Well it’s been a while... things here have been progressing at quite a pace... Ha had you all going, nothing moves fast here, nothing but the damned tortoise anyway.
Lets see, well mum finally decided to trade the Lexus in for a newer and smaller vehicle. Gotta move with the times I suppose, with petrol prices in the UK set for another rise (Predicted to be over 1.40 per litre for petrol and 1.50 per litre for diesel soon) the Lexus was becoming more and more untenable to run, even though at 24mpg average it was quite good for a 4.3l V8 saloon. It was also often hamstrung by sheer size, parking bays here are shrinking every time the lines are redone and nowadays after fighting to get it into a space we often found the doors not to have enough room to open without hitting the car next door. The final nail in the coffin however was the fact that it was unable to live up to Lexus’s two core beliefs.
Firstly the service we have experienced from our local Lexus dealer (there is only one within reasonable range of us) has been passable, but never anything approaching good. They have never seemed interested in our business even when we were willing to talk new cars with them. On a few rare occasions they have been rude, and only apologetic and efficient when they were caught out by Lexus UK who happened to call us just after a particularly rude service manager had been unreasonably rude to mum. Unfortunately for him, and the poor Lexus UK rep on the other end of the phone mum let Lexus UK have both barrels and informed Lexus she didn’t want their useless car nor to buy a new one. Reading Lexus called back a couple of days later, eager to put the car they had broken whilst servicing it right.
Secondly the legendary reliability often mentioned by Japanese manufacturers (Toyota and Lexus in particular) does not seem to apply if the vehicle in question is an LS430 from 2004. Recently the engine light had been coming on, according to the diagnostic computer (I happen to have one handily) one or more of the four lambda probes had failed. This caused several warning triangles to appear on the dash, and disconnected the traction control and stability programs making it difficult to put out at wet and greasy junctions. Coupled to this the car has not been driving correctly for months, it has been back and forth between Lexus Reading and various tire fitters with alignment devices but no one could pinpoint the problem. Eventually Lexus and the tire people blamed each other, and then the Pirelli tires recently fitted for being the culprit. As these tires (245/45-18 all round) were not cheap, and the Bridgestone’s they suggested would be several hundred each we decided to simply ignore the problem. One day I happened to be in a local garage in the car with a friend discussing the cars problems and he insisted I bring it in and put it on a ramp so he could look at it. In minutes based on my description of the way it drove and simply by pushing each corner of the car in turn he found that one of the rear shocks had developed a leak and was the sole cause of the poor driving. We sent it back to Lexus who were pleased to say they would fix the lambda probe and shock for a mere £3000. Along with the broken electrically adjustable steering column (Only up and down, no in and out), schizophrenic parking sensors and non-functioning automatic wipers this all transpired to ruin our faith in the car. We had hoped it would keep going virtually until the end of time, mechanically at least.
So the plus side of all of this I suppose was that we could go car shopping. Now it’s no secret that I really, truly love car shopping – particularly for new metal. It wasn’t quite so simple as just pitching up and agreeing this car or that car would do however, we had several different criteria to meet – each one on its own would be easy enough to match but all of them in a single car? We should have known it just couldn’t be done. Below are the criteria required to match my mother’s next chariot of choice;
1. Badge – She still won’t admit it, but my mother is a terrible badge snob.
2. Price – Like anyone else, we had a budget we didn’t want to go over.
3. Warranty – Because we would be going for a new or nearly new car the warranty would be important, so much so that when it expires the car may be sold on for a new one.
4. Performance – Some say that on certain days of the week my mother dons a white suit and helmet and wonders off in the direction of Dunsfold Aerodrome, Shortly afterwards the sound of wailing engines and tortured tires wafts back across the tranquil British countryside. All we know is - she could actually be the Stig. The Lexus could do the 0-62mph (0-100kmh) sprint in 6.6 seconds and go on to comfortably cruise way over three figures. It was not uncommon for her to use this performance.
5. Size – It’s time to downsize, mum wanted a Hatchback car with five doors that would be easy to park and still have space to get out. It also had to be able to fit three generously sized passengers in addition to mum and at the same four large and heavy sewing machines with four persons quilting supplies for a night or weekend.
6. Refinement – The problem here is that matching the Lexus refinement without ending up with another car as heavy and large as the Lexus itself would be impossible, best hope is that the current crop of hatches has passable refinement.
7. Fuel economy and running costs – Perhaps not as high a priority for mum as others shopping in this market - we were only looking for an improvement on 24mpg, and £300-£500 per annum to tax.
8. Equipment – The Lexus was extremely well specified, including satellite navigation and a reverse parking camera amongst other gadgets and gizmos. Again it would be difficult to match the full spec in the hatchback market, and all the more improbable given the budget.
9. Fuel – Sorry diesel lovers, but you all drive tractors. I own a diesel myself, and it has benefits but frankly every time I start it I always get that feeling that I am a farmer, and I could have had a V8 running on the correct fuel in place of my noisy tractor engine. It had to be a petrol – even if diesels in this market were refined enough (Which none of them are) mum only does ~6000 miles a year, diesels need higher mileages to make sense and can prove unreliable with so few miles.
So, already the list was shortened. The obvious economy brands where mums money would have travelled so much further were ruled out due to their badges not having the ‘right stuff’. Other brands were out of the running as they did not field a suitably small vehicle, they only offered engine or drive train combinations which were undesirable (underpowered or diesel) or their offering was simply out of her budget.
I had a shortlist of the following which we went to see or test drive;
· Volkswagen Golf 1.4TSI Match – The class default choice, offering fairly reasonable levels of kit and reasonable performance.
· Toyota Auris Hybrid T-Spirit – Free yearly tax, on paper very cheap to run and in top-spec form with all the options ticked it was still cheaper than many rivals and provided unrivalled equipment levels. Plus we both had an interest in Hybrids, given this vehicle would likely be changed in a few years so battery woes would not worry us the technology was interesting. However it was universally agreed that owning a Hybrid would only be possible if others could not tell immediately that it was one – no goddamn Pious’es.
· Honda Jazz Hybrid EV-T – Cheapest car on our list initially (Although not by much) its high spec, discreet hybridy cleverness and previous positive experiences with the earlier Jazz endeared us to look at it although it technically belonged to the class below.
· Lexus CT200h SE – By far the most expensive option, but we hoped to fall in love with the smallest Lexus, for it to beckon us to extend the budget and accept no compromises. We were expecting it to be the closest match to its stablemate-predecessor in refinement and quality feel.
· BMW 116i SE – Reasonably priced but very stingily specified, any saving would be eliminated by the need to add equipment that really should be standard – shame on you BMW. Should be the best to drive if not the outright quickest.
· Alfa Romeo Gulietta 1.4l (170) Lusso – It is said that you can never claim to be a true petrol head until you have owned an Alfa Romeo, something about them allures even though their reliability reputation leaves something to be desired. I owned an Alfa 146 for a short while; it looked fantastic and was fizzing with character. No doubt it would have driven fantastically – if 90% of it had not quietly succumbed to rust in every area unseen by the naked eye… But on to the Gulietta, which has been touted as a masterpiece by the motoring press. According to statistics the reliability is expected to match Alfa’s unimpeachable German rivals too. The Gulietta provides unimaginably more performance for the same money as all its rivals and a spec that at least matches and in most cases betters others.
· Audi A3 1.4TSI SE – The engine sounds familiar doesn’t it… That’s because the A3 is a Volkswagen Golf with an ever so slightly higher price tag and added badge prestige.
· Mini Countryman Cooper S – Can the least mini-mini match up to the others listed? It’s the same price but it does lack some spec (It’s a BMW thing) and don’t tell the nice marketing folks at BMW but it is ugly; there’s no two ways about it.
We started with Honda, and we did have high hopes after testing the original Jazz about 5-6 years ago. Memories of peppy performance and an unbeatably practical interior were enough to overcome the poor refinement the older model had. Reviews stated this latest model -particularly the hybrid model- had massive improvements in refinement. We should have known there could be a problem when the Honda salesman got nervous as soon as the word ‘performance’ was mentioned. On the test drive the Jazz made an unseemly amount of racket when asked to move at any pace above ‘amble’ and screeched like a banshee when mum tried to beat a mobility scooter at a set of traffic lights. As the mobility scooter trundled of into the distance (victorious) we hit a dual carriageway. At 65mph mum moved into the fast lane to pass a lorry... Lots and lots of noise followed, and we lost considerable ground to the lorry before mum was forced to move back into the slow lane. When questioned, the nervous salesman said “Ah but there was an uphill gradient at that point madam”; the enormous uphill gradient that had ground the Honda to a near halt was in fact an incline that wouldn’t affect a cyclist. We left the Honda showroom as quickly as we could get back; clearly the Jazz is not quite the car for mum.
Next on the hit list was Toyota, and in the showroom we picked up on a problem right away. It would seem that during the conversion to hybrid technology the Auris had to have a considerable amount of batteries fitted. This in itself is no problem (Other than the rumour that hybrids explode in accidents due to these batteries) but they have placed all of these batteries in the boot of the Auris, the remaining space could not be used as a post-box. No really, if you shut a toothpick in there it would start to get claustrophobic. This unfortunately ended the Auris’s chances there and then, the standard non-hybrid Auris is so boring we hadn’t actually noticed that we were using one as a bench in the showroom and it was bright red. The dealer tried to offer mum the Pious instead on account of its not unreasonable boot, after we were done laughing at him and generally insulting the other customers looking at the Pious I realised I was looking at Toyotas smaller offering, the Yaris. Although the Yaris is not yet available with Hybrid tech it turns out this is a bonus, as it does in fact have a boot, and a very reasonable one considering even the 5 door version takes up less room than the bonnet of the LS430. We agreed to test drive a top of the range Yaris, the Yaris T-Spirit 1.3VVT-i. It came with more than you could reasonably expect for such a small car, including a full length panoramic sunroof. On top of its high spec it performed admirably on the test drive, feeling nippy although it’s not really that fast and able to hold 70-80mph on a dual carriageway. Refinement was not great, but then again this Yaris with all options tick cost more than £5000 less than any of the other cars we were considering.
Impressed by the Yaris we went to Lexus and were told we could only see the CT200h by appointment, so we booked an extended test drive on a later date.
A few days later we visited Volkswagen, and were very impressed with the Golf- so much so we dismissed the Yaris as not big or refined enough despite the price differential. After Volkswagen we went and collected the Lexus CT200h for a 24hr test drive. To pass the time and waste Lexus’s fuel we ran all our errands for the week, backwards and forwards between the local towns. What we found was that the price premium charged for Hybrids is absolutely not worth it. Not only are hybrids the worst possible ecological purchase due to the pollution created to manufacture them but frankly you really have to be committed to being pretentiously eco-conscious to own them over any of the excellent other conventionally powered eco-options out there. It was slow, noisy unrefined and rode like it had too much weight in the back – which it did (Batteries). So it was up to Audi to convince us that a badge made their car better then the Golf on which it was based, BMW to convince us that theirs was the ‘ultimate driving machine’ and Alfa to convince us that a car with real soul could win our hearts.
Unfortunately for Audi, their car was mediocre and their dealer terrible. At one point my friend (Who came along for moral support) asked how much torque the 1.4l Turbocharged petrol engine had. The dealer responded with: “At least 3000lb-ft of torques, it’s a very powerful engine”. To put that figure in perspective an American M1A2 main battle tank produces 2750lb-ft of torque... The Volkswagen Group 1.4TSI engine as used in the Audi A3 and Volkswagen Golf produces 148lb-ft. To cement his incompetence when mum asked what the noise was as she did a rolling burnout from a junction he told her it was “Rust on the brake disks”. Having ruled out the Audi we went on to BMW, where we were welcomed by a friendly dealer who knew his cars and had a decent sense of humour. We couldn’t help but be impressed with the 1 Series; it drove like a much larger car and had a solid feel to it. In fact, it drove so well it overwhelmed the Golf in every way bar the specification.
From BMW we went to Alfa, where the dealer turned out to be the brother of an old friend and a true petrol head. Whilst the dealer and I talked meaningless paper statistics mum had ratcheted the Alfa up to 95mph in traffic on the motorway. Credit to the dealer, he pretended not to notice. The Alfa was a firecracker, with outright performance that ashamed everything else – even making the Lexus LS430 feel slow and unresponsive. Unfortunately the Alfa badge was too much of a risk for mum, so that leaves us in a class of one...
Mothers new car is a BMW 116i SE in metallic black, which they conveniently happened to have as a 6 month old dealer owned example on their forecourt for £5000 less than it would have cost new.
It drives well, giving unexpectedly good performance from the least powerful engine in the 1 Series range, a 1.6l Twin-scroll turbocharged engine with 138bhp.
So that about sums up buying a new car, not sure how it took me this long to explain it. So what else has been going on? Well I still haven’t managed to find a new job, a few interviews and what must be over 100 applications later. No offers as yet, it’s a tough market.
