Fair enough. According to FNN (figures a bit old) the Passat 140bhp SE has BIK liability of £71/mth. The BMW 318d ES is similarly specified but will give you rear drive c*ck waving for only 6 quid a month more.
The 100kgs extra weight will have something to do with it, though.
Alfa really should have stuck with making their own engines - the current range of petrols is s**te - but hopefully due to be changed as they don't want to be tied to GM blocks.
Na, I get that quite regularly on my commuting bike. But that's mainly because I'll warm up the engine for a few miles (2-3) and then I'm on the motorway for 50 miles, usually sitting at 69.9 mph, hofficer.
You've got to keep in mind that 10k are still only about 6 months worth of riding for me...
That's one of their touring bike advantages, because if you do significant miles it's quite noticeable if you have to service your bike every 4k or every 6k...
Good way to invite trouble on a BMW, that is. On the boxers you're looking at a very minimum at the valve clearances, throttle body balance and a few other jobs.
With a Honda you may well get away with only doing oil and filters for quite a while but on a BMW I would adhere to the actual servicing schedule.
I occasional do that for winter bikes etc - doesn't bother me overly.
The only one worth having seems to be the 250 Turbodiesel, but that's supposedly superb. And you can find a non-mini cab'd one for fairly reasonable money, yes. The smaller engines are supposedly better avoided.
Hmmm. But the refinement of the newer (non-chip fat compatible) common rail diesels is so much better than the older (CFC) ones, that it may be worth paying the *slight* extra running cost for a HDi...
Ah, right, yes, well, you can get most of those even on the base models of the 406. I think the leccy seats are only on the higher trim levels and I'm not sure about heated seats, TBH.
I had the track-rod end let go on my mini a few years back. It brought home the facts that a) I do not have rally-driver reflexes b) Dry stone walls are surprisingly easy to drive through c) (original) minis are not good cars to drive through walls
In which case, one merely needs to use the features of autotrader.co.uk, and quickly search the country for 406 Executive models with the 1.9TD engine (and check it's not the rotary Lucas pump), and ditto for Xantia Exclusive models. If either exist with that engine, that is.
Bad form, yadda yadda yadda, but a quick search (using 'Executive' and 'Exclusive' for the keyword seach, then just looking through for the diesel ones) - they do exist - 406s coming in between 300 quid and a grand or so, and Xantias between 795 and 1795 - both were just doing a sub-£2k search. Cheapest Xantia's an auto, and whilst it says re-con box, I wouldn't really fancy touching that, re-con or not, partly 'cos french autos don't fill me with confidence (call it paranoia if you will), and partly 'cos I'm not keen on autos in relatively low powered cars anyway.
And this *might* be worthwhile - decent spec - bulletproof Honda engine - not too sure about whether the autoboxes live long or not, but quite tidy (and leccy seats too), and could be worth a punt:
The autos may well be off the shelf numbers from major autobox manufacturers - Automatic BXs for instance came with some kind of ZF auto, but I think they're still often outlived by the rest of the car.
Renault make some of their own autoboxes and IME have a reputation (deserved or not) for being a bit cheeselike.
The Autobox in my Clarton still worked fine at 170,000 miles and it was made in France.
So, I wouldn't steer clear of French automatics just for steering clear's sake, but I think that on the whole, an Automatic's life is finite, less than that of manual gearboxes, they cost more to fix and for FWD repmobiles they are less common in the scrappy.
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