"Why don't I buy a more modern car?"

[red boxer]

i agree with you barrie.i've owned a landrover 90 pick up and a defender and driven my father in laws discovery and must say that driving my 850 comes close.also drivers of other vehicles seem to give way a little more than if driving any other type of car.they just feel .....solid ?

I've had two brand new cars a Nissan Micra and the New Vauxhall Corsa with the easytronic gearbox both went wrong now the corsa has gone fatally wrong so i won't ever buy a new car not even the Aston Martin or the Range Rover

Originally Posted by George Holmer

Modern cars and uncomfortable, expensive, ugly and horrible to do even the simplest things to. I hate them.

lol you sound just like my old man george who in the seventies embarresed us kids no end by refusing to drive anything built after 1960 for exactly the same reasons, funny how each generation looks back with rose tinted specs and sees the products from a earlier era superior when in fact they were generally far inferior, comments like modern cars are uncomfortable, expensive etc dont really stand up to scrutiny when in fact the average car built today is far far better equipped, safer, more reliable and in real terms cheaper than its forbears , what is about the past that appeals so much, my old man still swears blind all progress halted with the ford pilot, the bristol brittania turbo prop, and the triumph t120 bonneville

[James_N]

lets be honest, corsa's are the worst car anyone could ever buy!

But id go along with all of the above. I had a Honda Civic Type R before my volvo (a big comedown some of you might think) but:

- I had 2 CTR's because the first one went wrong (alternator - 10 days after buying, so I exchanged it for another CTR)

- The newer CTR I had was also fun. it took 3 weeks of regular trips up to the dealer to find a problem with my alarm system. for those 3 weeks, i was hanging out of the upstairs window every hour of every night turning the dam alarm system off! It used to go off at least 30 times a night. Christ wasnt i popular with the neighbours

I find now that:

- My volvo is more reliable
- I have no finance to pay for
- Low insurance (even at 21!)
- Cheap DIY repairs / Servicing

Yes the street cred isnt there, and people often ask me "Why the hell did you go from CTR to old volvo", most are very suprised when i tell them the volvo is more reliable (especially since Honda are supposed to be ultra reliable)

All in all, im happy, and even if my car lasts only a few years, it owes me nothing, and i know i can get another one for < £500

[James_N]

Originally Posted by chow

when in fact the average car built today is far far better equipped, safer, more reliable

The thing is, the more electronics they pack into cars nowadays, the more there is to go wrong. Point proven by the BMW M5, you need to remorgage your house if anything goes wrong with one of those!

As far as better built goes, if you push the front wing of my mates 307, it bends so much that your scared it will break! But i guess its crumble zones and all that.

obviously the more equipment a car has the more there is potentialy to go wrong, but the fact remains despite being far better equpped far more sophisticated and actually cheaper than ever modern cars are generally far more reliable than theve ever been the only drawback i can see is there not as user friendly for the diy guy as were the older cars (i own a triumph herald which is a joy to work on, being very simple dead easy access to everything, which is great because im forever working on the bloody thing!)

[Alec Dawe]

I also have a new (2005 and a half) S40 2.0 Diesel.

Its a lovely car. Lots of gear, fast, very economical, and UNDER WARRANTY.

That's the most important statement. I'd HATE to try to work on it myself, assembled with a shoehorn I think, and what the repair costs will be once its out of warranty..well the thought makes me blanch. So whilst the warranty runs, and I can extend it for another year at the end of the present one, I'm more than happy with it,
BUT,
As a car to run round in at the weekends, scare the pants off the chavved Novas and Corsas, nice and simple, strong, and very comfortably, I'm also very happy with the 240GLT. As regards cheap motoring, I don't think that anything from GM or Ford, that I could have bought for £500, would be in anything like the same good condition, nor anywhere near as sturdy and safe.
The 240 has better seats than anything other than a new volvo, and is much more fun.

So there's arguements on both sides, but I am still sure that the 240 is in better shape than the s40 will be in 18 years time!

Plus of course, the 240 isn't depreciating, and I what I paid for it is the equivalent of 1 month and 1 weeks payments on the S40......!
Only problem with the 240 is that I can't use it for work, as the 'Company Gurus' insist that any car used for work has to be a) NCAP 4star rated or better, and b) under 10 years old (Image and all that).
Apart from the fact that the 240 would probably demolish a large percentage of new cars in a prang... so the lack of NCAP rating doesn't bother me personally!
edited for my spelling!!!

[molening]

I have just had to hire an estate car for a few days (plese see my earlier posting on cam belt failure). It is a peugeot 407 initial comments after a 400 mile drive.

DOWN SIDE

Seats uncomfortable.
Lots of electrics you dont need.(do you really need door mirrors that fold away every time you lock the doors)
Took me 1/2 an hour to get doors locked last night as the CPU wasn,t happy about a window being slightly open.
Everything I look at looks really hard to fix.
Dont see how you could fork lift a pallet into the back.
Fels like you are driving a plastic box
Don't fancy owning the depreciation.

PLUS SIDE

Used less fuel.
Air con nice in current weather.
Er thats it.

Cheers

Barry

PS I'm not a grumpy old git yearning after days gone, but I do struggle to understand why people seem to scrap perfectly good Volvos (and many other makes for that matter)

[barrie013]

I would agree with the above posts that modern cars are more sophisticated, but at what cost to the owners ? I gave an Astra Estate away recently because the airbag light was on. The MoT was due, and the cheapest quote for a repair was £100. I checked the Astra forums, and there is no way that this could be a diy fix.
Admittedly £100 is not the end of the world, but to me it is the thin end of the wedge. The car was an 1800 twin cam, and both fast and economical, much more so than my 240, so my wife and I discussed it, and decided that as the car only cost us £500, a minimum repair cost of 20% of its value was not economically viable, especially bearing in mind that the airbag light was only one fault, there may have been others, and there were too many other chips etc. on the Astra to make me comfortable about keeping it.
(Sorry if this is turning into a Norse Saga !)
I then checked with Motability to see which cars were available, and lo and behold, my son qualified for an Astra Estate. I went to my (then) local vauxhall dealer, and talked to the Motability salesperson who said:
'You don't want an Astra, what you want is a Zafira' to which I replied,
'If I wanted a minibus I'd buy a f*cking Transit', which is how I ended up with a Peugeot Partner. My 240 has cost me the equivalent of five or six weeks lease on the Peugeot. It is quieter, as well-equipped, faster (!), and much more comfortable. However, I do not doubt that the newer Volvos are sensational cars, and assumig the build quality is still up to standard, no doubt they will give their owners many years of trouble free motoring.
Please don't take this as a criticism of owning a newer car, as it is not meant to offend anyone, these are just my thoughts about my personal vehicle owning circumstances.

[imadoofus]

It's the mention of 'classic status' here that is also my reason for not driving a new car. Over the years, I've had many new and nearly new cars, and they all have their virtues and their foibles.

Most recently, I sold my Peugeot 406 coupe (2 years old and lost £4k in the year I had it) and bought a '94 Mercedes E320 coupe, which is now my daily driver. People thought I was mad ("Why sell a nearly new car, and buy a ten-year-old one?").

1) I am a big exponent of classic cars.
2) It's relatively unusual (at least in the condition mine is)
3) It's mechanically 'bullet proof'
4) It's depreciation proof - In fact, it's already worth (IMO) 10-15% more than I paid for it, and I've only had it 15 months. It's on the cusp of classic status, and in a few years, I'll get a good drink out of it.

So when I needed to complement the car with a load-lugger which ticked as many of those boxes as I could, what did I buy? An 850 GLE Estate I bought it to go and live at our new house in France, but I'm enjoying it so much that it's staying here for the foreseeable future! (And I'm in the Merc today for the first time in two weeks!)

Both my cars have all the mod-cons that a newer car has (leather, climate, cruise, computer etc), and the only downside is an average of 18mpg in the Mercedes, and what looks like being 19.5 in the Volvo

PJ