What's made you smile today?

[portland_bill]

Had a little run out in the Panda today. Not driven it for nearly a fortnight.
Despite the Fabia being newer, more comfortable, better handling, faster, and more economical, it is just a good car. The Panda put a smile on my face.

 

[StevenRB45]

If I remember correctly I’m not the only one who sees the Gtc as an inferior car.. even the pro-Vauxhall’s reviews I’ve seen, rate it as not good enough to pip the scirocco and start focusing on things like the number of seats.

Yes but given a start point of an Astra K..the fact that the reviews are complementary at all is a marvel!

That and if you were to go shopping with a theoretical shopping trip for a 3 door coupe, a tidy reasonable miles 2012 GTC starts at 4.5k.. at that price the scirocco is an 08 with well over 100k and to get into into a similar car..you're looking at 7k. Also petrol sciroccos in that range are of the vintage to have the famous timing chain that needs changing as often as a belt. Or you could get a diesel which would be one of the ones affected by diesel gate so likely to eat egr valves. God help you if you're bonkers enough to buy a DSG at that price point. Or you could go off the deep end and get a DSG Twincharger..which is a grenade sellotaped to a grenade.

Engineering is not just what a journo sees in the week he has the car..if you want a laugh compare the "what to look out for" section on honest John of the Astra GTC to the one for the Scirocco.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

well its been quiet a transition over the years as much as I loved the puntos the duster is a true work horse fiat sadly had a massive gap around 2016 for a rugged estate since Im running 1 mrs and three kids we needed the space

Didn't fancy a 500X ?

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Yes but given a start point of an Astra K..the fact that the reviews are complementary at all is a marvel!

True that's a good point.

Seriously though if I was going on a shopping trip for a 3 door coupe the Astra would never have made it to the short list. To be honest i'm not sure a Scirocco would either, If I wanted a 3 door Coupe, id probably look at things along the lines of a 3 series C-Class or maybe even the Mustang.

Coupes are generally impractical, and the only real use for them is to go quick and look good, I don't think any vauxhall really fits that bill.

 

[varesecrazy]

FIAT parking only there it seems!

Probably.. it appears common

 

[SB1500]

Had a little run out in the Panda today. Not driven it for nearly a fortnight.
Despite the Fabia being newer, more comfortable, better handling, faster, and more economical, it is just a good car. The Panda put a smile on my face.

Yep. This happens me. (But daily)

“I’ll get an Auris, economical, comfortable, reliable, safe” ... then I drive to work, Panda fan of the decade emerging lol

Replace Auris with 500/595/208/DS3/Duster/Sandeep/Logan/Yaris/Jazz/Civic/Focus/Astra/i30/i20 ....

they’ve all come up against my Panda mentality and as it stands this minute, my next car will likely still be a new Panda lol

 

[puntofan01]

Good man, lol!

 

[SB1500]

https://www.usedcarsni.com/2017-Hyu...arch_attr=1&tab_id=1&search_type=1&car_class=

I must admit, this i20 is a nice little car..

 

[Schumi2001]

I had an i20 in WRC colours for some promotional activity at work.

Have to say, I don’t know why anyone buys Fiestas and Corsas whilst i20s exist.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

I had an i20 in WRC colours for some promotional activity at work.

Have to say, I don’t know why anyone buys Fiestas and Corsas whilst i20s exist.

Reputation

 

[puntofan01]

SB1500: I must admit, I never knew that they made a 3dr i20. I definitely prefer the 5dr.
Schumi2001: with regards to fiestas, not only do sheeple flock to buy them, but they can't pay enough for them! Especially used! My friends brother bought a 9 year old fiesta 1.4 titanium from the same dealer I got my Grande from: he paid £3,895 for it with 63k on the clock, and a week later, the engine started to overheat, and promptly blew on the short journey back to the dealer!! [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

 

[SB1500]

Would never consider a Fiesta. Focus, maybe. But just like Golfs they’re way overpriced and I reckon it’s got to do with the masses of people that are willing to pay silly money for them because of their die hard VW fan friend or Ford friend (of which each person probably knows a few, I certainly do).

The Corsa, I want to like it but the engines are lousy and realistically I suppose they’re sort of under achieving in their design and performance. The Fiesta, regardless of what magazines call fun, is like a mattress with firm springs attached to trolley wheels to me but at least something can be said about it!

The i20, well it’s an interesting proposition. But it’s not German, and it doesn’t originate in the EU which at this point I see as a benefit, especially if anybody pulls of a similar situation to what’s happening with Huawei in the US this week lol

The Pandas in the heart, but a friend is planning a 500+ trip to Scotland and back and I know the comfort level and noise level of my car now would make it not so fun. Hoping the B segment is a reasonable improvement though I don’t expect Mercedes level quietness. But 15 years later in design and double OTR price I’m sure something will have improved in the refinement category!

 

[SB1500]

What made me smile today;

I recently had bother with a few MacBook Pro’s, which Apple sorted out but costs me so much time and travel and being useless at work without my main weapon for a week at a time ...

I’ve just jumped ship. ThinkPad X280.

I tried this in 2017, had a miserable experience with Windows ... ran back to Mac. Crashes, not responding etc.

But wow. Windows has really upped its game. It looks the same now as it did in 2017 but something under the hood is really improved. It’s handled uploading of 150GB of data (which came down from iCloud) back up to OneDrive without a hitch.

I’m really excited to get stuck into the real power user stuff Windows is good for now that it’s on par with the Mac interface wise now!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Very big smile raised last night.

We drove out into Midlothian yesterday to take our two nearest (geographically) grandchildren swimming yesterday afternoon - a journey we take often - We always take the seafront road out onto the A1 and then around the A720 city bypass for a short distance 'till we can branch off to the A68 and on outward from there. I rather like this journey as it lets the car "stretch its legs" a bit and get everything well up to temperature. (disturbs the cobwebs I'm sure). Returning we more usually come back across the city as Mrs Jock invariably wants to do some late supermarket shopping.

Last night though, mostly because there are so many disruptive road works in Edinburgh just now - especially around the rebuilding of the shopping centre at the top of Leith street (which again is closed at this time so totally messes up my route down by the Black Bull and round the back of the station) I decided to return by the outward route. As we were filtering onto the fast A68 just north of Pathhead I had to slow on the slip road to allow a rapidly approaching vehicle to pass before I filtered in. As it sped past I realised it was a facelifted, mid grey coloured, Mk 2 Punto (the one with the black grill). It was not at all "blingy" but slightly lowered with some nice wheels and a sports exhaust which was not one of the ones with a ridiculously large tailpipe. As it went past it made a very nice crisp exhaust note, not too loud and not to "Farty" sounding as so many do. I just thought how nicely it had been done. I was intending to catch up with it for a better look but, setting my cruise to 60mph (we were in the Ibiza and it's a single carriageway road here) it drew steadily away until, by the time we were approaching the by pass, it had disappeared.

I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for it whenever we're out that way.

 

[DaveMcT]

On Monday Elsie did the 180 miles (each way to the NEC) to a training course with no hassle and no fuss. The 100HP isn't ideal for such driving but I got out with no aches & pains whatsoever and my back is pretty fussy about car seats.

 

[Eklipze3k]

Saw a lovely orange Noble M12 on the way to work this morning, ooft.

 

[varesecrazy]

XTC were onto something back in the 80's

Looks like theyve become topical this week.

Making plans for Nigel

His future is sealed.. like British Steel..


Anybody remember Swindons 'wall of fame'

Diana Dors. XTC..
too early for Melinda Messenger..?

The local who moderates
the 'Grumpy Thread..' might know..

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Would never consider a Fiesta. Focus, maybe. But just like Golfs they’re way overpriced and I reckon it’s got to do with the masses of people that are willing to pay silly money for them because of their die hard VW fan friend or Ford friend (of which each person probably knows a few, I certainly do).

Try thinking more generally about the price of things, cars are weird when it comes to value.

You pay £30k for a brand new car, in 3 years time it will still in essence be a perfectly good new car but is now only worth £12k

Buy a £30k piano, in 3 years time it will still be worth £25-30k

Buy a £30k watch, in 3 years if could very easily still be a £30k Watch.

You can buy a watch for half a million quid, enough to buy a large 4-5 bedroom house. Yet the amount of work that goes into a watch compared to the amount of materials and work that goes into a car, how can you justify £500k on a watch? The simple answer is you can’t. The reason the price of anything is what it is, is simply that’s what someone is willing to pay. A half million point watch doesn’t have half a million pounds more worth of materials and work go into it, even compared to say a £10k Rolex with gold and diamonds, but it’s worth that much because some one will pay a higher amount.

The flip side of that is the price of something will keep dropping till it reaches a level that is attractive to a buyer, Fiestas and golfs will sell all day everyday because that’s what people want and are willing to spend their money on, you may think they are over priced but that is only in your eyes. Not the eyes of the people buying them.

Simply put, if a car is cheap then it’s because people don’t want it.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Project punto heated seats is in full swing, one seat installed with the heater elements, so far. Need to buy a fuse holder and some wire to extend the loom a smidge tomorrow and hope to have it all installed and working by Tuesday.

 

[varesecrazy]

Project punto heated seats is in full swing, one seat installed with the heater elements, so far. Need to buy a fuse holder and some wire to extend the loom a smidge tomorrow and hope to have it all installed and working by Tuesday.

Just in time for 'summer'..