What's made you not grumpy but not smile either today?

[bugsymike]

I can hear kids saying... Look at that car dad the paintwork is amazing can we have one like that...
I did as you for many years but demands of work, family and moving around the country just made the time I spent mending too much. I bought a new Citroen Visa Diesel and to my suprise found it was cheaper day to day than running old cars, better fuel efficiency helped back then too. It only works if you stick with something for as long as possible. Being an expert like you means repairs are done once , where I probably mucked it up and did many things twice. Its mad how you start to think you need to change a car when it gets past 50K, when I had a few company cars, like you with over 200k on the clock, and still going well. If the manufacturers supposrted cars for longer they cpuld go on for a very long time. One day soon we may drop to 1 car and it will be hardto decide which to keep, I suspect the older one will actually be a better bet.

I recall servicing a customers Toyota people carrier she used for her handicapped residents she was complaining about the price she had just paid for her nearly new BMW to be Dealer serviced nearly 30 years ago around £1000, my bill to her for a full service, not a menu service was around £140 at the time including parts, labour and Vat.

 

[The Panda Nut]

I recall servicing a customers Toyota people carrier she used for her handicapped residents she was complaining about the price she had just paid for her nearly new BMW to be Dealer serviced nearly 30 years ago around £1000, my bill to her for a full service, not a menu service was around £140 at the time including parts, labour and Vat.

£1000. Kinnell!! That was what I was paying for cars then. Oh actually I am just thinking that doesnt seem so long ago and I was I suppose paying 12-14K for a car then which even now seems obscene. But a grand for a service would have broken us.

 

[bugsymike]

£1000. Kinnell!! That was what I was paying for cars then. Oh actually I am just thinking that doesnt seem so long ago and I was I suppose paying 12-14K for a car then which even now seems obscene. But a grand for a service would have broken us.

It was only a short while before that BMW became the first to introduce the special device that only Dealers had, to turn off the service light so that they could have a monopoly on BMW servicing if you wanted to part ex your s/h BMW for a new one at the dealers as it had to be proven to be serviced by them throughout it's life!
Mind you it wasn't long before local motor factors started hiring out the service device key to turn off the service light, the idea was for when independant garages serviced the cars, but shortly after that dodgy car salesmen would just hire the device, turn the service light out and not bother with the service, so saving themselves more money.

 

[SB1500]

It was only a short while before that BMW became the first to introduce the special device that only Dealers had, to turn off the service light so that they could have a monopoly on BMW servicing if you wanted to part ex your s/h BMW for a new one at the dealers as it had to be proven to be serviced by them throughout it's life!
Mind you it wasn't long before local motor factors started hiring out the service device key to turn off the service light, the idea was for when independant garages serviced the cars, but shortly after that dodgy car salesmen would just hire the device, turn the service light out and not bother with the service, so saving themselves more money.

Hostile moves by companies like that are usually a game of cat and mouse.

Apple did the same thing with screens and batteries - if you swapped two genuine screens between two identical new iPhones they’d both display a message saying non genuine / non verified parts used as they started serialising them to ‘cut down on stolen devices being stolen to be broken for parts’. Only the special machine at Apple approved repairers or stores could properly set replacement parts up.

Then the Chinese workshops came out with this little cheap electronic device that could read the serial and overwrite it on to any other screen… making the above pretty much useless.

Cat and mouse. Eventually they’ll find a way around that but eventually someone else just as smart will work a way around it. Same with the cars like you said.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Hostile moves by companies like that are usually a game of cat and mouse.

Apple did the same thing with screens and batteries - if you swapped two genuine screens between two identical new iPhones they’d both display a message saying non genuine / non verified parts used as they started serialising them to ‘cut down on stolen devices being stolen to be broken for parts’. Only the special machine at Apple approved repairers or stores could properly set replacement parts up.

Then the Chinese workshops came out with this little cheap electronic device that could read the serial and overwrite it on to any other screen… making the above pretty much useless.

Cat and mouse. Eventually they’ll find a way around that but eventually someone else just as smart will work a way around it. Same with the cars like you said.

Suggestion...
If you ever catch the cat playing silly bleeders, shot the ******. Preferably with a howitzer.
Game over.

 

[StevenRB45]

Record breaking Christmas tree anyone?

 

[portland_bill]

Returning home, approaching my street, and there's a BMW SUV almost touching my bumper. I'd been doing 30, and he'd arrived quite quickly. Not aggressive, just some old guy, unaware of his speed or distance, just staring ahead, brain dead. He's turnign left too, so slowing down less of a risk. 50yds, left again, he's still following. Now I need to reverse onto my drive. Most neighbours have got used to this by now, after 30 years, so I slow, left signal on, but he's still glued. Suddenly he realises, and slows. I stop, select reverse, and start to drop down the hill and steer towards my drive. Then, presumably riding the clutch, he moves towards me, then panics when he realises that I'm still coming, and it is goiing to be close. His wife is now looking quite concerned. I gently move onto my drive, with my front wing about 2" from his bumper, plenty of space. As he drives by, he's looking at me, very grumpy, whilst his wife is looking a little better.
Hands up anyone who thinks he learned anything.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Returning home, approaching my street, and there's a BMW SUV almost touching my bumper. I'd been doing 30, and he'd arrived quite quickly. Not aggressive, just some old guy, unaware of his speed or distance, just staring ahead, brain dead. He's turnign left too, so slowing down less of a risk. 50yds, left again, he's still following. Now I need to reverse onto my drive. Most neighbours have got used to this by now, after 30 years, so I slow, left signal on, but he's still glued. Suddenly he realises, and slows. I stop, select reverse, and start to drop down the hill and steer towards my drive. Then, presumably riding the clutch, he moves towards me, then panics when he realises that I'm still coming, and it is goiing to be close. His wife is now looking quite concerned. I gently move onto my drive, with my front wing about 2" from his bumper, plenty of space. As he drives by, he's looking at me, very grumpy, whilst his wife is looking a little better.
Hands up anyone who thinks he learned anything.

My hand is still down..... BMW.... Say no more. There area few people who are normal hunmans who drive them but not as many as there should be.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

My hand is still down..... BMW.... Say no more. There area few people who are normal hunmans who drive them but not as many as there should be.

I’m with Panda Nut on this one, probably within a few minutes he’d found another car to ride the back bumper of.

Old BMWs (~20yo) tend to be driven by the sort of people who have all the the arrogance and non of the budget. Newer ones tend to be driven by people stretched to the limit on a finance deal, with a £40k balloon payment, meaning they will only ever go from one 3 year old car to the next for all eternity spending way more than anyone ever needs to in the process.

There are the very rare occasional BMW drivers who know what the indicators are.

Then there are the classic owners who actually look after their cars and know how to drive them. They don’t have all the electronic gadgets and so they know how to get a RWD round a corner without crashing as soon as a light drizzle comes down

 

[SB1500]

My hand is still down..... BMW.... Say no more. There area few people who are normal hunmans who drive them but not as many as there should be.

BMW, Audi and even those Porsche SUV things are tenapenny now. Finance wasn’t good to those ‘exclusive brands’.

More rare are Maserati’s, big Alfa’s and even Lexus less common. Makes me wonder when I see them on the road who the people are and why they didn’t just go with the crowd. Seen a nice Maserati today actually, no idea which model, but it has presence.

 

[The Panda Nut]

BMW, Audi and even those Porsche SUV things are tenapenny now. Finance wasn’t good to those ‘exclusive brands’.

More rare are Maserati’s, big Alfa’s and even Lexus less common. Makes me wonder when I see them on the road who the people are and why they didn’t just go with the crowd. Seen a nice Maserati today actually, no idea which model, but it has presence.

Maserati Kings of the road. I love them. Next door bought a Levante a 4x4 thingy. It had the biggest car wheels I have ever seen beautiful leather interior and a humongous V8.

Its no Panda though but not too shoddy apart from ther giant road tax, the massive price and the massive VAT on it and the awful fuel consumption, and the cost of tyres and parts in general. Oh and the lack of people who can repair them properly. LOL

Apart from that though....

Ive always wanted something a bit different so I do understand the left field choices.