Post by ChrisM on Feb 1, 2023 22:04:17 GMT
I'm Cross, T-Cross
In fact the forum photo uploader is currently down so I am actually cross!
The Polo replacement is a T-Cross, a car not on my radar until somehow it was, just a few weeks ago. I was on the point of signing for an automatic over 3 years ago but then bad things happened where I was working, resulting in an enforced change of jobs, then covid struck etc etc. Finally with the chance to sell the Polo (a car I really liked but no longer needed having got younger daughter's Audi sorted last year) I decided to take the plunge whilst I can, and get an auto.
It still needed to be cheap to insure but being just over 3 years old, it's more expensive to tax than the Polo (at the now-standard £165 instead of £20 pa) and it also needed to be narrow enough to fit in my garage and still enable me to get out of the car, a real problem. I was originally looking at a Polo auto but the current Polo is still fetching even sillier money second-hand than the older generation Polos, especially as an auto. The T-Cross is only about 10 to 15mm longer and wider than the current Polo, so the hunt began for something in an unusual colour (not black or white or silver and preferably not grey). LED headlamps and climate control (instead of basic aircon) mean that you generally have to go for a high trim level and pay about £3k more than lower trim levels, even on the used car market (the car was only launched in 2019). Hours of time spent pouring over used example with almost nothing in budget, and then.... just down the road at the local-to-me dealer from where I bought the Polo, a very vibrant turquoise example caught my eye.
From the photos on the website, it was on ale from 6 January or before with 11200 miles on the clock, first registered in October 2019 and most likely in Exeter. It's very unusual for Devon cars to be on sale in Surrey. Anyway a couple of visits later and I had a test drive booked for Saturday just gone, and the mileometer still read 11200 miles. It was traded in at the end of December by an elderly couple who moved up this way from Devon and have gone down from2 cars to one. It drove well and I liked it, the only annoyance being that you have to have your foot on the brake to move from N to D, which is a real pain for me as I tend to knock an auto into N at traffic lights then slip it back into D when the lights change. You can do this in the Captur without pressing the brake, but it seems VW aren't keen on the idea.
The car has some choice options which also helped my decision to buy: front and rear parking sensors and a reversing camera, a VW semi-rigid boot liner, the essential spare wheel, flappy paddles for manual gear changes, on top of standard kit which included Android Auto (so not to worry that it doesn't have satnav), auto dimming rearview mirror, folding door mirrors, radar-controlled active cruise control, emergency braking to avoid pedestrians, cyclists and cars, "rear guard" which supposedly brakes the car if you are reversing out of a parking space and something or someone approaches in your blind spot, blindspot monitoring with the orange lights in the door mirrors, lane-keeping assist (weird sensation of vibrating steering wheel if you move slightly off-centre in the lane you are supposed to be travelling in) and goodness-knows what else.
Photo uploading seems to have been restored:
In fact the forum photo uploader is currently down so I am actually cross!
The Polo replacement is a T-Cross, a car not on my radar until somehow it was, just a few weeks ago. I was on the point of signing for an automatic over 3 years ago but then bad things happened where I was working, resulting in an enforced change of jobs, then covid struck etc etc. Finally with the chance to sell the Polo (a car I really liked but no longer needed having got younger daughter's Audi sorted last year) I decided to take the plunge whilst I can, and get an auto.
It still needed to be cheap to insure but being just over 3 years old, it's more expensive to tax than the Polo (at the now-standard £165 instead of £20 pa) and it also needed to be narrow enough to fit in my garage and still enable me to get out of the car, a real problem. I was originally looking at a Polo auto but the current Polo is still fetching even sillier money second-hand than the older generation Polos, especially as an auto. The T-Cross is only about 10 to 15mm longer and wider than the current Polo, so the hunt began for something in an unusual colour (not black or white or silver and preferably not grey). LED headlamps and climate control (instead of basic aircon) mean that you generally have to go for a high trim level and pay about £3k more than lower trim levels, even on the used car market (the car was only launched in 2019). Hours of time spent pouring over used example with almost nothing in budget, and then.... just down the road at the local-to-me dealer from where I bought the Polo, a very vibrant turquoise example caught my eye.
From the photos on the website, it was on ale from 6 January or before with 11200 miles on the clock, first registered in October 2019 and most likely in Exeter. It's very unusual for Devon cars to be on sale in Surrey. Anyway a couple of visits later and I had a test drive booked for Saturday just gone, and the mileometer still read 11200 miles. It was traded in at the end of December by an elderly couple who moved up this way from Devon and have gone down from2 cars to one. It drove well and I liked it, the only annoyance being that you have to have your foot on the brake to move from N to D, which is a real pain for me as I tend to knock an auto into N at traffic lights then slip it back into D when the lights change. You can do this in the Captur without pressing the brake, but it seems VW aren't keen on the idea.
The car has some choice options which also helped my decision to buy: front and rear parking sensors and a reversing camera, a VW semi-rigid boot liner, the essential spare wheel, flappy paddles for manual gear changes, on top of standard kit which included Android Auto (so not to worry that it doesn't have satnav), auto dimming rearview mirror, folding door mirrors, radar-controlled active cruise control, emergency braking to avoid pedestrians, cyclists and cars, "rear guard" which supposedly brakes the car if you are reversing out of a parking space and something or someone approaches in your blind spot, blindspot monitoring with the orange lights in the door mirrors, lane-keeping assist (weird sensation of vibrating steering wheel if you move slightly off-centre in the lane you are supposed to be travelling in) and goodness-knows what else.
Photo uploading seems to have been restored:
