I solved my car dilemmas! (Long)

You're financing a brand new, big Citroen, with your own money...?

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always been taught that is akin to just burning huge wads of cash? Is that a good idea? Serious question, I'm not taking the piss (I'm sure SteveH will do that enough for us both heh ;)).

Also, I didn't really get the bit in the middle, about trade in adjustments, are you trading in an £11k car? Or just the Ignis for, a frankly astonishing, £2.8k? Is the new C6 you're buying £15k? Now, I know at least one part of that must be wrong, and I'm sure C6s are more than £15k new... Indeed the cheapest pre-regs I can find are £23-24k for the 2.7HDi Exclusive, although they are 57 regs and they all seem to have done 1 mile heh.

Is Exclusive the top model? I bet that'd weeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll comfy.

Something went wrong there. Where there is a line break, it should say 'be' heh.

Except buying any new car is like burning a wad of cash. Buying a used one means burning less, relative to the same new car, but still burning it. Here, Richard has decided what he wants and that's the end of it, bought, job done (we hope).

You're sounding like SteveH... Richard sounds nothing like SteveH. Richard likes C6s and has bought one. End of. SteveH likes Alfa Romeos and has written mini reviews of all sorts of machines under the sun but appears no closer to buying a non-Alfa Romeo. Or something; I've lost interest / touch / the will to live. Oh and SteveH has loads more money than I do.

Richard Kilpatrick gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

To be honest, I don't think I'd sweat it - I've not seen one yet in a "bad" colour - all the various dark greys look superb, the reds are good, even "boring" silver works well.

...you bastard...

Richard Kilpatrick gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

You won't like me saying that at the CCC rally over the weekend, there was a dealer advertising £20k for pre-reg v6 HDis, then...

I don't think they were 08-plate, but...

I've yet to see a red with cream interior, which would be the really "confident" combination. I like the dark blue, the dark green, I'm very curious about the brownish/purple/Ganache (I think) colour, but black will always win out for me.

The overriding requirement is for a cream interior though, rather than the exterior colour. I'm just sick of silver and grey cars. Be thankful they don't come in yellow.

Richard

Eh, if they're doing pre-reg, rather than ex-demo with a few thousand miles on, then maybe some will get sold. Were they Exclusive or Lignage spec, though? I've seen Lignage pre-reg for around that, but then I lose Navidrive, satnav and leather.

I've driven two Lignage models with dark grey cloth/cloth and part leather interiors and there's "missing button syndrome" as well as the black interior being very dull - the little telematics screen with the big bezel hiding where the PROPER one goes is very obvious, rather than making a lower-profile dashboard design.

I might not have a towbar fitted; it needs to have the bumper removed and modified apparently. It doesn't LOOK modified but clearly it's not just a bolt-on accessory.

I have found instructions that suggest the USB port can be added, though it needs wiring to be done very carefully with a port modification (for all RT4 cars) - so I reckon I'll have that for direct iPod connection.

Richard

Um, you can run old stuff and maintain it at not much cost. On a bad year my car costs about as much as one of your monthly payments :-)

(of course to me Focus still counts as new)

You want to spend the money, fair enough - but don't go pretending it's a budget option.

cheers, clive

Yeah. I mean, I doubt I'm all that experienced really.

At present, and for the foreseeable future, I won't have time or a garage to work on cars in. The cheapest banger I've had realistically was my 1999 Astra 1.7TD; unlike most cheap cars I've had it drove well on the motorway and was comfortable (when you're doing up to 4,000 miles in a month, vibrating front ends and imbalanced brakes get a bit tiresome).

It cost £650, and lasted 8 months as a second car; it lasted about

17,000 miles IIRC. It suffered wheelbearing failure at a cost of £67 and I had time to DIY that, I'm not counting tyres or brakes as they are wear and tear items (though in the course of used cars, I've always had to replaced one or both of these, whereas when I've run a new car I've often had the duration of the contract hire without ever needing either replacing, so the odd £150 here and there certainly comes out of my budget when it may not otherwise do so).

When the Astra died it needed a diesel pump at a minimum cost of £500+labour.

Middle aged cars depreciate fast; that's a cost too.

IMO and IME, you can run old stuff if you're not fussy about it all working correctly, having to deal with replacing it when it goes wrong, and can deal with vibrations, odd noises and rust. Which before you decide I'm being a snob, I've done plenty of putting up with. I'm rather fussy about my cars working as designed, so for me, the Citroen is an affordable option.

I wouldn't say it was a budget option because I could choose a new car that cost a third as much and have all the benefits of "a new car" in terms of bits not falling off, etc - but if I wanted to run a middle-aged executive car my experience is that I would spend as much on buying it, losing money on it, and repairing/maintaining it as I do with a new car, or have a much less satisfying ownership experience (there's no point in buying a luxury car if the AC and electrics don't work, the seats are worn out and the steering is shagged, which the last BMW I looked at was).

A good example, actually, that BMW. The spec lists servotronic PAS, Aircon, etc. Well, the aircon was shot, the servotronic was leaking all over the inner wing and felt heavy, the brakes pulled quite badly, the gearbox was a bit obtrusive, and the 3.0i V8 with 200bhp felt slightly less powerful and smooth than the 1.5 in my Ignis. Yes; it was still functional as a car, but every single positive aspect of the car's "prestige" status was shot - all it had left going for it was a big boot.

Now, someone might get a car like that from me at market price after I've sunk thousands into fixing the A/C and steering etc, and they might get a good ownership experience as a result, but overall, someone's paying to keep the old cars intact. This isn't a bad thing, it's better for the environment etc. I'd probably be more inclined to run an older car if I hadn't had such awful experiences with garages being thoroughl incompetent.

Richard

I was asking a genuine question, I wanted to know whether I'd been mis-educated, and whether Richard had got a stonkingly good deal. I'm all for Richard spending lots of cash on a new car. It's good, new cars are way nicer to own than second hand ones to me. I was just interested to hear Richard's thoughts on it. I didn't ask for yours, but as usual you turned round what I said, to pick faults in it. Why do you always do that? Go along replying to all my posts and polite disagree with it?

No, you're just obsessed with SteveH - who had nothing to do with anything I wrote aside from a VERY obviously tongue in cheek remark. We all know I'm the only other person in this group that doesn't care that much about depreciation, and doesn't mind losing lots of cash too it whilst buying a new car - hence why I spent £13k on a Renault Clio.

And doubtless the impending recession that the media's talking itself into will creep into the thread somewhere at least a few times.....

Can I butt in and half-guess what Richard was trying to say?

I think he was basically saying that their maximum "buffer zone" for trade-ins (i.e. the difference between what they'll offer on paper as part of the deal and what it's actually worth) is around the £4k mark - i.e. if someone was trading in a car worth £11k, they'd get offered £15k, but he expected them to deduct the actual value of the Ignis (I forget the age, but was it worth about a grand, £1500 tops?) off that buffer zone? But if it was worth £1-1.5k, then surely that's pretty much what they did do, didn't they?

I'm probably completely missing the point too, mind.

Yup - Exclusives are pretty nice - equivalent to an Elite spec Vauxhall, but probably more comfy, and more in the way of arse-warmers and bollock-coolers too.

Oh of course, I have a £13k Renault Clio on the drive heh! A yellow one at that.

Niiiiice dude nice. Plus you get that awesome new-car ness too. Interior damage/stains are my big bug bear. Thats why new cars are good hehe, they don't have that. I tooth combed the 197 before I bought it, as it was 9 months old - but that model wasn't available new, and the couple left unregistered were up at £16/£17k which I just refused to pay because at one point they were discounted to £13,995 plus options by Renault. So I bought mine, which judging by the registered date would've been that discounted price (plus £1,300 for the paint and about £100 for the upgrade stereo) for £13k. So, It was only £2.5kish off the new price, but it was only 9 months old, and utterley spotless. Also it had 10k miles on it, which I was actually quite happy about heh, 'cos by all accounts from other owners they take 10k miles to really loosen up, start making all the power and get more economical. One guy took his on the rollers at less than 1,000 miles (was about 700 iirc) and it made about 190bhp, then the same car, at about 10k miles, no mods, always run on V-power - 202bhp on the same rollers. Before people start saying it was just the rollers been inaccurate the same came has since made very similar figures elsewhere too on a group rolling road shootout on ClioSport.

I didn't look very hard, just a quick glance on Autotrader for some figures so my post was vaguely accurate heh.

Hehehe this is like new Clio Sports. Everyone pays £2k off list heh.

I bet it's the most comfy car on the market today (aside from like, rollers and stuff heh) pretty much. Big Citroens are so nice to sit in. I've never sat in a new C6, perhaps I'll take the trip to Whitby to see it one time when you're there hehe :-) It's only 20 miles or so from here!

Awesome dude - good luck with it, hope it all goes smoothly and the dealer doesn't dick you about. It sounds like you're as picky as me, so I assume you'll be going over the bodywork with a magnifying glass checking for imperfections before you sign on the line ;-) ?

Just in case anyone was gonna say anything, I signed for the Clio before I knew I was terminally ill :-)

Sounds you're going to end up really happy with it, so f*ck what anyone else thinks and enjoy the thing! Just one thing - is it an auto or manual that you've bought? Obviously the sensible thing would be to not touch any french auto with the combined barge poles of this whole newsgroup, but for the type of car, auto would be the obvious choice, and if it's got an extended warranty, then I suppose it wouldn't be *too* mental an idea....

Or a Sovereign spec Jag? Or a GT spec Honda Civic Type-R hehe! I read the bit about finances too, and that made sense, but it doesn't really matter heh - it's not my money so I don't really care :-)

Well, if it's anything like the Pug 407 Coupes SteveH has been looking at, with the V6 HDi box they're only available with the tiptronic 'box - but it's a ZF box these days so it might be ok he reckons.

Mine too - and the way it's been driven. I've seen how the salesman handled the C6 Lignage I drove, and moreso, the state of the 18,000 mile demonstrater their accountant/sales staff use. My Ignis was tidier inside.

I've just been offered the PERFECT spec, too, but with 21,000 miles on it (as in it's not in the pre-reg stock, but ex Citroen management). Black, cream, sunroof. Turned it down because that's a year's worth of use; I won't get a sunroof anywhere else but I don't want my new car to have had a year of abuse!

Does anyone pay list for any car these days? I bet Contential GTs get a few grand off and the punters asking for free mats.

April '09! I'm skipping the October one but I might make a daytrip.

I'm going to be sensible, but yes, basically it's got to be perfect. They have one almost right in stock, but it's grey and someone scratched the bumper. My gut reaction is "don't want it", but realistically, what would I do if someone scratched my bumper in a carpark? So if they offer something which has a paint imperfection I will allow them the opportunity to put it right.

Richard

It's only available with an auto - the only Manual C6 is the 2.2 four cylinder, which is... well, it probably has some merits, but the gearbox (a six speed manual) is not one of them.

My C6 will get frequent gearbox oil changes, which was the main death of autoboxes in the XM - a poor service regime. I think it will be fine, and it does have the warranty, so I'm not worrying.

I find smaller cars, like Golfs, usually give more trouble as FWD autos than big ones anyway.

Richard

It's PSA, not Renault. Renault are the ones with the cheese autoboxes.

cheers, clive