If I could just find something like this for about £3-4k...

Yes, you can swap the head unit.

No, a pikey special unit won't interface with the steering wheel controls. You'll need to buy a less pikey brand to do that.

I wouldn't swap the head unit in there anyway - they're a decent spec. unit in those (VW Gamma / Audi Concert, ISTR) and it seems to have a half decent car kit fitted.

If you want MP3, then just use a cassette adaptor.

...is the right answer.

I've got a Sony MP3 headunit I could have shoved in the Passat by now, but stuck with the OEM equipment because it's excellent.

...or get an iTrip etc.

While it might be half decent kit, I don't fancy having to spurge out further on a parrot kit (Unless the mk1 had a bluetooth option I might be lucky finding) and having to have what is quite a chunky bluetooth controller compared to pikey lidl silvercrest one, lose the USB and SDCard option and have to trail more wires across the car with a cassette adaptor for the missus's mp3 player when we are on a run.

The pikey one has a proper aux socket (so less quality reduction than a tape adaptor), a USB drive that can play from a 2.5" USB HDD, memory stick or direct from mp3 player, an SDCard slot, the handsfree and the bluetooth streaming. I hate trailing cables. The less there is the better. Sound quality is pretty damned good for a cheapy and a damned site better than the Skoda headunit fitted to my old Octavia.

I doubt the handsfree car kit would be any good unless bluetooth, or has a Samsung connector available and can talk Windows mobile.

Nice, I bet there are plenty of that quality around and you could be well choosy. I see the typical Superb owner as someone who'd look after their vehicle.

One of these is for you. It's a nice car that probably works very well for what you need, comfortable and reliable whilst being a little quirky (much more so than an Octavia). I rank these slightly below a Citroen C6 for quirky factor but would trust it to be more reliable. Shouldn't depreciate a great deal. It *will* be the best car you ever owned.

You've had a Celica GT-Four, an LPG Rangey, An LS400 (almost) a Saab Convertible... All cars I'd love to own/have owned. You have good taste but severely limited budget, space and SWMBO approval. You get bored easily and are very fussy about small niggles. The slightest sign of vaguely costly mechanical work and you look to move on and you agonise for months over your next choice.

I think most of this is caused by frustration over money. When I was skint I used to change cars often, look on Autotrader to see what interesting bargains I could just about afford if I blew my whole paypacket and lived off my credit card for three months. I was so often tempted to try and get a loan and throw borrowed money at my problem, of having no money (which manifested itself through the state of my cars).

Now I am debt free, have very low living costs and a salary I almost feel guilty for receiving as I would say I'm overpaid. I am really happy to run a 600 quid old Merc. I've spent over 400 quid (so most of the car's 'value') on getting it through its MOT and this recent exhaust debacle. The heater blower doesn't work, the dashboard lights don't work when the headlights are on, the boot lock doesn't work, the central locking only works sometimes, and then only on the passenger side, the rear electric windows are all but seized up from lack of use, the driver's door has a nasty dent and the rear arches are well rusty but I don't care because it starts first time, every time, it's a pleasure to drive (despite being no sportscar in terms of speed or handling) and looks damned cool and very elegant. I am willing to forgive this car's failings and foibles as it's ancient and full of character. It even returns 38mpg on a run.

I think driving 20,000 miles around Australia in a '73 VW camper helped put things in perspective. There were all sorts wrong with it (some vaguely dangerous) if I was being fussy but it was good enough to get us through some of the toughest conditions on the planet (especially for an aircooled motor). We and the van made it alive. Pootling around this tiny, paved island doesn't require any kind of automotive perfection. It's just that it's such a boring, frustrating place to be that it sometimes feels that the only way to make it interesting is to have an interesting car. But have you seen the state of the people who drive the new Fiat 500 and those Nissan Figaros? Those people are dead inside and as beige as f*ck. Nice car though.

All unnecessary s**te! Clean your life of gadgets and feel free! You don't own gadgets, they own you. You come to rely on them and end up building your life around the features that are supposed to make life simpler and more convenient. Oh please.

I like things simple. My phone is my mp3 player is my gps is my portable fm radio. My Headunit is my handsfree so no borgtooth earpiece anymore. My car is my money pit is my ashtray ;)

Three things all interconnected, simplicity, not trailing wires(except on the odd occasion it needs the car charger) or uncomfortable ear pieces.

I'm all for simplification and no trailing wires.

But not when it comes to ripping out one of the better OEM head units and replacing it with a pikey heap of shit.

You'd need to know what kind of car kit it is, if it's a 3rd party, rather than Nokia kit, there will be a swappable cradle for it - probably one that does bluetooth and charges your phone.

Of course, the alternative would be to buy a branded head unit that'll interface with your steering controls.

I don't know about that. I usually niggle, but I usually get it done. Just this Saab is getting a bit pricey. Headgasket and rear brakes £600 Handbrake cable and service. £120 Alarm £150 but months of niggles trying to get it to behave. Clutch hose and tow in £179.

This is all since march, and while it has never failed to start even being driven for a week with the BHG, I reckon it is time to stop spending further.

When I was spending money on the GT4 for mods, it was because I had it and it was fun. When I'm spending money on the Saab now, it is patching up, cash is tighter and it isn't as fun.

I loved it when you had that GT4. My teenage dream car and you were modding it when things wore out. Can't remember why you got rid now,

20mpg something to do with it IIRC?

Carl, as it's basically a Passat, you can get an off the shelf hands free kit for it. Mine had one fitted and it leaves no holes anywhere.

Your best call so far. Get a superb.

I like things simpler. The car has a stereo, GPS isn't an advantage for repeated runs, and I don't spend my life on the phone.

(actually that's not true at all - when working I spend a hell of a lot of it on the phone, but away from work I don't).

Problem is though, Carl has to commute quite far each day, and stuff like the heaters and the dash lights would just be unbearable in winter, when you end up stuck in traffic for 2 hours, freezing your nuts off, only to not be able to read the speedo when you do set of heh! Then in the summer, the opposite, when the blowers and seized windows don't let any air into the car at all so he just has to sit there baking like he's in a greenhouse!

I was only using your Merc as an example of older car's character faults (my A reg '83 Triumph Acclaim had none actually... Well, the radio was analog tuning with knobs and it was only MW an LW hehe! The 405 had plenty tho before I sold it for £50 :-p) that would just turn into methods of torture on a long run.

My 405s heater didn't blow hot, an the rear window heater didn't work very often, so it was a bastard to keep the windows clear if I had more than 2 people in the car, we ended up having to open the windows for brief stints when it was like -2c outside and we were doing 80-90mph on a dual carriageway on the way to the cinema. Anyway, so whilst an old car could be fine for Carl, it would have to be reliable and have to still be comfy - which IMO includes things like a heater, as it's just awful driving when you're freezing IMO. And of course, there's nothing wrong with wanting a car with a few creature comforts, especially when you spend a few hours a day in the car.

Another thing is that he still fancies having a tinker and fiddle with the car, so it has to be something that will allow him to do that too. I realise modding discussions aren't allowed in here, but it's something that interests Carl. Which is also probably a waste of money of course, but then like I said elsewhere what hobby isn't heh! I mean, god you think the £2k depreciation on the Clio [1]was a waste? I think it probably pales in comparison to how much I wasted on RC cars before getting out of the hobby... Those things are terrifying money pits!

[1] I loved driving it that much, it was so worth it to me, especially co it helped me complete a life long ambition to go to the Nurburgring! Those laps were some good times - especially lap 3 when my mates had got out feeling iffy, so I was alone, and had just dropped 200kg+ !

I used to have the hi-tech solution of pressing loud speaker mode on the phone, putting it in the door pull and then shouting at it. No one ever really complained, apart from a few people saying I was a bit quiet so I had to shout loader. Oh and sometimes if I braked heavily, the phone would fly out and bounce down to the floor, managing to get just about to the edge of my reach so I had to grope around the floor, stretching to find it whilst trying to drive in a vaguely straight line till I got it - which wasn't guaranteed hehe, some times I just had to shout bye and ring back later.

My mates Corsa VXR has the Bluetooth option, and it's really good. You pair your phone, then you control it from the steering wheel with the numbers and things coming up on the screen in the dash. He can scroll his phone book to make calls, and when he gets a call the callers name (if he has it) or number comes up on the screen, it turns the stereo down, and then he presses a button to answer. It has voice dialling as well, and I think he can control pretty much the whole thing with voice as well.

We both said after messing around with it for the first time, that it was something we'd never normally of ticked on the option list for £200 (iirc) because we didn't really know how it worked, and we certainly didn't think it would work so well! If I was to be buying another car, either new or nearly new, I'd be ticking the box for it or finding one where someone else had. It really was a lot better than I thought it would be, a lot easier to use an worked a lot better than I expected.

I've got the same thing in the Vecra and yep, the voice operation is pretty good.

Problem isn't getting the kit for the car, it is for the phone. It is sort of iPhone shaped, but needs a Samsung interface. And the cable loads into the lower side rather than the bottom. I had to hack about the =A35 passive cradle I'm using now. Basically I need to fit the phone, then feed in the charger cable, wiggle the phone to exactly the right position. I don't think I've ever seen a Samsung Omnia car cradle but I'll certainly look into it.

Bad form Blah blah etc, it appears I can get a powered Brodit cradle but that means I would need to remain bluetooth as the data and power share the same Samsung connector.

No it doesn't.

Nah fuel was fine, got between 28-35mpg out of it and it didn't need super unleaded. Thing was, it had a taste for oil, and I got twitchy. Was using about 1/4-1/2litre a week of full synthetic, then I tried semisythn see if that made a difference and it didn't.

I could have gotten a picked a low mileage import engine and had that fitted, but instead I splurged on the Saab convertible. It was one of the cars I had always dreamed of owning, I had just quit smoking and wanted to treat myself. Aircon and a sunroof didn't quite have the same appeal as a C900T16S convertible.

Shame the A pillars turned out to be rotten about a week after it's MOT and the roof let in about 2 litres a week of rain over the very wet winter.

I still see my Celica everynow and again. The guy who bought it was a tyre fitter, and his mate who tested it was a Porsche 944 nut mechanic, so I reckon that oil use got sorted pretty quickly.

That GT4 was probably the last car that I got my hands really dirty on, but I did make a lot of changes and still paid for a lot more to be done on top of what I did. ST205 GT4 gear shift conversion(£15 and some copper pipe spacers got me a short shifter) Aluminium shifter bushes (take out the squish from the rubber fittings) Grooved discs and ceramic pads front and rear. Braided hoses. KYB shocks and uprated but not lowered Eibach springs. TRD strut topmounts. Cusco front strutbrace Silicone boost and coolant hoses. Cold air fed cone filter. Dump valve. Manual boost controller (Boost up from 7psi to 13). Reverse EL boost, oil temp and oil pressure gauges. Polybushed rear end, and Whiteline adjustable rear antiroll bar. Aluminium rear diff carrier plate and nylon diff mounting bushes. All poly ARB bushes. Stainless 2.5" Mongoose cat back. I still had some bits I hadn't gotten round to fitting.

I had a 3" stainless decat pipe and the front wishbone polybushes. I just threw them in with the car.

After driving the Saab for a couple of weeks, I so regretted buying it when I drove the Celica next, but I would have struggled to sell the Saab because the weekend after I bought it, the heavens opened and it seemed to rain for the next 3 months solid.

I didn't realise at the time, but the Celica was so planted and rode so level cornering and braking. Even with the upped boost it didn't have the same "surge, slam OMG" kick in the back of the Saab, but it did so much better at everything else.

After watching top gear I wouldn't mind a test drive of that 500 Abarth SS though. Looked abit more fun than the typical retro-revival bucket.