M5

What impressed me most about it was its ability to be a real luxury car with a quiet, compliant ride and yet, at the flexing of an ankle, a rocket ship.

Er....

That's the number one reason why you should never let your wife do route planning 
Last week we did home to St Ives (near Cambridge, not the other one) using the M74 and A66 and it was 402 miles.

I reckon the fuel cost will be well worth it.

I can think of a current one that would give it a good run.

themotorforum.co.uk/thread/576/good?page=3


Congrats on the new motor, John. I've just been off to look up that blue. You won't lose that in a car park!

Carwow has a M4 vs M2 track battle video up and it was filmed in pouring rain. The two cars are barely driveable so 4WD is definitely the way to go!

Anyone like to lend me some money to get the Singapore Grey one, to see if I really could live with a saloon rather than a SUV or estate ??

I think the m5 is faster (in a straight line )Zeperf do an average of all the roadtested figures and the m5 is fractionally quicker ,and that’s in the dry I am assuming ,in the wet the gap would be larger.
I think you would need a Mclaren /Ferrari /r8 /911 turbo to go quicker than the m5 in a drag race.

They'd have given me two spares if i'd taken that one!

Are you ignoring the deposit?  £799 a month won’t cover an M5

Nope - the deposit is about the same as I put down on the Kuga from memory, but the monthly repayments are 5 times what I'm paying and the final balloon is also somewhat more that the none on the Kuga !

I can dream, can't I ? unlike John  who's getting the real deal.  I just wish I'd had better careers advice when younger, and a lot more luck in my employment !

This car is only a possibility because of the £35K endowment I took out to cover some of my mortgage after I was separated. I converted our mortgage to capital and interest about 12 years ago but kept the endowment on. It didn't pay out what it was supposed to but it gave me an opportunity to do something I could only have dreamt about before.

As for careers advice at school, I got f*** all and got to 6th year wanting to be a pilot but knowing that at the time, you either had to go to USA and spend £50K to get your licence or join the RAF and learn that way. My parents couldn't afford the USA and I didn't fancy the RAF so having enjoyed my crash higher in economics and listening to some of my friends talk, I decided to give accountancy a go. My best friend went to the USA as an engineer for Howdens, working on the windmills and he has never come back. He is now a senior engineer with Roche, who took over the company he worked for. He had a lot of shares through their share option scheme and the takeover turned him into a multi millionaire overnight. Another friend of mine joined a company about 5 or 6 years ago, joined the share scheme and invested perhaps £5,000. Last year they were bought out and his share was £1m. There are lots of people more fortunate than me but you just have to make the best of what you have at the time and take the opportunities when they present themselves.

I does!  No PCP this time though, big deposit and reasonable loan, which will be paid off in 2 years. The Golf was on a PCP but only to get the deposit contribution, we paid off the balance straight away.  The first car I’ve owned outright in a long time.

I don’t think there’s any modern car that wouldn’t be preferable to that!

Well if you're going BA the pilot might need it.

I'd also agree that careers guidance at that stage is largely useless - most of us haven't a clue what we want, and those who did scarcely needed the guidance. I think accepting how your personality shaped your choices and not feeling that others are responsible for your position in life is actually liberating. I wish I'd finished my physics degree, but with the benefit of hindsight it was not only my own fault, but I'm fortunate that I didn't.