Is the gripe why can't I buy 2 year old cars for 4 grand? As otherwise I'm not sure where it's going..
I mean, in 2015 and the years around it, you could get a brand spanking new Panda Pop for £6,995 - no haggling needed. Alright, no button on the key... but brand new car lacking a lot of the ****-take cost saving that the C1 / Vag trio had at the time (ugly exposed metal in the interior and lack of parcel shelf..). Pretty sure the i10 around then had remote locking on a separate key fob... so I'm not sure if the Pop manual locks are that bad lol Anyway, I know that's now 8 years away.. but still, 18k for a base Corsa. I remember the Vauxhall configurator in 2014 time. I'm sure they started at under 10k for the base model.. the 'Sting' was it? With the go fast stripes. Seems like a bargain looking back.
The Swissers have required cars to turned off when stationary for years. All common sense really. I let the stop start do its thing on the Panda, it may help a tiny bit.
Start Stop is good in congested urban areas. I think it's a misconception that is saves fuel, I think it's more about helping air quality in these urban environments. Fair enough at that, my city in NI can smell pretty fume-y at rush hour. Can't imagine what real cities like London / Birmingham / Manchester would be like. I think it definitely serves a valid purpose.
I turn it off on my car. My short 8 mile commute, it'll kick in at the first junction on the bottom of the street. Despite a cold diesel engine - somehow it deems it good. I get 31mpg if I let Start / Stop run and interrupt the warm up process. With it deactivated, I get around 40mpg as it's had time to warm up. Unfortunately, the longer I let my car struggle to warm up, I think it has some kind of heater that directly burns more fuel to heat it up faster than diesel usually does.. so it drinks more fuel to run that part to heat it up.. so long story short, start stop OFF gets me better mpg. That's just how I use it but. My DS3 it barely ever worked when the car even was heated up somehow!
My daughter had a corsa C 1.2, it was a surprisingly nice little car to drive. We test drove quite a few cars when looking for a runabout as her first car, and out of them all the corsa felt most like a real car to me. It felt quite solidly made, drove like a proper car. Out of the others, the punto felt the worst in terms of cheap tinny small car.
When looking to change it we tried a corsa D 1.2, and upset the seller when driving by asking what's wrong with the engine. The C felt like a rocket compared to the D. Then found out the D is 300kg heavier.
Drove my mums 2004 Corsa C, a blue 'Active' limited one in 2014 when I passed my test. God, back then I thought that was great!!! From 2009 until 2015 though as it turned out, she hadn't had the oil changed even once... head gasket went, after one day I was driving it, smoke started coming out from under the bonnet.. The uncle who has since taught me all I know about cars sorted it, but it went another 6 months or so before the temperature gauge started going crazy and it started overheating.. local mechanic declared it as not worth fixing. Shame though, as bodywork wise that car was pristine. It was a 1.0 3 cylinder, just around 99k miles. And it sounded like a diesel because of the chain rattle. I naively rang Vauxhall at the time, asked how much it would cost to replace the chain. They said something along the lines of 'not worth doing, 100k is about the lifespan of those engines'. Remember being so devastated hahaha But he was probably right.
My cousin got a Corsa D (2006, Design I think) as his first car from one of his relatives. It drove really well, smooth and comfortable for its class. But it had a (1.2 or 1.4) petrol engine. I thought it was luxury at the time compared to my Panda. The seat fabric was like a part leather / fabric design, much thicker and better wearing than my Panda. Auto lights, auto wipers. The carpet was thicker. Although it had just as basic a radio / less practical dash. He has a 2018 420d now M-Sport. Don't think he looks back, but I also don't think he realises that his Corsa wasn't the worst car to have as his first. Decent spec / condition when he got it.
Around 2019 that car s*** itself on multiple occasions, my uncle stripped it down and redid all the internals as good as possible. Was fascinating to see the engine be stripped down and built back up. It still had issues but managed to last until mid 2021 before they became a big problem again. Had to be filled with water every time. We always say we wonder how those engines would do, if they had the oil changed like clockwork... would they last? Or are they just genuinely a shoddy design from GM that regardless of care, will just fail around 100k?
The road used to be packed with Corsa C's. They've dropped down a good bit in recent years around here. Corsa D's still everywhere. I was surprised how slow his 1.2 was compared to my mum's 1.0 C. Reading above, 300kg.. big difference! :-O Then again, my 1.2 Panda (current shape) was a LOT slower than my 169 05 model. Heavier too I suppose, and more tech on the engine for eco reasons I think.
Attached some photos of the classic 'mayo' under the top cover.. brings back memories of driving my mums! haha
Hopefully those engineers still have a job.. or maybe they'll be replaced by digital sound engineers with the sole task of producing .mp3 sound tracks for the new, all-Electric Abarth models ..... I weep for the future .. :-/
