Yep. And there are also plenty of "designed to be driven cars" that don't look look like the arse end of an ugly-sticked elephant. I'm sorry, but that thing is just TOO crap :)
Speak for yourself !
Yep. I dunno about you, but the last thing I wanna be doing is spinning and crashing on the way to work, or losing the back end and piling into oncoming traffic !
A car without air-con and electric windows, isn't a car. Get out of the dark ages :)
You can insure an Mi16 for £700 (excellent ride and handling, 165bhp, full leather, electric everything, Pininfarina styling, a genuinely NICE car), and you're choosing a Volvo 360 instead, to save £200 ?
Have you gone MAD ? Or are you so tight, you're about to implode ? :) :)
Maybe, but its still a good drivers car and some people find that far far more important than whether the 14 year olds is the Asda car park are gonna be impressed :)
Thats coz you're a nancy boy. Its not that difficult to keep a RWD car in a straight line!!!
Wuss (although i do like the leccy windows on the Pug :))
Well a decent Mi16 (i'm talking top notch) will be £1000+. You could probably get a ropey one for less, but then would need time and money fixing things. You can get an immaculatate 360 GLT for a few hundred and they're built to last (as long as the rot hasnt hit them, even them its not too hard to fix). Plus because of the bad image no one wants to steal them, unlike a tasty Mi16. Plus the Pug is FWD and i've caught the RWD bug and want some more. And (i keep thinking of more reasons) the quoted insurance prices were TPTF, if i wrote off a nice Pug i'd loose lots of money, if i wrote of the Volvo i'd chuck it away and find another one. And of course, there are plenty of cheap parts available new (ECP and the like), plus there loads of them in the scrapyards. Dont get me wrong, i'd love any of the other cars (hence why i looked at them), but the Volvo just seems to make the most sense - you you get a quick (ish), fun RWD car, which is also very comfortable and loaded with all the leccy stuff you like so much, with low insurance group and a crap image for a few hundred quid. Sounds perfect to me.
I wouldn't know - I've only ever driven one, and it was just a leisurely cruise.
I think "Agreed" is the word you were looking for :)
As you've just illustrated, the ONLY thing in the Volvo's favour (apart from RWD, which you seem to like) is it's cost savings. You get what you pay for !
As a person who likes driving, surely you don't mind paying more than you have to, for something decent ? I could save a fortune if I bought a Pug 106 Diesel, but I choose to spend vast sums of money running and insuring my 2.0 Turbo car - and I don't regret a single penny of it :) I wouldn't be at all happy driving around in a sack of shit (read Volvo 360 :) just to save a few quid !
I take it you didnt have the back end out and went piling into other traffic then?
No, its definately spelt W U S S
Saving money is one aspect, but since you havent driven one, dont dis' it. The reason i want it is because i enjoy driving, and after 5 years of mostly FWD (which arent particualry difficult drive) its time to move up to bigger and better things. A 340/360 is the ideal platform to learn on. Name another similarly sized RWD car which is that cheap and easy to find with the same amount of power.... Most others have become collectors items or are under-powered/shagged.
And its huge amounts of fun, as much if not more than any of my pugs. The volvo has much potential (RWD, good weight distribtution, bullet proof torquey engine with a modest amount of power and fairly simple to tighten up the chassis a bit, not to mention piece of piss to work on). It all depends how you define decent - i'd say what i've just listed makes a pretty decent car. Call them a sack of shit if you will, but i couldnt care less. IMHO its far more interesting than a boring old rep mobile.
Besides a 106D will obviously be vast amounts slower than a ti, not to mention lacking gadgets (which you like so much). A 360GLT will be faster than the 205 and will be fully loaded.
You will be hilariously *stupidly* sideways in a 360 without much provaction if you have bald crappy rear tyres or just give it some beans.
They have lots and lots of steering lock so you can recover it from the "almost going backwards" angle of sideways-ness, the 2 litre 118hp engine has bags and bags of torque so not too much gear changing required to zip along. Obviously they'll do 200k+ if maintained.
If thats not enough power any of the Volvo red blocks will fit, even the
Saw a website once with a 340 (might have been 360, but i think it was 340) that had one of the old 2.3l Turbo boat anchors wedged in :) Can't find the site now tho... They're 160bhp standard or summet aren't they? And as they're probly built for huge mileages, they'll probly take a bit more boost no probs :D
Nope. As I said, it was a leisurely cruise. I wasn't "pressing on" at all.
I certainly will dis' it - it's a Volvo 360 ! LOL !
:)
That's precisely their appeal to me. I just wanna get where I'm going as quick as I can, with no effort. I don't wanna be fannying around trying to keep my RWD car on the road, when I'm hustling along :)
Agreed. That's why I bought a TI :)
Have you considered other things ? What about an old Beemer, or an Omega/Senator or similar ? Or something like a 200SX or an MR2 ?
There are heaps of RWD cars making reasonable power (read, more than 150bhp) that aren't a Volvo 360 :)
But my boring old rep mobile will get from A to B a damn site quicker :)
You're talking about being able to control the car when it's gone past it's limits. If that happens on the public road, then your driving is broken :)
I manage just fine in my TI - touch wood, I've never had a crash in the 8.5 years that I've been driving. I know where it's limits are, and I don't exceed them.
(except I drove into a caravan 5 years ago, cos I skidded on the wet grass that I thought was dry, and had to buy a new bonnet :)
Sierra? You can pick up a 2.0i or similar for pennies, there's tons of aftermarket stuff, parts are cheap and you can drop a 2.9 cosworth engine in if you feel the urge for more poke. Or a rover V8. With turbos :-)
Plus, they're (slightly) nicer to drive than the volvo, and a lot more common.
I didn't say I was a good driver though, did I? :)
Just that compared to Novaboy it's quite obvious I can drive, as I've run rwd for a few years now, and not had one shunt, he drove rwd for a week and bent it!
Of course, what really annoys me about my car's handling is I can't get the back out when I want to, but it steps out at random in the wet. Really must fix it, soon!
Nah, it can happen because you deliberately caused it to go that way, it can happen because you misjudged something or were caught out by something. It's inevitably going to happen to some people at any given moment. Good driver skill isn't about being lucky enough not to find a dodgy situation developing.
Once you know how to handle skids and things, you sure don't want to unlearn those skills, even if they encourage you to overdo it in a statistical sense. It may suit people who don't want to need to learn them to insist they'll never skid, but it isn't really true, it's just a case of not having skidded *yet*.
Learning how to control a skid on a skid pan is, I suppose, level one. You can induce a skid, and regain control by steering in and feathering but not lifting off if it is RWD (a deceptive hazard that catches people out when they go from FWD to RWD because lifting right off is a good way to catch a skid in a FWD car.)
This can be used to give instinctive reactions that handle a skid before it gets out of hand - a far better prospect on the public road than allowing the skid - when it happens - to continue to its natural conclusion.
Next would be level two, where you have driven about in conditions where skidding is common, e.g. a dirt track circuit / stage or in snow and ice, this sort of thing. Not just "managed not to skid", but experienced a wide range of skids and slides and begun to appreciate what sort of conditions do what and anticipate how much to move the wheel.
A difference there might be illustrated by an example:
An articulated lorry (for reasons of it being relatively more common to do this) goes around a motorway roundabout a bit before your drivers do, it's just filled its fuel tank and under cornering forces, sloshes some diesel fuel onto the road. This is not rare, although it obviously doesn't happen every day on every corner.
Your first driver comes along. They have faith that they will never skid because they know the limits of their car. However, tyres on a patch of diesel have effectively no grip so they find the car just went past its limits unexpectedly. The driver will swear or pray, probably sawing away at the wheel or with brakes full on, and continue in more or less a straight line off the roundabout and straight onto the busy motorway twenty yards below. You won't find them offering an opinion on usenet, because they've gone to a place where cars never skid. You may find the ones who've not encountered our test site yet, they will still believe their driving skill works because they never skid.
Now we have the level one driver. They have trained their instincts to automatically control a skid by using a skidpan or the like, and as they enter the patch of diesel, rather than turn more or lift off or brake, they turn into the skid and feather the throttle (so the engine is neither accelerating nor decelerating the car). Unfortunately, this is diesel, they have no grip to play with so this strategy has no effect, they're still skidding. Unfortunately, their instincts will guide them so they will exaggerate their corrective measures, lift off a bit more, turn in lots more, etc. As they emerge from the patch of diesel and grip begins to return, the car will respond to the corrective measures but will now react to the over corrected steering / throttle positions and end up skidding worse in the opposite direction. They too, end up traveling down onto the motorway, but tail first rather than head on. Again, we'll find them up in a cool place with a harp, saying "I dunno what happened, I did it all by the book."
Then we have our level two driver. This driver has mucked about and induced skids in a variety of conditions, sometimes ending up in the hedge but increasingly keeping it on the track / special stage / road so they have a pretty reasonable expectation of how skids usually develop. As they feel the steering go light, naturally they instinctively correct it but this time they have enough experience to recognise that the skid isn't correcting and then make an informed decision about what to do, which in the past has been most successful in continuing with the throttle feather but bring the steering less into the skid and wait for the car to start responding before looking to correct the skid and regain control. Now, this driver may also fetch up on the motorway below, but there's a much higher chance that the car will find enough grip at the edge of the patch and come round and back under control without disaster.
It is my certain opinion that a driver who has moved to what I call "level one", would never seek to return to the state they began with, and that a driver who has moved to "level two", would never prefer to return to the previous two states. (Add further levels of skill as required to suit, it's only a metaphor.)
HST, it is quite likely that people who drive about sideways a lot result in a larger number of accidents, especially when they are hurrying it along and the like and don't care if they go past the limits. That's an ethical rather that automotive issue, e.g. they should be doing it on the track and should not be doing it on the road, etc, etc. Bit like driving fast can lead to speeding tickets, it's not really a reflection on driver skill and I dunno whether it makes any odds in terms of number of accidents, but would agree it is an ethical question.
Old beemer is a possibility but insurance co doesnt like them. Omega bit too big (although i do like them). 200SX too cimplicated. MR2 all rotten unless you wanna pay the money.
Yes but when i have a 'proper car' i.e. those with a far amount of power and RWD it wont be wasted on the roads! Also if i get into stage rallying in a few years (which is quite likely) it will be very important.
Its perefectly easy to get some cars out of shape and still have control. I didnt spin the old Volvo once and was wagging its tail all over the place (sometimes one purpose, sometimes it caught me by surprise)
Thats fine for you, not for me.
Did you write off the caravan? If so it was a worthy crash :)
It was a big static jobbie - my front went under it, so the bonnet took the full impact, and just folded up ! One bonnet and headlight later from my local scrappie, and all was well again :)
Yep, I pretty much agree with everything you've said. Clearly the more car-control you have, then the better things will be.
My original point, was simply that you don't generally *need* drifting and skidding skills for normal road use - a good driver, will usually avoid getting into those situations, although obviously they're occasionally unavoidable !
Anyhow, proper cars all have ABS and ESP these days - they do a fine job of bailing you out, when you make a mess of things :)
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