Saab 9-5 Turbo Aero

Who has claimed that?

I drive a Saab 95 HOT Aero alot, and whilst it is not brand new it is properly well looked after, it is serviced by the local TVR dealer so I know it drives "as new" yet it understeers like f*ck and the torque steer is worse then the Chipped S1 RS turbo I had a few years ago < well that might be a slight lie :) > but it does pull you all over the road, you need arms like Geoff Capes, and Steve the economy is ok on the motorway, but the old man drives it 15 miles a day and he gets 200 miles to a tank of Optimax.

If you can get an A4 2.0T I would not choose anything else tbh. Chipping doesn't effect warranty unless the chip "contributed" to the part failing, and even then a good chip tuner can hide the remap pretty well. If you can get the quattro too then it's a no brainer.

I didn't notice any torque steer or even understeer, at least no more than the Passat has anyway, and I drove it on a day when it was absolutely pissing down.

Possibly the Dame Edna facelift has solved a lot of the issues? - or maybe the auto box smoothes it all out.

Obviously, it would be the old shape - not keen on those. Especially the facelift version.

S-Type is still right up there for me, but I'd quite like an estate - I did look at the X-type estate, but the auto box is a bit iffy on those.

I'm biased... but it does.

And as I've said before, I'd quite like to see what a Fabia vRS with the same map would be like, what with it being that bit more compact and lighter.

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I've been in one with a switchable Revo map. It was pretty brisk. Didn't feel as fast as mine I have now (but it was a few BHP shy) cos it didn't howl up to really high revs, it wasn't electric mentalist power, it was more, a relentless surge that really pushed you into your seat. And we weren't actually that far off the cammed up nutter 165bhp 106 GTi we were chasing. I never drove it though, so this review is worth that much :-)

All though I would say, it's slower than the Cupra PD 160 I was telling you about, and I didn't like the way that drove either as I said, so, it probably wouldn't float my boat.

However, that engine is that same 130bhp job that's in Depresion's Ibiza FR - his is mapped and FMIC'd, so you really need him to post, as it might be vaguely useful. I notice the FR's road tax is only £110 after the increases as well! If I had to pay for the 197, it'd be 260 quid! Good job I don't have to pay really isn't it :-)

No no, to 'the Steve's' - chav = any small car or hot hatch and any modified car or anything very sporty (Imprezas etc) with big wheels and sports body kit from the factory. Although 'stick on chav ripspeed shit' doesn't apply to the Sports versions of anything that may be SteveH's next company car. So the S-Line bits on the A3 wanted, or the R-Design Sport SE Kit and 18s on the Volvo something or other - despite the body mouldings being available in a different colour to the bulk of the car! Even *I* thought the body kit was too much on the Volvo ffs!

HTH :-)

Chavs are not necessarily pikeys. But I'd bet Pounds to Dollars that no chav would ever own a Skoda.

My 405 had 95k on when I gave it to my mate for £50 heh. It was still going fine when he got rid of it 30k later. Although I must confess, when you pressed the window heater button it sometimes took a little while before it came on. No more than a couple of minutes though on a bad day. I went in a

406 Taxi last year 280k on it heh! It seemed to go ok, and there were no visible problems from the passenger seat.

Or as we established the other day, no DSG in the Leon Cupra, but available in the FR? Where as Golf GTi, GTi Edition 30s and R32s - all get DSG.

Skoda need to make a hot Fabia. No one would call the 130bhp vRS hot, just a warm hatch. It needs either a powerful diesel like the 170bhp 2.0 TDi, or a 2.0T FSi or maybe even the 1.8T - as i beleive they still put that in some cars? Or has the 2.0T FSi replaced it in everything?

You can get it on the V6 TTs, the Golf GTi Edition 30 and the R32 though, and the R32 has 250bhp and 4wd(sort of).

The rumour in here was I beleive first mentioned by me, but googling shows up no problems, and the only place I heard it was on ClioSport, which isn't exactly gospel heh...

No, I wouldn't buy an iPod just because it was an iPod. If it was however the best value MP3 player for it's capacity, price and features I would.

The missus has a 20gig small french MP3 player that I can't find the name of, nearly as small as a current iPod nano, but thicker. She has had it for nearly 3 years and the battery is still good and she hasn't filled it. As I don't have an iPod interface in the car, and I don't use iTunes on the PC because it is sluggish and bloated, the other player has as much features as an iPod.

[*waves*] I might just map mine one day. A chap over at briskoda.net has had his dyno'd at 260BHP, but it is a bit special, ang going that high means ££££, but a generic remap isn't very much, really.

Mind you, the Fabia is heavier than you'd expect for a fairly small car.

It's not in the slightest bit tiresome. It *is* a bit brutal how it arrives, but it's all where it's needed. It's easier going than our Lupo

16v sport which has a similar power/weight, but a rev-happy 1.4 petrol.

A standard PD130 vRS gives a nice surge of acceleration- not supercar, but not bad- and remapped cars tend to rev better than standard.

I have an iPod, I also have a PC and don't use iTunes. If I plug an ipod into my car stereo, I can skip tracks/albums etc. If I plug any old MP3 player into the Aux in 3.5mm socket, I can't control anything but the volume heh. Although if I plug a USB pen in, I have the same functionality as the iPod - but then, I can't take that places and listen to it through headphones :-) But I accept most cars don't have a aux-in, iPod socket and USB socket heh.

Not enough 'brand value'.

Oh indeed it had 120K miles on it, but it burnt oil at 60K like the rest of them it wqs fixed. The sunroof was rotting at 60K. I just stopped using the sunroof.

I didn't know they did. I thought DSG was confined to "core" products.

I'm sure I'll regret this, but in budget is what? £17k?

You'd be able to snip a grand off that without any trouble. I imagine most Alfa salesmen are going mental with loneliness in the current climate, if you went at them with £16k they'd probably bite your hand off.

£15k is my absolute limit, for various reasons - so even with a very hefty discount, that is still over budget. Not a huge amount over, but enough over to make me think twice about doing it.

Unfortunately, it's also a saloon and I'm pretty much set on having an estate now.