marzman

Decisions decisions.... I've decided for the first time in my life to buy a new car. I've always owned cars that are 8-10 years old at the bottom of their depreciation curve, but i think the time's right in my life to get something new. I wanted an Audi TT simply because I love the Virtual Cockpit. I've visited the dealership several times this year and this weekend I settled on the model I wanted - a Nano Grey TT 2.0 TFSI Black Edition S-Tronic with Nav. The car came to a cool £39,600 with options - just under the all important £40k threshold for new car tax rules. I've signed on the dotted line and it will be available to pick up from the end of next week. I would have paid a deposit but their card machine wasnt working so they said they'd get in touch this week to sort everything. Here's what the car will look like: The thing is though, at no point did I feel excited by the car. I felt like I was settling for a convenient, half decent motor. I've never liked the TT previously, and they just dont seem particularly special. Things came to a head on Sunday night watching the new Top Gear, where they had a Mustang on. CRAP!!! How could I forget about the Mustang and buy a TT???? Fast forward 3 days and countless phone calls and I've settled on a 5.0 GT Coupe, probably in Grabber Blue. The options list is quite small anyway but im not having the premium sound system or heated seats in order to keep it under the £40k mark. Just waiting on a call back from the dealer tomorrow to confirm they can get me this car. I've tried to call Audi to back out of the deal but my sales man hasn't been in work since the weekend. Ford seem to think I can get out of it (I sent them the paperwork to see if they could advise) but i'm still nervous. I'll be pretty gutted if I get stuck with a TT. So fingers crossed that in the next couple of weeks i'll be driving a Mustang!

Father Ted for me.

Bump. This is still available. Good time to buy a new track car ready for the upcoming season. Open to offers.

Excellent work. Keep the updates coming.

It's looking amazing mate. Home stretch now...!

This has made my day, this is awesome!

Brilliant, good info thanks mate.

I may have found it. Range Rover Velar D300. 6.1 0-60 and 44mpg.

Ridiculous. I've done some reading and watched some videos about Elon Musk fairly recently, and I see his projects as a really refreshing benevolent approach that nobody else on the planet is doing. All of his projects have a 'for the good of humanity' purpose, but they're just a little more outside the box than what the everyman thinks of. Yes there are problems with pollution and waste, but governments and other companies are already looking at those. This guy wants to do things that nobody else is doing and push boundaries that humans thought were inconceivable. A quick quote from a website regarding his ambitions for SpaceX: Then looking at his Tesla proejcts, the R&D achieved in this field is creating opportunities in other areas which havent been particularly well publicised, such as the deployment of a huge battery/solar farm in South Australia last quarter. Paraphrasing the solution, it basically allowed reliable, robust, clean power in a very unreliable and difficult to power region that suffered from outages/power shortages. My understanding was that he provided this solution FREE as a proof of concept and now has got other countries queuing up to get on board! The above may be factually innaccurate as i heard it on a podcast, but you can read more about it here: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/1/16723186/elon-musk-battery-launched-south-australia And obviously to continue with this benevolence he needs to make serious money, so great - i hope he continues to make billions so we can see even more innovation.

Sounds amazing... i'll check out your tips, thanks.

For me, Elon is the greatest human being on the planet. He's definitely an alien in a skin suit a la Men in Black.

This is awesome Col, thank you so much. There are a few good suggestions on here that weren't on my list. My plan was to split my 2 weeks kind of 35% Tokyo 65% Kyoto and surrounding areas, but a friend of my wife's told her today that we should stay in Tokyo the whole time and just day-trip Kyoto, Nara etc as there's not that much to do/see there. Would you agree with this? Good tip for excuse me too - i'll brush up on that.

Welcome back. Did you have a friend who badly crashed their scooby at a track day...? I always remember that post from years ago and think it was yours IIRC. M13KYF hasn't been around properly for a couple of years or so. Still has his car as far as i know, but he relocated across the country and then went quiet. Sarnie pops in from time to time.

My wife and I are off to Japan in April for a couple of weeks, hopefully catching the cherry blossoms while we're there. We'll be spending about 5 days in Tokyo and then the rest of the time in Kyoto and surrounding areas, with a potential trip to Hiroshima. I've not nailed down the itinerary yet but got a good idea of the usual tourist things to do - but does anyone have any nuggets of info or experience that might be useful? Does anyone know of any regular static car meets that take place, or is there a specific area of Tokyo for this for example? I'd quite like to see that one evening...

Basically a C-Class petronas edition would do for me, but they dont seem to do one.

Thanks, but it's not for me. I've never fancied a hatchback. I really like the C250 saloon though. I'd been modding one in my mind last summer... I wanted one in silver, and I was going to put some turquoise accents on it, like the Merc F1 team. Then to finish it off I wanted some of those Pirelli colour edition tyres. I was strongly considering the estate version too as it looks just like the medical car that follows the F1 cars round. Not very aspirational to copy a medical car though...

Tax band - i'm paying about £550 for my RRS at the moment and it just annoys me. It's just money in the bin and is comparable to having a worse MPG. I'd never really taken any notice of it until i bought an RX8 track car last year which again is £550 tax. I only tax/insure it for the months that i've got a track day, and its just dead money. In terms of practicality, by definition of an all rounder you're right... I clearly want something that doesn't exist. I want a sexy tardis.

Okay, more rules, but in my order of priority. Meeting all of these would be my perfect car. Must look stunning, in the 350z, 911, Mercedes AMG GT mould Must be quick, but not stupid quick. I don't want a car that I can only use 30% power on the road legally. Must achieve 35+ MPG, and be automatic Preferably a low tax band - I cant stand throwing money away on road tax Would like a usable boot space for Ikea trips/tip runs. Folding rear seats is preferable. Do any 2+2's do this? Must be Sub £40k, but the cheaper the better, new or used, max 10 years old. Petrol or Diesel is fine Having written this, the versatility/boot space is the least important, and also probably the cheapest/easiest to satisfy as I just need to make sure my wife's car ticks this box.

A lot of cars mentioned are lacking in the looks department though. How about a TT? Can be quick, economical and good looking...

Track to the tip... exactly! As long as its economical too.

Just a bit of fun, inspired by Wendy's post on Keysers thread here What is the best all round car? I know many of us run more than one car, and even that's not enough to tick all the boxes sometimes. I think most of us want a great looking, high performance car that's economical and can be versatile if needed. Sadly that car doesn't exist - but what's the closest we can get to it? I like 4x4 style cars for the more comfortable driving position and their versatility, but the ones i've had (Range Rover Sport) don't handle well and are definitely not economical. On this basis I feel like the mid-size SUV's or SUV-Coupe's might be strong performers here, but they're all so ugly. I'm going to vote Porsche Macan (nb i've not driven one so i'm assuming the Porsche credentials will mean it handles well) I feel like Audi estates might fare well on people's lists...

Thats just the new forum now, sadly. I complained about this several times but the team have been unable to change the view in the 'Unread Content' view despite the rest of the site working perfectly.

So can you use a dashcam to claim off a 3rd party's insurance if they've not stopped to exchange details, is that how it works? Great if so.

How dare they. That's sacrilegious.