OK, and the scores are in,

Well, you can say that, but at the end of the day once something gets over a certain age/mileage those sort of things tend to be a bit irrelevant. Otherwise, early E32 7 series with 200k on the clock could all be considered low mileage.

Spoken like a car dealer.

Is that what they told you?

S plate is getting towards the end of the classic Imprezas life, assuming it's a 1998 or so - when they were at their best. Ok, so, 100k out of the engine is to be doing really well still, but you could do that 100k quicker than, well almost anything.

There is a W reg classic round here, it's this kinda metallic light burgundy colour, hmmm, well I realise how foul that sounds, but it's actually really nice. It's got the big, dark anthracite Prodrive wheels and the exhaust etc. It has just a small smattering of other mods such big AP Racing brakes conversion, no idea on the spec except they're massive heh.

There's also some light engine work, one of my mates vaguely knows the owner and apparently it's running about 330-340bhp, so not mental for an Impreza, but it's reliable and genuine power as opposed to these '500bhp' ones you see, that have either had many tens of thousands of pounds despite the owner wearing a Burberry cap, or, they've got 500bhp for about 10 seconds and are now very broke, or finally, they have no where near that power.

I'd have thought the same thing to be honest. Ok, I wouldn't have spent £4k on anything that already had 80k on it, except for like maybe a 2 year old bargain or something. Then of course though, it would be more than £4k unless it was like a Kia or some other crap. Personally though I'd like to spend it on something with no more than say, 50k and 5 years under it's belt. Hmm, actually that seems really unlikely unless I was buying some little pov spec Corsa or something. Not that I'm actually in any position to comment having never spent 'mid-money' on a car (where £1k and less is the bottom end and £10k is the top of the scale with anything over being stupid money to spend on a rapidly depreciating asset). Either, the £1k 405 or the two Clios which each cost more than £10k...

I think the 12K average is pretty outdated these days.

I do 20,000 ish a year. That's 38 a day in total getting there and back, some nicking about during the day and whatever I do at the evenings and weekend. I suspect that's fairly typical to be honest.

My new transport cost me zip and has 48,000 miles on the clock and has one previous owner. You can probably work out what it is...

Mrs. Sherunckle's Ibiza? (c:

Noooooooo....................

On an interim basis, it will be Skud, the Skoda.

Once I can find a suitable barge I will get that.

This will be some form of elderly shooting brake. Some sort of Audi / Ovlvo / Benz.

As long as it can tow on weekends and chunter around the rest of the time.

Or

I might just spend a bag of sand on an early MX5 :-))))

I had roughly

40 litres of fruit squash in plastic bottles. 8 kilos fresh ground coffee 4 kilos instant coffee 8 kilos teabags and a 24 pack of kitchen rolls

Fair ammount to be carried in a smallish saloon car. The rolls had to go on the back seat. Everything else went into the boot ok.

Nice.

I saw a couple of Quattroised Audis on the 'Trader. There's one near the Stadium in 'Nauldy I was kind of interested in but I decided I don't have £3k to fritter. W-reg Green 2.5TDI A4 saloon Quattro. He wants about £3k.

There was a 1996 5 pot 2.5 TDI Quattro Estate in Perth for around 2k, but I couldn't raise the seller on the telephone yesterday.

Keep your eyes open, I think I've seen 3 go through the Scottish OC forum for under £600 over the last 3 months or so.

That lot put together weighs less than me. I'm not as much fun though.

I know, that most of the other cars I was looking at, even at arround

2003-early 2004, were at 100,000 through to arround 150,000 even Alfa 156s and Toyotas Avensis. The GS300s were either much higher priced or really old starships. That car fitted the bill as it was similar priced and lowish fully documented miles.

I mean OK, I could have bought an ex-lease fabric trim diesel passat with cassette player at 130k for the same money, but why would you.

That's not even equivalent to having a full-sized passenger.

You'd have to be mad to do that, 'cos you could get a Highline with well under 100k on it for that money.

Even B6s make very little over that in 'company car' 2.0TDI-SE spec. at auction.

So by your reckoning, 8yr, 80k is low miles then, as I thought. Not "time capsule", but definately low by modern standards.

Looking at the trader. Passat TDi Highline, max mileage 100k, You are looking at close to £4k for 20k more miles than I have on mine. That is the cheapest.

The Golf had 60,000 on it 31 months ago when I got it. That was June 2006. So that car was low mileage at 6 years and 60,000 miles. Today it has 112,000 miles on it. 52,000 miles in 31 months.

So, by that reckoning, 80,000 is fairly low for 8 years.

Skud the Skoda has 48,000 miles for its 8 years, but it has spent all of its life bumbling around the west end of Glasgow. I'll soon sort that out over the next few months.

Didn't see SF's post, but I'll reply here - I guess the Exploder's got about

80 or so litres worth of capacity? So overall we'll be talking about 180 litres of fuel, so equivalent to 2-3 extra people, depending on their lardiness. My view on how much relative effect something has on performance/economy is how much it adds to the overall weight, proportionally. So adding a bit of weight to my Sprinter probably won't make a huge difference as it weighs a fair bit to start with, but a similar weight to a Ka, well, granny, sucking eggs, blah de blah.....

So probably not much more than 60kg then. A light passenger.

A national serarch shows loads of TDI-130 Highlines with under 80k miles on them for under £4k. Prices start from around £3.5k.

There's a very good reason why they hold value, though.

You know you've been driving bland German repmobiles for far too long when the difference between an ex-lease fabric trim diesel passat with cassette player and 130k miles and a Highline with just under 100k is anything significant :-)

Thing is, though, for a quarter of what he paid for an 80k-miler IS200 with a short MOT and due a cambelt before too long, he could have had your 156 with 130k (correct me if I'm wrong), a good while longer before cambelt replacement's due, much better economy, and probably every bit as good condition. And probably more fastidiously maintained. And £3k left in his pocket.