nothing to do with classic bikes

[bollard]

my mrs is buying a replacement car

its come down to the skoda fabia or the vw polo

which would you go for?

you get better value with the skoda and actually the new ones look quite cool

the polo is slightly more refined but somehow rather boring. difficult choice.

[mini-me]

As someone who never pays more than 500 quid for a car,then scraps it at its first MOT fail I can't answer that

Cars exist to carry motorcycle bits around,nothing else.

But if you want to worry about car prices google 'unsold new cars'  interesting read. especially the pictures of 1000's of them waiting to be scrapped,thats new unsold ones.

[murdo]

The polo's here are very pricey with the servicing, don't know about the Skoda.

[bollard]

good to know about the servicing - thanks 

[murdo]

I always check the service costs on any new vehicle, can add up to quite a shock if you don't know.
I helped a friend to purchase a new vehicle and we looked at the Polo, the 60,000Km service was something like $1,400 AUS, with 15,000Km services around the $300.
She ended up with a Suzuki that had 15,000Km service for $140 repeated over the vehicle life. It is still running happily 10yrs and 100,000Km later.

[mini-me]

In the UK German cars are notorious for ludicrously inflated service and labour charges.

£90 an hour for BMW is common;they'll only fit BMW approved parts, and a pal of mine found they refused to work on his brakes when they found non BMW parts fitted,even though they came from the same parts supplier as BMW buy in from.
Audi every bit as bad, as are VW, those famous emissions fiddlers.

German cars exist on the BS they use to sell to a certain kind of Brit who thinks the badge makes them something special and a bit better than the plebs.
Or BMW the favourite care of drug dealers and foreign scammers.

I am now on my third Peugeot 205, they don't rust, do stupendous mileages, my last one was on 200k and its still in the yard as a spare;easy to work on,cheap as chips to buy and repair and they go like manure off a shovel if you drive them like a bike, and use the gears.

I wouldn't have a German car as a gift, but soon someone will be along to say all  French cars are crap

[bollard]

Ah well there were a couple of reasons that it came down to the polo and fabia, one of them was rear visibility and the other was comfort. I imagine that the peugeot is comfortable though. In recent years designers have made rear windows higher. In our home circumstances we are at the far end of a turning head, two of the neighbours park in the turning head itself so it is difficult to reverse and turn to get out unless you can actually look round and see what,s going on. Cameras are too narrow for this. I wish the guy with the huge people carrier would park it in his own driveway but there we are and no I haven't asked because I know what the answer would be.

[mini-me]

A few years back I had to hire a car and got stuck with a Kia, lethal bloody thing, I could not see out the back window so reverse parking was interesting, could not see the front, let alone the nearside corner, and the blind spots from the windscreen should make it illegal in my book.
Friend of ours turned up with some kind of VW last week, it had a idiot light to tell her the tyres needed pumping up, and they don't give tyre pressure in Bar or ilbs /sq in any more. Idiot lights for everything, I would be ripping out wires and fuses left right and centre if I had to drive one.

I have been driving ridiculed french cars for over 30 years, Citroens of all kinds, Renault 16, Pugs, never a bit of bother, even my LDV vans had Peugeot diesels in them.

Buy a cheap car with a new MOT drive it till the next MOT, if it fails junk it, if it passes, keep it till it fails. If you buy a 1000£ car and run it for two years it will have cost you £10 per week; compare that against depreciation. And you still get scrap value.

Scrappy near me has a yard full of under ten yr old so called 'quality cars', all waiting for the crusher,all scrapped because of silly electrical stuff mostly.

Cars are a con trick, appealing to folks vanity.

[bollard]

Yes I am the same - I'd be happy with an old micra for £600 but this is the wife and she won't want to be breaking down on a motorway with no hard shoulder.

[mini-me]

Buy her a Green Flag memebrship and a decent mobile phone,tell her to keep off motorways,they make you fat

you know it makes sense

[murdo]

Maybe buy her something Japanese that wont break down. 
We get plenty of excercise here dodging potholes, even on our 'motorways'. 

[bollard]

The latest versions of all the jap offerings all have that visibility issue I mentioned, even the current version of her car - the yaris. It' s really between the vw and the skoda.