Half-price heroes

The thinking man's MPV

2008-05-14T17:15:06Z

First of all I would like to thank all of you for posting your super clever suggestions for getting my backside into an interesting seven-seater.

Grateful as I am for the input – I must confess to having completely ignored it. Which is why I’m now the proud owner of a 112,000 mile Volvo V70, 2000 on the “W” and powered by the 2.4-litre petrol engine.

It does fulfil the basic criteria of seating seven, although with two of those rear-facing pop-up seats in the boot. That’s right, sometime before everybody got excited by Vauxhall’s ‘Flex 7’ seating system, various other manufacturers had already had a very similar idea.

The rearmost seats are suitable only for children of course. Which is no bad thing: I’ve discovered they actually can’t wait to climb aboard, hide from parental oversight and then make rude gestures at following motorists.

Before we got to the idea of a rear-facing Swede, I persuaded Mrs. R to have a drive in a Zafira. Which she reckoned was really rather downmarket. We then spent an hour of our lives that we will never get back in a Toyota showroom, looking at a completely underwhelming Verso that was priced so optimistically I couldn’t speak for several days afterwards.

I have to admit that, when you’re actually facing the prospect of putting your name on the V5, it’s the boxy shape of a typical people-carrier that serves as the biggest turn-off. Just the thought of having a lump like that on the drive, blocking out the sun, was enough to make me shudder. Estates are just so much more lifestyle. Plus we – and that’s the royal ‘we’ of HRH Mrs. R – has minimal requirements that include leather, climate and an autobox.

Plan “A” was to find a Merc W124 estate with pop-up seats in the boot, but that one bit the dust when Mrs. R kicked up a fuss about driving a vehicle that was older than the 11-year old Saab she currently pilots. I find more modern Mercedes scary to look at and not entirely reliable.

So we ended up with the Ovlov. I bought it utterly blind – which was stupid, but exciting. Fortunately the old girl seems to be in decent enough fettle and – so far – has cost nothing more than petrol to run.

That said, if I had to do the whole exercise again I think I’d probably just chuck some old foam into the back the Land Rover and tell the kids to make a den there. Next time I’ll think thing through better.

Dealers play recession roulette

2008-05-12T16:39:29Z

If you’re calling about the car, it’s already gone. Selling my 2001 Seat Toledo TDI has delivered a fascinating insight into the dynamics of the modern car market. Main dealers might be filled with tumbleweed and racks of yellowing brochures, but demand for sub-£3000 diesels invokes an analogy concerning hot cakes.

Indeed, despite 93,000 miles and a reasonable crop of stone chips, my Toledo sold to the first punter to come and see it – for just £150 less than the keen price I was asking for it. I’m not surprised: soaring fuel prices mean that a realistic 48mpg is hugely compelling at the bottom end of the market.

But, before it departed, the Toledo also delivered an insight into just why the modern car showroom is echoing to little more than the sound of glum-looking sales executives’ shuffling feet.

Like most punters at car-change time, my first thought was to offload the trusty Seat as a part-ex. And, to cut a long story short, my local Honda dealership offered me just £1100 for it: considerably less than half of what I eventually got, and barely 50 per cent of it’s official trade value according to the industry-standard CAP price guide.

I can only presume that the logic was that, having spent two hours in the dealership getting as far as the derisory offer, I’d meekly roll over and accept it. Of course, I walked: turning the whole thing into a waste of everyone’s time.

Granted, the dealership might not want to have been lumbered with a car it couldn’t sell through its own used approved scheme. But a mate who knows these things assures me there’s no problem getting older diesels “underwritten” for their trade value these days.

In short, a very odd way to (not) do business. And now I’m in the happy position of being a cash-only purchaser, I won’t be heading back to this dealership any time soon.

Technorati Tags: toledo,seat,dealer,honda,sell,mike,duff

The seven-seat itch

2008-04-22T11:04:06Z

I think that I’m about to do something rather distasteful and quite painful. No, I won’t be joining Sir Max for one of his weekly dungeon sessions – this is far worse. You see, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to go out and buy myself a seven-seater. My actual circumstances haven’t changed – Mrs. R isn’t in the family way again – but for all kinds of reasons my clan needs a minibus.

On principle, I won’t get a full-sized version – I don’t want to look like I’ve started a child-minding service. I did seriously consider an XC90 on the grounds that it only looks like an evil off-roader, and not the devil-spawn that is a XXL seven-seat people-carrier, which would do my social reputation far more damage. But perhaps fortunately, even the earliest and shabbiest versions of the big Ovlov fall well outside by budget.

So I’m thinking compact: Zafira, Megane Scenic or Touran. And before I get too excited with thoughts of a fire-spitting Zafira GSI turbo with a 300bhp chip in the ECU – whatever I end up with has to have an automatic gearbox. Oh, joy.

All this has put me into a quandary that I’m sure will be familiar to many of you with multi-car families. With something new (or newish) arriving, something else has to go. On the Ruppert rotation basis that means my E34 BMW 5-series is for the chop, meaning that – to obey the first rule of Bangernomics – I have to drive the second-in-line Saab 9000 until it blows up.

The problem is that, in the back of my head, I’ve decided that I really want a Rover 800 Coupe before they all get thrown away. And I haven’t given up on a Porsche 944 yet, either. I mean, now we’re going to have a gross surplus at seats at one end of the garage, why can’t I cut back a bit on doors and chairs elsewhere? A Caterham would be a hoot, wouldn’t it? And if I get one in bits I’ll even have an excuse to live in the garage for a few months while I screw it together.

So there you go, I’m in deep trouble and any suggestions – wise or stupid – are welcome as a distraction from the impending doom of an MPV purchase.

Technorati Tags: vauxhall,zafira,renault,scenic,megane,volkswagen,touran,banger,porsche 944

The thinking man's 911

2008-03-31T16:27:42Z

So after my last post on the Scirocco I found myself cruising the internet looking for relevant examples. And, after a bit of lateral thinking on the subject of German coupes, I started looking at some online 944s.

This Porsche is a sort of heavy metal Scirocco, and for me one of the very best sportscars of all time. Even more so – and prepare yourself for sacrilege here – I’ve always preferred it to the 911, what with a proper water-cooled engine in the right place and far fewer associations with red-brace wearing merchant bankers.

Even better, the 944s out there tend to be proper everyday machines. Not garaged, not wearing one of those silly bras to fend off stone chips, and not driven by a bonus-bragging city Herbert. And, as the prices of ‘80s 911s grow ever sillier, the 944 is starting to look like conspicuously good value.

It still looks great in three dimensions, too: sleek and modern, especially next to its big-arsed sister. It’s got a proper boot and slightly more rear accommodation – it’s absolutely perfect for the way we live now. Plus which, of course, the undeniable kudos of the Porsche badge sitting on the front.

And these things are cheap. You can buy MOT’d 944s below £1K if you’re prepared invest a bit of TLC. £4-5K is the envelope for an unpretentious, decent example – and £10 grand will land you a minter. Think about that: for considerably less than the cost of one of those overweight CC things you can get a proper bit of old-school GT wearing a Porsche badge and with guaranteed future classic status.

The 944 coupe is lean, muscular and looks like it belongs to somebody who knows his way around Le Mans in a Group C racer. And yes, it also looks like it belongs to somebody who is too cool for a smoky ‘80s 911.

My prediction for 2008: supercars will get much cheaper

2008-01-01T09:50:26Z

Sorry to start the new year as harbinger of doom, but my new year prediction is the collapse in supercar prices that I reckon we'll be getting sometime before the end of December.

Predicting what's going to happen at the top of the motor trade has always been an imprecise science. It plays by a different set of rules when compared to the business of slinging Mondeos or vending Vectras, and the correlation between the health of the wider economy and the mega-car market is never completely precise. The early '90s collapse in supercar values happened some time after the rest of the economy had started its inexorable slide downwards.

The luxury manufacturers still have nice long waiting lists - but these aren't growing. Indeed, a recent conversation with a salesman for one of the most exotic brands revealed that he'd been sharing the showroom with little more than tumbleweed for the last two months. City boys are seeing their bonuses wither - and many of them are also starting to wonder whether £150,000 of toy is really the best place to plough their soft-earned.

Granted, we've not had the speculative rise in values of the early 1990s boom, where the prices of some very ordinary cars got very silly indeed. Now we've got something that's arguably far worse - chronic over-supply of nearly-new metal.

The very success of companies like Aston and Bentley means that there are large numbers of clean, tidy and recent models around. Prices have held up commendably well - people wanting to skip the long wait have been prepared to pay for the privilege of doing so. Remove the wait and the first reason for high prices disappears. Chuck in the economic downturn that most analysts reckon is going to bite in the next year and the avalanche could really gain momentum.

Modern supercars have become so ownable entirely because they hold onto their values so well, allowing a whole new class of buyer to own them. These guys are certainly rich, but not rich enough to stand around whistling while a disposable asset sheds a large percentage of its value. Hence it only takes a few people to cash up and start prices sliding to get everyone else considering their position. And the very strong prospect of a steepening decline as more owners decide to bail.

Bad news if you've got one of the cars in question - or you've paid a deposit on one. But a potential goldmine for anyone looking to bag themselves a bargain exotic. Watch this space.

Technorati tags: Supercars, economic downturn, Duff

The dangerous allure of the car auction

2007-12-07T14:29:59Z

Went to British Car Auctions the other day, mostly for a classic car sale viewing, but also got drawn into a prestige auction that was running at the time.

There were any number of BMWs and Mercs going through, some of them rare groove stuff such as M5s and a mouthwatering CL600 that went for £14k, but what got me wishing I'd registered to bid/arranged to borrow funds/had somewhere to park the spoils, were a couple of cars that were a little out of the ordinary for this particular auction. Past experience (though very limited) suggests that the unusual tends to earn a lower price, because that's not what the traders came for.

First up was a pristine Nissan 350Z Convertible, a 2005 on an '05 plate, complete with the essential GT pack and 14,000 miles on it. Winter's no time to sell a drop-top, and so it proved here, bidding running slowly until the Z made £15,000, which I reckoned an absolute steal for a car that would cost just over £30k new today.

The other tempter was more affordable, but also needed closer inspection being much older. It was an absolutely unmarked 1999 Jaguar XK8 coupe - even its allows were unscuffed - in a beautiful blue. There was no bidding at all to start with, before it climbed to £7600, a figure even the man with the gavel couldn't quite believe. True, I didn't catch the mileage, but unless it was ludicrously high that Jag would be worth over £11k privately. It momentarily made me think about a new career involving a sheepskin coat, but I'm sure selling used cars for a crust is far harder than it looks.

Technorati tags: British Car Auctions, bargain, Jaguar XK8, Nissan 350Z, Bremner

Audi Quattro: five-pot burble at a bargain price

2007-10-31T17:23:49Z

In truth, the Audi Quattro is about noise, not performance. That might seem strange for a car which kick-started the four-wheel-drive revolution 27 years ago, but while Audi’s marketing bods would point at Quattro technology, what stirs the soul is not differentials but exhaust burble.

On a dry road the Quattro is hardly a revelation. In the 1980s, four-wheel drive didn’t come cheap in terms of weight; the five-cylinder engine is fairly hefty, too, and ahead of the front axle line to boot. As a result, the Quattro is prone to huge, tyre-scrubbing curves of understeer. At least it’s stable and predictable.

But once conditions become more slippery, the relatively agricultural transmission becomes your friend, giving you just enough traction to stay out of trouble, but sufficiently little to keep you entertained.

And all the time, there’s that engine. Five cylinders, a turbocharger and the spirit of Mikkola, Blomqvist and Rohrl. Even by 2007 standards it feels strong, although there is noticeable lag.

The later models, fitted with the 20-valve engine, are the most potent. But even their 220bhp is eclipsed by many of today’s hot hatches. I’ve tried first generation and 20-valve Quattros, and only the rare and still-wickedly expensive short-wheelbase Quattro Sport actually felt fast – helped, no doubt, by 306bhp and the use of plastic body panels.

Mere output isn’t the issue, though. To a generation of motorsport fans, the noise of a Quattro is rallying. As such, even a scruffy example will make you feel like the real Stig when you floor the throttle, as well as giving you the warm glow that comes with keeping a bit of history alive.

That could be a costly exercise, though. Availability isn’t a problem – Audi had intended to build just the 400 examples needed to rubberstamp the car’s competition homologation, but in the end it turned out over 11,000. But finding a good one is a trickier business. A cheap one can be yours, now, for less than £5k; top-quality ones are still upwards of £15k. But many have been thrashed, plenty have been crashed and even those in decent nick need care and attention.

Audi reliability is pretty solid, but there’s still plenty that can go wrong – not least the system that tells you something’s gone wrong. If you don’t hear the voice-synthesis set-up when you check out any potential purchase, walk away – otherwise you’ll be taking a risk with fundamentals like the engine, transmission and brakes. Otherwise look out for rusty arches and headlight surrounds, noisy exhausts and whiny differentials.

That said that much, even a cheap Quattro is likely to keep going long after a cut-price Lancia Delta Integrale has fried its electrics. Which means that, as slices of road-legal motorsport history go, it’s still a bargain.

Technorati tags: Audi Quattro, bargain, McIlroy

Small but perfectly warmed: VW Lupo GTi

2007-10-29T16:24:34Z

At the end of 2005, the world lost one of its finest and most affordable drivers’s cars. The Fox city car is all very well for VW, but when it was introduced back then, it meant the end of the Lupo and consequently no more Lupo GTi. And the Lupo GTi was the first new car I ever really wanted.

I was a year into my degree when the Lupo GTi tore onto the pages of Autocar. Then, on a budget that just about extended to rent, tuition fees, pencils and the occasional medicinal pint of lager, it was the affordable fun-to-drive featherweight I day dreamed about. The group 11 insurance looked affordable, 40 miles to the gallon likewise, and the £13k asking price looked reasonably realistic too. The finance would have been £250 a month after a £3k deposit, and I reckoned I’d be able to afford that once I got a graduate job.

But for all its affordability, this little firecracker also appealed because it was a proper GTi. Yes, it was a Lupo, but a Lupo with sports seats, a leather steering wheel, chrome-rimmed dials and polished steel pedals. It also had the 125bhp 1.6-litre engine from the Polo GTi and weight-saving aluminium panels than contributed to a kerbweight of 960kg – almost 200kg less than the fast Polo. This car could hit 60mph in just 7.7sec and go on to 120mph. And the GTi badge, worn on both bootlid and grille, was a warning to Saxo VTS drivers that they had some serious traffic-light competition to deal with.

A Lupo GTi will scrabble along your favourite road at a rate that seems so ridiculous it’ll make you check that your seatbelt is securely fastened. Even more entertaining is the way it corners – with a little body roll, but no shortage of grip and plenty of steering feel to go with it. The first time you really stretch its legs, you won’t believe that a little, upright supermini could be made so entertaining, and you could drive one for years without getting bored of such an improbable source of fun.

These days they don’t cost so much, either. You can now buy a very tidy, 47,000-mile Y-reg GTi privately for under £5000; they’re increasingly rare, but tend to have been well maintained.

For those of us who were sorely tempted at the £12,995 list price level, the prospect of such a great car, for such a bargain price, is next to irresistible. And the acid test is this: I’ve driven more expensive, faster, more powerful and much more exotic metal since my university days, and part of me still hankers after the Lupo.

Technorati tags: VW Lupo GTi, Saunders

BMW's bargain supercoupe: M635 CSi

2007-10-12T10:28:00Z

I was a very lucky boy yesterday, because I got to drive a BMW M635 CSi. This was, and still is, one of the best sports cars ever built. I know we're all supposed to get emotional about Porsche 911s as everyday performance cars, but they’re so damned common these days, and not nearly as comfy. The 635 was a proper continent-crusher that would gobble autoroute, autostrada and autobahn with casual abandon.

Sadly, I didn't get to do any gobbling yesterday. The driving conditions were hardly ideal: a monsoon in central London, combined with a traffic-jammed Hyde Park Corner and a South Kensington High Street that was similarly teaming, meant I didn't get to sample the BMW's on-limit handling, either.

Still, I was in highly familiar territory. I used to sell brand new 6s and these were routes on which I used to demonstrate what an all-round sexy beast it was. I remember one customer I passengered with had a bit of a deathwish; she closed in on terminal velocity on The Mall, and nearly gate-crashed Her Majesty’s tea party. Luckily the car stood up to the abuse better than I did; I had to extract myself from the footwell quite carefully.

Twenty-one years after it was built, this car still felt taut, lithe and very compact. You could see every corner of it clearly and so, despite the fact that tipper lorries and buses were doing their best to drive over me, I could always see precisely what was going on.

The best thing about these older cars is that you don’t feel detached from the driving experience. No need for i-Drive here, although there was a neat computer that I could tap at. I found that I still knew how to set up the immobiliser function, too; not that it was the cleverest thing to do when the lights turned green in Knightsbridge.

So it’s great to drive in a traffic jam, but it’s also sensational to look at. Sharp, aggressive and such a rare sight. What's more, I can buy a standard issue BMW 635 CSi (probably a rusty one, mind) for under £2000; I’m currently sorely tempted.

The 1986, 65,000-mile, fashionably white M635 CSi I test drove, however, was at a dealer, and up for £16,995. Not such a bargain, I'll admit; but it would be a proper way to treat myself.

Technorati tags: BMW M635 CSi, bargain, coupe, M6, Ruppert

Peugeot's lovely little load-lugger

2007-10-11T12:24:00Z

Strange how the charms of a five-year old design suddenly become beguiling when it becomes your constant companion for a week. Take a bow the Peugeot 307 SW.

I remember road-testing Peugeot’s family wagon a couple of years ago, when ‘mini-MPVs’ were the hottest thing, and wondering where the 307SW fitted in. Now I know.

Roomy, quiet, crisp-steering and with a usefully flexible interior, the 307 SW fitted a family holiday around Tuscany last week like pesto matches trofie pasta. Hertz rented us a 1.6-litre HDi diesel in five-seat configuration, leaving a huge boot that swallowed four big bags and a McLaren buggy, all below the load bay cover – important for security.

Our kids had as much legroom as in our Volvo V70, the front seats had fold out tables, and better still the rear seat backs reclined. Forget engineered-in refinement, because as any harassed dad will tell you the biggest improvement possible in cabin refinement are sound-asleep two- and four-year-old boys.

At times like this you wonder if a 90bhp diesel is the perfect everyday motor. Often we were the fastest car on the road, despite averaging nearly 50mpg over 900km, while the HDi lugged admirably up the hilly E45 through the Tiber Valley.

Much of this road, carried on spectacular viaducts, is as rough as some I drove in Morocco earlier this year. Critically, the Peugeot’s suspension soaked this lot up while driving sweetly along more typical Tuscan sweepers.

Another revelation was refinement. When we jumped back in the Volvo at Stansted, the increase in road and engine noise was remarkable.

And you couldn't ask for cheaper, right now. Bargain hunters will delight in the news that the 307 SW is in run-out at the moment, which means they're cheap to buy both nearly new and used. High mileage second-hand examples start at just over £3k, while £11k will secure a low mileage, six-month-old example from a car supermarket. I'm sorely tempted.

Technorati tags: Peugeot 307 SW, estate, mini-MPV, bargain, Rendell

Fancy a TVR Cerbera? Do you feel lucky?

2007-10-08T17:22:12Z

The Cerbera marks the point in history at which things got rather serious at TVR. This, after all, was the company's first car to feature not just a home-grown chassis and interior, but also a home-grown engine. And quite some motor is was too. It had eight cylinders in a vee but with a flat plane crank, just like that of a Ferrari V8, and an appropriately spine-chilling soundtrack.

To begin with the V8 was a 4.2, but it was soon stretched to 4.5-litres. Not that this mattered much when it came to horsepower - in whatever guise, the Cerbera always had plenty.

I'll never forget the first road test example that came in the direction of Autocar. Within 12 hours of its arrival it had deposited its rear screen - whole - onto the M4 at 85mph. Yet even this was not enough to put some of us off. Rear screen or no rear screen, the car was so explosively rapid that no one on the magazine could quite believe it had 'only' 350bhp.

So we took it to a rolling road, just to make sure. At 445bhp and rising the car nearly jumped off the rollers, soon after which a call went in to TVR asking for a more representative example to be delivered. Blackpool flatly denied that the car had a special engine and asked us to re-test it on another rolling road. Which we did later that afternoon. The numbers said 350bhp and 320lb ft, bang on the money in other words. We never bothered to go back to the first place to tell them that their kit was out of whack.

And this was how the Cerbera's character was committed to Autocar lore. From then on, it was known as that very exciting, little bit crazy, occasionally unreliable, but also incredibly big performing Lancastrian. Unlike previous TVRs it handled too, albeit in a tattooed forearm kind of way.

The 4.5 proved to be more fail-safe and a little quicker, but it's the 4.2 I will always remember most fondly. I ran one for a year because, as a works driver for the TVR race team, it came with the job. When it ran properly, it was the most exciting car on earth. When it didn't (which was more than occasionally) I wanted to burn it. In the end, when I handed it back, I wiped away the tears and was glad to see the back of it, sort of.

Since then people have asked me whether they should buy a Cerbera and invariably I've advised them to look elsewhere. Now that Cerberas are down to the £10,000 and under mark, however, I'm beginning to wonder. With patience and luck you might even find one that's already had its midlife crisis and which will prove more reliable in later life. On the other hand, you might not. With the Cerbera you can never tell precisely what might happen next.

Technorati tags: TVR Cerbera, Sutcliffe

BMW M535i: worth braving the rust for

2007-10-05T16:42:33Z

There are lots of equations to deal with when buying a used car. Availability of Auto Trader divided by newsagents open at 7am on a Friday, multiplied by cups of tea in a cafe, for instance. Or phone calls to shifty blokes who will only agree to meet you in a car park divided by how many examples of the car you're after are available on that day. That one never works in your favour.

But it's the technical equations that really get me going: equipment levels expressed as a fraction of the cost when new, engine size plus bhp plus fancy interior kit or, my favourite, list price divided by massive depreciation.

And there's little that depreciates as much as, or is as well equipped as, a top-end BMW, which is where the M535i comes in. Once this was the quickest car BMW made (140mph, 0-60mph in 7.4sec), and cost £17,950 new. This model came before the M5 and the first M535i was the original M-car. It too was fast, agile and lethal in the wet, but most have either been stuffed into a ditch or artfully bent around a tree. The second-generation cars are more plentiful and easier to live with. And if you could work out a way of applying those daft equations to them, you would get impressive results.

The raw material consists of a massively characterful and hugely durable 3.5-litre straight six, with 220bhp and 220lb ft, Bilstein gas dampers, a limited slip diff, leather interior with Recaros, electric mirrors and even heated door locks.

I couldn't resist. Mine was white and looked like it had been stolen from a sink estate. Once it had a turbo. That had long gone, but 143,000 miles had loosened the engine to the point where a turbo wasn't necessary. The wings were shot through with rust, as was most of the underbody, and the interior resembled the aftermath of a plane crash. It cost £500 and not once did I regret handing over the cash.

It pulled like a bomber from 1000rpm, and it was a manual. Always get the manual. Yes, the shift is obstructive and the clutch heavy, but the enjoyment experienced from opening the throttle and downshifting from third to second, accompanied by the straight six's deep resonance, is worth it. Compared to a modern sports saloon it feels light and immediate, with its barely assisted steering and taut damping.

Convinced? If not, then let's talk money. I wouldn't suggest going as low as £500, but £2000 will get you a really good one. M535is will never be worth much because they will always live in the shadow of the M5, so don't expect one to become an investment. Besides, it will have rusted away into nothingness long before that happens. But that means this car will always be subject to lack of recognition divided by immense ability, and that equals a bargain.