don't need to think about it, and the Manual mode changes quick enough for me when you really want to press on....Only feature missing from mine that I miss is having split/folding rear seats, which was a factory option that rarely got ticked ...retrofitting is possible but costs about £200-300 just to get hold of the needed brackets from BMW, and than your need to get hold of some seats. Mods wise the list is pretty long... Quaife LSD Birds B3 suspension, Eibach anti-roll bars, M3 subframe bushes AR design high flow cats Evolve Intercooler AFE sealed air intake Procede ECU tune (switchable maps on the fly) EBC brakes pads/Discs + braided lines - 750 Built in CCC Satnav upgraded tolatest CIC model + Alpina speaker upgrade Pure300di DAB + internal aerial 250 Alufelgen 19inch wheels Finally, Racwreks uprated oil cooler - Currently with CS waiting to be fitted If I hadn't modified the suspension and added a LSD I would have swapped the 335 for something else by now. The power train in the car is good enough to be in a M car (as BMW has now done) but it was almost as though BMW handicapped the rest of the car on purpose so it wouldn't threaten the E90/92 M3. My lovely wife recently has been hinting at me to change to a more economical/reliable car, hence me doing some ownership costs....We've now reached a compromise, and I've promised her my next car will be an EV car so running costs will be minimal....but luckily even she realises the only EV that is actually usable on a daily basis is the Tesla S, so the 335 will be safe from been culled for while yet

It's now been nearly 3 years since I waved goodbye to the 350Z and hello to the 335i, so I decided to work out running costs etc and may be consider a change... The total cost of ownership ALL IN works out as £760/month (£27k in 3 years ) including fuel at 24mpg for 5k/year. Depreciation is biggest single cost and accounts for 1/3 of the cost, with mods accounting for the second biggest cost. Having access to someone like Mitz/Andy at Cougar store has been a life saver!! One thing I quickly realised with the 335 is that it's a lot more 'delicate' than the Z. Components fail on a regular basis, infact in 10 years+ of driving various cars, including a £500 Micra I've never had to be towed anywhere, but with the 335 it's happens once already and I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again!! But I would happily say the 335 is the best car I've owned by a long way, there's not a single other car for the money that combines 400bhp, 40mpg possible long runs, RWD, comfortable, plenty of gadgets, and discrete, it's not a cheap car to own/run but for me worth every penny Right now I cannot think of another car I would swap the 335 for... The new M3 did catch my attention, but after reading the early reviews I really don't think it's worth spending £40k+ over my 335 to get into one. The only other car right now I would swap my 335 for is a Tesla S, but at £65k+ for the model I want that's not going to happen any time soon...So will have to 'make do' with the 335 for now

Lovely looking thing the 458.....I see man maths is working hard here, weren't you looking at £4K RX8s a few weeks ago .... Go for something exotic to replace the 911 with you know you want to

I came to the UK aged 10, when I arrived I did NOT speak a single word of English, and my parents barely had enough money to pay the rent for a single room flat. I saw how hard my parents were working so that I had the opportunity to get educated here in the UK, so knuckled down and work hard. 22 years later I have 11 GCSEs, 4 A levels, 1 degree, 1 doctorate, 2 diplomas, just about to complete a higher postgraduate degree and about to start another. The education system in the UK has empowered me to get a job that I love, become nearly mortgage free at the age of 32, and have enough disposable income to waste stupid £££ on cars/gadgets, and I'm only half way to my maximum earning potential, which I'll hit in the next 10 years. I would say am no more intelligent than the average guy on the street, so if UK education systems has enabled me to archive all this you can see why am a massive fan of it!! The one thing that I really hate about the UK is that so many people born here don't realise just how good they have it.....People in other parts of the world would LOVE to have the chance to be educated for free, and have the opportunity to study at places likes Cambridge and Oxford. The tuitions fees I had to pay to study at University is nothing compared to what places like Harvard/MIT charges. People like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are geniuses, they didn't complete higher education because they were TOO clever, anyone who drops out of school because they think they can do what these guys did are deluding themselves. The point of studying Maths, Physics at school is NOT to force you to memorise pointless facts. It's to train your brain to tackle problems in an efficient cognitive manner. Our ability to deal with stressful situations very much depends on our ability to deal with a large cognitive load, something that subjects like Maths, physics helps you develop. Though I have never needed to use things like complex algebra on real life, in my daily job I do need to make complex decisions in some very time pressured environments, something that is only possible due to cognitive training. But at the same time just having a good education doesn't and shouldn't mean your guaranteed a good job. I might start/finish work at 9-5 etc, but I spend nearly every evening /weekend doing some kind of work related stuff, and I love it. I can guarantee any one with a successful business will tell you the same, there is no substitute for hardwork regardless of your education status!!! The way I see it life is full of opportunities and the people that succeed at the people that grab hold of those opportunities and work hard, something so many people in the UK don't seem to get?? Sitting around and moaning has never achieved anything, I learnt this the hard way when I had a 'rebellious' phase at Uni and ended up nearly been chucked off the course!!

Hummm.....maybe 5% of the population have enough talent/brains to make a good living it without 'formal' education but the top paid jobs in the uk last few years. 1: CEOs 2: Pilots/Flight engineers 3: Medical practitioners 4: Marketing/sales directors 5: Lawyers Try getting into those jobs without good grades... I hated exams in school, but at 32 still doing them!! But I for one am glad my parents very strict and forced me to 'conform' to the established education system, I know I certainly wouldn't be so financially secure as I am now without a decent formal education.

I like that concept....will be joining the nappy changing/sleep deprived/constantly broke club soon....Got to drive around Europe, do a trip to the Andes, maybe even do a trip back to Newzeland, generally blow all our disposable income before we have to 'streamline' and save up for stuff to clean poo/vomit up with

When the babies comes are you sure your going to have time or the money to worry about suspension and 'ring time .....I'm at an age where most of my mates from uni/college how all have kids (some two!!), and from what I can gather once it arrives you can pretty much write-off the next 18 years of your life interms of socialising/having money for holidays/going out for meals.....ofcourse if you ask anyone with a baby, having one is 'the most amazing thing in world', though some of my more honest mates have told me different

If your in the market for a £50-65K, 300-400Bhp, luxury barge for the family the Tesla S is almost a no-brainer. Its about 10-15% more to buy new than the equivalent A8/5 series/XJ but with a fraction of running costs....I'm 99% sure in a few years time when its time to move on from my 335i i'll be swapping it for an EV car. If i had the money I would buy one now, but I don't ...Still all the more reason to try harder at work I still rather site on a group of lithium batteries rather than having 60-70liters of flammable liquid in the boot.

Just went to check on OLED prices, the LG launched last year at £8k!!! When I saw the set in John Lewis a while back it was £5k, now you can pick one up for £3.5k......Got to love the world of mass production quick prices can drop....so hopefully £2k OLED panels will be with us in 12 months:)

Forget LED/LCD/Plasma/Smart TVs.... Get down to John Lewis and check out the OLED sets from LG/Samsung. The difference in picture quality is unbelievable and probably the biggest improvement I've seen in years (Even including the 9th gen Kuro panel I had for a short period). They had the Samsung OLED panel next to a traditional LCD LED panel and my wife pointed to the older panel and asked me 'Have they set up this one to look bad on purpose?', that's how much better the picture quality of the OLED panel is compared to the current LED LCD panel....and the biggest test, when I said am thinking of buying one and pointed out the price difference between the panels she didn't object The holy gril will be a OLED super/ultra HD panel, it's going to cost buckets to make/buy but it is coming.....So unless you Really Really need a new TV I would be patient and see how quickly OLED prices drop. At £4-5k current they are a toy for the super rich but I don't think it will take more than 12-24 months for them to hit £2k at which point am having one