156 Selespeed. The first month.

No, a dodgem car is the way to a proper turning radius. ;-)

Clio V6. I win. I'm sure you all saw it on Top Gear, about twice as big as a Range Rover or whatever it was, and Clarkson saying "Oil tanker captains often remark their ships have the turning circles of Clio V6" :-) Not that I could have taken it into a multi story anyway and it was far to low to get up anything but the lowest ramp.

The 197s turning circle was pretty good. Well, it was after the Vee, I don't know whether it's actually good but like, who cares? It's just not important, all it means is you sometimes make a 3 pointer a 5 pointer and stuff - Oh no, the humanity...

With a bit of wheelspin for "really" tight turns :)

Good job London taxis are RWD....

:) The turning circle has become more important to me over the last six months because I've started doing a three point turn every day where I park and tend to use multi-storey when I have to go to Leeds. I stick to the wider multi-storeys; the one next to the swimming pool is awful.

I have not-so-fond memories of having to reverse / repeat turns in a Norwich multi-storey when I collected a 306 GTi-6 for a test drive, which is seems has a turning circle way bigger than a normal 306. Probably the six speed transmission getting in the way or the wider wheels. Why the Peugeot dealer suggested the multi-storey I don't know.

No reason FWD can't have a decent turning circle, at 2nd attempt the old FWD Austin Mini had a superb 8.7m turning circle. Not sure what it was at first attempt but I have no doubt it was way under 11m. One hurried redesign later and history was made.

"DervMan" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Close, but I was thinking "Yorkshire man with known diesel fetish" - your wallet's squeeking in your pocket.

LOL!

It's a sound theory, except I'm Scottish and just happen to be living in Yorkshire...

...ah, okay, as you were... :-)

That does sound tight - how does it compare with rear wheel drives from the same design era?

The bigger mk2 LS400 has a 10.something metre turning circle. But the 9000 is 10.8m And it feels loads worse. That little bit tighter circle makes all the difference when trying to whip round in a quiet junction.

As long as all he wants is a large(ish) comfortable passenger ferry then he's right. If load lugging is important then IMO the RX300 is hopeless (as are most of the current crop of 4x4s). A disco has a reasonable load space + passenger comfort, and the turning circle of an ocean liner. I'm thinking of either a new(ish) 2005 or so Exploder or similar Expedition as a replacement for the current Exploder.

The fuel consumption is worse than the Lexus, but either has a decent load bay and is relatively easy to manouever in a city if necessary despite the size. Given how long the current car has lasted, I've no worries about getting another as long as it has leather upholstery. The cloth interiors are s**te.

I was in a 156 2.0 the other day which had red Momo leather and I remember thinking "Yeah, I might buy one of these when they're disposable money".

I remember getting 10k worth of server taken from here. In something like a corsa van, though it would have easily gone in something like a seicento. And that wasn't a high end server.

I believe that in autotesting circles (pardon the pun) some deft use of the handbrake is also considered entriely appropriate.

There's a motley crew up here who share a Caterham for such use - it has WRC style upright hydraulic handbrake for this very purpose. They call it the happy handle.

And rightly so.

%steve%@malloc.co.uk (Steve Firth) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Nothing higher-tech than massive tyre scrub and understeer, probably.

True confessions. I was a bit wrong on implied date and tightness of turning circle, they did it for 1967 on MKII.

"Turning circle reduced from 32ft to 28ft as part of a Mini MKIIpackage", that's 9.76m down to 8.54m, so smaller than off the top ofmy head. From averagely good to F'in superb.

3 quick Googles later (could be more rubbish as didn't bother to open pages) Hillman Imp 9.7m 1959 Model Ford Anglia Prefect ... Turning Circle:. Left: 32 ft. 2 in. Right: 32 ft. 6 in. That's Left 9.81m and Right 9.91m in SI units. Morris Minor Series MM 1950-52, Left 32ft 11in, right 33ft 1in (say 10m)

Those 3 don't look like that much of a challenge. Just don't get in a dog fight with a MKII Mini.

Had he been told not to sell any by the service dept?

I'm not sure that's it, because it's a noticeable difference when attempting to turn the car in the drive - the surface is loose gravel so I wouldn't expect tyre scrub to be as signficant.

Peter Hill gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

feet 0 inches (7.6 m) turning circle That's the same as the requirement for London black cabs.