Going to look at some cars today!

[Biscuit]

As far as I know they are too expensive to maintain.

Road Tax is pretty high for the top end one too Are they more expensive than BMW or Audi?

I had a look at the legacy 3.0 r spec, i would buy that in a heart beat if it wasnt for the car tax!

Im starting to swing toward 2.7/3.0l diesel A4 quattros and back to the 120D/325

Volvo S40 D5/T5 models seem appealing too.

While im on the topic of road tax. Some of the cars i look at seem to say if a car is registered by x date it is ~£270 per year but if it was by x date its ~£450. Is this just when it was originally registered or does this come into play if i buy one second hand?

[kalniel]

Original registration of the car as that's when the CO2 was official assessed/noted and the tax band calculated. Subsequent policies creating new tax bands don't apply to cars that were registered before the policy came into affect.

Lexus have expensive servicing and parts, but I'd go for one if you found a good example - decent Audi equivalent. Like merc and audi they are trying to shed the image of rip off dealers with fixed price jobs - see the list here:
http://www.lexus.co.uk/owners/lexus-...e-promise.tmex

[Biscuit]

im putting together a list from parkers/pistonhead/autotrader. Any others i should look at?

[Biscuit]

I drove a 2.2TDCI Civic Type S the other day. It was a lovely car to drive!
Steering is nice and direct and has reasonable feedback.
Engine has plenty of poke and itsnt too much of typical diesel with all the power in the low revs, it actually seems fairly balanced across the range. It did seem to make some funny rattly noises though :/
Interior is pretty nice, well put together and comfortable. Bucket loads of space!
Low milage, 2008 and within my price range.

Today im off to see a 2.0 TFSI Audi A3, perhaps something in the afternoon aswell im not sure yet

[Biscuit]

Well the audi was good, pretty bare with regards to trim but im not too bothered about that if im honest. Steering wasnt as lacking of feeling as i remember in A3s but the power from that 2.0T with 4WD is awesome, so much traction! Suspension wasnt as stiff as i was expecting either, it seems to absorb a lot of the bumps and ditches in the road.

123D M Sport this afternoon, its red aswell so the colour is pretty interesting

[jimborae]

Currently got an A3 1.6 TDI demo from the garage for the weekend and it's alot better (read faster) than I expected. As this is a demo car it has a few more bells & whistles on it too. As you say nice ride but I actually thought the steering feedback was rather lacking but the chassis over all is taut and grippy.

[Andeh13]

I have a Skoda octavia vrs 2.0pd. Its on 120,000 and touch wood still going strong. I have had it remapped for the last 30,000 miles but 90% of the miles are motorways at a steady 80mph.

The things to watch out for are...

1) DPF, they go on all high milage diesels around 70-100k. Have it smashed out and the sensors mapped and never worry about it again. I've passed 2 MOTS since mine was removed. Car revs better as well.

2) Injectors are known weak point on the 2.0pd VAG engines. Skoda replaced all of mine FOC, no issue, £3000 worth of work done on a mapped car(didn't tell em) 4 years out of warranty. Audi apparently refuse to do it, vw fight it and seat are unknown to me as to how they handle the crappy injector. VOSA are well aware as are the owner forums..briskoda etc.

3) ABS sensors can apparantly go, not for me touch wood but £300 fix for stronger stuff is the way to go I hear. Again car forums and Google will tell you more.


I adore my VRS, has a huuuge boot (4 sets of golf clubs, camping gear for 3 for a week...suitcases for 4 for a week etc...) leg room for four lads easily, quick enough down the country lanes to make you grin, 46-52 mpg when driven with a bit of motorway care (non map v remapped) and a damn good looking car to boot.

I love love love it!

[Biscuit]

Well iw as hoping the dealer would have got the 123 out of the showroom for me to have a proper look at it... but he hadnt. Given its in Wembley its a bit of a pain for me to get there so there isnt many chances for me to take it for a drive. Real shame as there is not a lot of 123Ds about and from what i saw, it seemed to be a really nice example for the price!
I guess there wouldnt be much room for me to drive it around and test it properly in London anyway

Currently got an A3 1.6 TDI demo from the garage for the weekend and it's alot better (read faster) than I expected. As this is a demo car it has a few more bells & whistles on it too. As you say nice ride but I actually thought the steering feedback was rather lacking but the chassis over all is taut and grippy.

I did specifically say, not as lacking as i remember
Its definately not as responsive or direct for the driver as the Honda was, but i didnt feel as though i was losing too much. Happily drove around in it for the test for 20 minutes without thinking, 'i wish i had more feedback'

I have a Skoda octavia vrs 2.0pd. Its on 120,000 and touch wood still going strong. I have had it remapped for the last 30,000 miles but 90% of the miles are motorways at a steady 80mph.

The things to watch out for are...

1) DPF, they go on all high milage diesels around 70-100k. Have it smashed out and the sensors mapped and never worry about it again. I've passed 2 MOTS since mine was removed. Car revs better as well.

2) Injectors are known weak point on the 2.0pd VAG engines. Skoda replaced all of mine FOC, no issue, £3000 worth of work done on a mapped car(didn't tell em) 4 years out of warranty. Audi apparently refuse to do it, vw fight it and seat are unknown to me as to how they handle the crappy injector. VOSA are well aware as are the owner forums..briskoda etc.

3) ABS sensors can apparantly go, not for me touch wood but £300 fix for stronger stuff is the way to go I hear. Again car forums and Google will tell you more.


I adore my VRS, has a huuuge boot (4 sets of golf clubs, camping gear for 3 for a week...suitcases for 4 for a week etc...) leg room for four lads easily, quick enough down the country lanes to make you grin, 46-52 mpg when driven with a bit of motorway care (non map v remapped) and a damn good looking car to boot.

I love love love it!

Cheers for the info and i will bare that in mind. I know a guy at work with a VW had the Injector issues and he got it sorted for free, quite suprised Audi refuse to completely, is there nothing you can do about it?

[Andeh13]

That's only what I heard from VOSA a good while ago now but It may have changed. When the injectors go you loose -all- power immediately, potentially dangerous if over taking/pulling out which is why VOSA got involved. Skoda put up no resistance at all when I contacted them after I posted on Briskoda and was given their name/number. The guy dealing with it said Audi had taken the side of fighting a recall/replacement, VW were putting up a resistance and Skoda/seat were replacing the injectors when asked/contacted over it.

I was thoroughly impressed with how well Skoda handled it once their customer services were involved! The dealership which did the work originally said it was the ECU, but when testing the injectors after my direct request came back full of apologies and handled the payment direct with Skoda UK.

[kalniel]

It has changed - they were recalled November 2011 for all VAG group PD engines using Siemens injectors, including Audi. They probably won't actively chase up owners, but the dealers and garages should all know about it by now, hence why it's worth checking if the modification has been done if you're going for one - and insist on eys-on with the paperwork - some dealers will verbally agree anything to sell a car. The problem is with an oil seal in the plug of the piezo actuator, which the recall modifies to prevent from becoming an issue.

All 170ps PD engines are affected, plus the Passat 140ps PD which apparently uses the same injectors. The 140ps PD engines (apart from passat) use bosch injectors which don't suffer this problem - though avoid this engine if it's longitudinally mounted (eg A4) as there's a weakness in one of the oil pump linkages. The 170ps common rail engines aren't affected.

I heard about the ABS sensor failures as well (which oddly, doesn't affect ABS, but instead traction control) - but hadn't heard you could get them upgraded - any links andehh? I played safe and got a third party warranty for my audi, which included electricals, cambelt and resulting damage, as well as allowing Audi repairs/parts.

[Biscuit]

Seems like a warrenty might be worthwhile, problem is that its a bit of a minefield finding one that isnt a bit of a scam. Who did you go with and have you have to use it at all so far?

[kalniel]

Seems like a warrenty might be worthwhile, problem is that its a bit of a minefield finding one that isnt a bit of a scam. Who did you go with and have you have to use it at all so far?

Mine's a Mapfre (formerly Abraxas, which my garage still refer to them as) warranty which I bought with the car from the car supermarket - initially I was concerned about the usual buying warranty with a car rip off, but it looked good and has been OK in practise.

The worst thing is that you are supposed to ring them up before any claim as they will authorise the work, and despite saying everywhere that you can have a dealer repair, they will always try first to get it repaired at either the supermarket you bought the car or the nearest halfruads autocentre, who are a bit rubbish. The good news is that most H autocentres can't even read the full engine codes (audi encrypt them apparently - though for newer cars perhaps they aren't allowed to) so in one case (think it was an ABS sensor, in fact!) I had to take it to an autocentre first, and only once they'd had a go was I allowed to take it to my very local audi dealer for a proper fix.

Despite this, the warranty guys still try and send me to the (not very local) autocentre for anything vaguely mechanical. However if I just take the car to my Audi garage they have an account with Mapfre|Abraxas and take care of everything - I guess they say something like 'we noticed this fault/it failed during service'.

So in about three years I've had:
ABS? sensor failure - no actual break down, light just came on on dash and t/c was disabled. Rang up warranty, took to H autocentre where after a day they said they couldn't read the code, rang warranty again and they approved taking to local audi amid lots of FUD about needing to pay upfront and then getting a cheque to repay me back. Actually Audi sorted it all and didn't need anything from me apart from my name and the name of the warranty company.

Rear wiper motor died - warranty again said take to H autocentre. I grumbled at their incompetence but they insisted that it wasn't a complex issue so no justification for going to audi. I did go to H autocentre and they replaced part via warranty, but I had to pay for a new wiper - this wasn't resulting damage they explained, because it had fused to the motor due to wear and tear rather than failure and required cutting off to get the motor out.

Intercooler pipe clips - odd one this - car just refused to start as I was taking it for routine service. RAC chap was stumped - motor turned fine, no error codes (his reader seemed rather more advanced than H autocentres..). Got a tow to the Audi garage. They didn't see any codes either, but noticed the pipe clips were worn or something so replaced them, and the car hasn't had a problem since, so I presume it was a loose pipe that caused the problem. When I came to pay for it they said it'd all been done under the warranty.

So I'd say I've probably had more than my money's worth out of the warranty. It also includes breakdown recovery, but as I have RAC anyway I would prefer to use that as they'll take me to the Audi garage where the warranty seem happy to pay if the car is already there, whereas the warranty recovery will almost certainly just go to the nearest H autocentre again.

This is the warranty infact:
http://www.availablecar.com/WhyAvail...nty/AcWarranty

I got it solely to cover any possible big expensive failures -cambelt, ecu, turbo etc. And I just sneaked under the age of car conditions for getting it as they only apply for starting the warranty - once I bought it it covered me for another 3 years.

I'm just coming to the end now, and have got Audi MOT protection for another year, which isn't a breakdown warranty, but covers non wear+tear items if they would cause an MOT failure, which hits the same items I'm concerned about. I'll do that for the next two years, so basically I'll have had some kind of cover till the car is 10 or 150,000 miles.

[Biscuit]

Cheers for that. Reckon i will look into their warranties once i know what im actually getting but that sounds promisng... even if there is whole halford auto centre thing.

GOing to head to this place today to see what they can come up with. I really wanna test drive a 123d!

http://www.bigmotoringworld.co.uk/

(warning: there is a very annoying video/audio that autoplays on that website)

Its a bit of a treck for me but they have such a massive range of beemers across such a vast array of trims and engine sizes, i should get a decent idea if there is a beemer that i really like.

[kalniel]

Its a bit of a treck for me but they have such a massive range of beemers across such a vast array of trims and engine sizes, i should get a decent idea if there is a beemer that i really like.

I admit I love car supermarkets - if there's one with a likely range of models I'm interested in I'll happily drive two hours to get a new car - it also helps to head up north sometimes as the price difference can more than make up for the trip! (So if you're ever visiting further up the country, try Available Cars from the link in my previous post - there are several supermarkets around donington.)

[Biscuit]

Well my parents live in yorkshire and im going to be working in manchester for most of the rest of the year, so a possible plan (depending on how it affects no claims) might be to sell my car early and then sit on the cash until i have found something i like, which could be up north.

I have spotted a few things in 'car giant' but again... london based

As my parents said on the phone yesterday, im not in any rush to actually buy at all, which in many ways puts me in a good position to wait till i find exactly what it is i want.

I might try and have a trip up to donnington at some point.

[Biscuit]

Well I discovered that if I'm not interested in buying there and then on that day, they are not interested in helping me at all. It also seemed a little expensive, is there usually much room for negotiating at these places?
I also discovered if I want to get a 3 series it has to be a coupe, don't like the 4 door version.
Undecided on the 1 series having looked at a few. Kinda like it but something puts me off.

Think I might have to push my budget to 11k to get something nice though.