Which is better, only one way to decide........ Fight

'92 Datsun GothKab?. Jap import (Made for Greek Orthodox Minister based in Norway), 'intelligent' 3wd, diesel, CVT auto, made for a week as a bet by stoned Datsun cleaning staff, designed by the kitchen staff after an interesting night on Saki and Ketamine. It'll have the cam followers weaved into the headlining or summat equally weird but it'll have black paint and be theoretically more fuel efficient than a pushbike (unless you happen to use it on the M56 in rush hour, when it'll do 4mpg and only on mega-difficult to find posh diesel)

Sounds perfect, how much do you want for it, and does it have all the import papers?

See, I'm not always stupid. Not always.

No, you are... it's just that on this occasion I am being as stupid as you in stating the above. ;-)

Course it's not, unless he gets a super bargain and doesn't do many miles/months in it he's going to lose some money - it may only be a few hundred quid, but that's still something. In these times of 'the credit crunch' (who else is sick of that stupid phrase?) I do see the brainyness in only buying a cheapo car, or hanging onto the one he has, till it all settles out. Carl said he has to do this anyway, because he's waiting to see what happens with his SO's job.

Of course, economics may not be my strong point having just spent £1200 on a watch... Although, it was stickered up at £1400 so actually, I'm a bartering master :-D

If you want a warranty that actually pays out on things, you need a main dealer one, Network Q sort've thing or whatever Skoda's is called. They're great, basically the same as new car warranty for a year. My mate claimed a clutch on his after reversing flat out, dipping the clutch, putting it in first, revs to the limiter, and just dropping the clutch heh. He did it like, 10 times before it gave up and he just sat still, smoke pouring out of it, with the revs on the limiter. Then 10 minutes later, it was fine again, but smelled, so he took to the dealer for a new one and denied all knowledge of how it broke :-)

The paper ones, unless it's like an AA Gold standard one aren't worth the paper they're written on. For some mad reason the small time trader mum an dad got their old Rover 827i auto from had three years AA Gold warranty, and when they bought the car it was like, 6/7 years old heh. That saved them a fortune in small claims. The engine and gearbox were both Honda, and they were fine, even when the autobox had a drain cap or something fall off and dump all the oil, and was then driven like, 10 miles home... It wouldn't go into gear after that, but the local mechanic man popped down and diagnosed it and filled it up, then it was fine! Unfortunately the rest of the car was Rover, so little niggles kept happening (door locks, central locking, wiper motors etc).

Off on a random tangent, as I know you like your Car PCs - I was reading earlier, VAG have started using Nvidia's Micro ATX chipset in their new top end Audi's, to filter down through the marques to everything with a fancy screen that wants a really good looking Sat-Nav and menu system hehe. There was some other companies too, Merc iirc and one more - I want to say Beemer but I'm not sure... They're loving it because it has like, everything integrated, memory controller, gpu etc etc.

If he sells it on and buys something else which has also lost the same percentage or even more of its value in the mean time, how is that losing money over if he just went and bought something else of a similar value but deemed interesting by Lawrence Logic, in the first place?

The argument further up this thread wasn't 'Don't buy anything' as I see it, it was 'Don't buy that as its boring and you'll only get rid of it to buy something else in due course...'.

If he does the latter, like I've already said several times, almost anything he'd be looking to buy now instead of the Octavia, and which he then decides to get rid of the Octavia to get later on, will have been hit by falling price syndrome just as badly if not worse, and thus, if he buys sensibly now, there's no reason he'd be out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of pounds if he did decide to change it again in due course.

Whatever. If I'm wrong and you care, explain it better. If I'm wrong and you don't care, then why reply? Your repetitive resorting to insult is tedious and makes it look like you lack the wherewhithal to make an argument.

Lawrence Logic?*proud*

But that isn't what I was suggesting at all - I'm suggesting spending nottalot on something equally dull and reliable and living with it until the prices have stopped plummeting. He will *then* be in a much better financial position that if he splooges it all now.

No, the argument was a little more subtle than that, but I reckon everyone round here has probably had enough of our badinage.

I've explained it fully elsewhere in this thread.

Where have I said I don't care?

If you want to keep posting up ill informed rubbish and flawed opinion as stated fact, don't expect other people to not pick you up on it.

You look like him! :-P

Never mind your ramblings in here aligning with his character... ;-)

'Bah humbug'

I take it that you meant to type: "..correcting other people's ill-informed rubbish and flawed opinion, don't expect them not to come over all shouty and stamp their feet about it."

You keep posting the same old bollocks about the handling of Passats et al, based seemingly on the odd go in your dads Passats, and a longer stint in what sounded like a leggy, possibly ropey B5 estate that used to belong to your boss, and in comparison to other stuff you reckon is better... some of which I've also experienced directly (for more than five minutes, at that), and therefore have comparisons which you don't seem to be able to accept might actually be both relevant and valid, seemingly because they don't fit with your own experiences.

It doesn't appear to matter to you that my experience of a late Sport with sensible miles on it and a fair amount of added poke to try and provoke it into stepping out with is different, because you happen to have had a different experience and therefore you're going to *state* as fact, they

I've got another Mk4 Golf at the mo - like it just as much as the others I've had, and in some ways consider it to be a nicer drive than the Passat.

But it's not as sharp handling wise, and I wouldn't try to tell you it was despite the fact I happen to like the car... but the Passat was, and will be if I repair it, pretty good in this respect for a barge of that size, something others who've been in it when I've been slinging it around have commented on, as have others who've tried to burn it off in supposedly much more nimble stuff and then wondered why it's still glued to their tail (and in fact being held up by them), round some twisties.

I suggest we just agree to disagree and leave it there... but if you keep stating the same, in my opinion, flawed statements as fact, I will carry on labouring the point that my experiences are not the same.

GLOL!

That is safe now. Hence why I'm looking. She is sick of me having cars that cost more to fix in a year than they cost to buy if they need fixing, and drive odd, smell funny, or make strange noises if they don't.

Have a look at the Fiat 500 Abarth. The audio/nav system in that is WinCE/WM6 based, like my phone and those cheap knockoff chinese headunits. They even have USB and SD cards slots the same.

Ah that's good news then :-)

Hehe, women eh?

My sister-in-law is seriously considering flogging the Espace they've got and replacing it with a 500 Abarth with all the toys.

For a minute I thought she was mental, then realised that in the four years they've had the E-spaz it's only done proper 7 seats full travel about 10 times (in 70k miles). Both me and my brother coped perfectly well with riding around in the back seat of whatever my mum and dad were driving so his kids can do the same. If they need something bigger, he'll still have something at least E-class size of his own which will do that job just fine.

The Abarth would be a *real* giggle on the lanes where they live.

Removing the emotive fluff, my opinion is based on driving 5 different passats, of different trims and vintages. I have covered several hundred miles in all of them, so had plenty of time to test the handling. None were ropey and only my estate could be called leggy, and all had essentially the same dynamic behaviour; in my opinion, this speaks well for their longevity - that one with 140k under it's belts behaves almost the same as one with 25k suggests to me that they wear the miles well.

Surely it's implicit that everything anyone states 'as a fact' is only such from their point of view? Prefixing everything with 'In my opinion...' or 'Based on my experience...' is surely redundant?

But...that's nothing to do with handling. Straight-line grunt and cornering grip have nothing whatsoever to do with handling (in my opinion...). Handling is the ability to make the car do what you want it to; it's the poise it has and the controllability of the attitude it adopts. In my opinion that is what the passat lacks - if you corner below a certain speed it grips and goes round, if you exceed that speed it understeers. It's all very manageable, and can be made to grip well enough, but in my opinion it doesn't /handle/ very well.

You could take a mk5 escort and put fat tyres and stiff suspension on it, and make it corner well, but I doubt anybody this side of an owners club would think that it handled well.

I'll drink to that. Cheers!