Post by alf on Jan 25, 2024 12:00:10 GMT
... of sorts anyway, as in its my partners car not mine, but doubtless i'll spend plenty of time in it/driving it. Especially as its our only 5 seat car after I accidentally (on purpose??) bought an early Quadrifoglio with no 5th belt 
Anyway, she drives a lot of short journeys, but when she occasionally goes long, it might be very long - friends in Anglesey, parents in Bavaria, stuff like that. She (and the kids) liked the Tesla we hired in Florida (hence the electric obsession), but a hybrid works better for her. She was keen on 330e's as I mentioned before (and I concur as 3-series are always a great steer) and had been holding out for a black or grey 330e Touring (the vast majority are saloons) with HK stereo, around 2020 plate (we previously tested a saloon in that spec at carshop Swindon). Late last week a black 70 plate 330e touring came up at carshop Northampton and she reserved it before we all went there on Sunday to, as it turned out, test then buy it.
I'm embarassingly short of details I'm afraid other than it has the M sport brakes, HK stereo, and HUD on top of standard M Sport spec. I have not even been in it yet - I drove the A5 back after we rejected their trade in offer, was in London for a few days, now I'm home but she is in Germany until Monday night and the car at the airport! In the one day I was here with it, I took this pic (which I had to screenshot from Google Photos on my PC as I have a new iPhone and the file format isn't recognised by windows
).
Carshop Swindon a few weeks ago was well organised and a nice site to visit, if pushy. Carshop Northampton was a total mess, they couldn't give a shit, and despite us having reserved the car 2 days before, hadn't cleaned it and were not ready for us, so we tested it then waited ages while the car was valeted and the payment side took ages as well (which obviously the kids loved). All of my Saturday was sorting out Lu's car, all of Sunday buying this one. The car was a single owner car, very straight and unmarked inside and out bar one deep chip on a headlight lens. The wheels are perfect and it feels recently waxed - I think it just then got dirty on their site from dust. They have good prices but won't negotiate anything, their "match" price offer only works if the other car is the exact same colour and spec, so is effectively worthless as ads all tend to list different parts of the spec! I'd rather pay a little more for the very good customer service I had in all 3 of my Jaguar main dealer purchases personally.
The biggest annoyance now is the tyres. They were below 3mm all round, so were all changed - for utter crap. I was a tyre nerd well before I ended up working for a tyre company, if people think I overdo the shittiness of budget tyres, have a look at the only reviews I could find for the rear tyres, below. The fronts are not the same and are even more obscure with no reviews visible. Utter lunacy - we'd rather have had the car on the old tyres (if legal) and saved whatever price (£400 ish) they paid to have this crap fitted. Having just had the tyres on Lu's Fiesta swapped over for some from my employee purchase scheme, I'll now be doing the same with these and either ditching runflat for Bridgestone all-seasons, or going for Turanza RF summer tyres if she wants runflats. Tina's control inputs are not especially sensitive and she has a lot of seat time in 4WD, with the torque fill from the electric motor and RWD, this may not be the best combo...
Anyway, I'm happy to have another 3 series Touring in the family, my old one was one of my best cars and for practicality they are superb. I've already done one tip run in the Quadrifoglio and stacking sharp-edged stuff - even on a sheet - on hand made italian leather was not a great feeling, and I got some funny looks at the tip - more people than I expected, know what the Giulia QF is. This is much more suitable (though the seats in it are lovely). I'm sure it will be a lot more fun to drive than the A5 was, for me anyway - I prize feel over raw pace for the family wagon, it has more of both.
This does mean that the 2014 74k mile A5 cabriolet (3.0TDi S Line Quattro with B&O) will be up for £10500 shortly when I've washed it
Anyway, she drives a lot of short journeys, but when she occasionally goes long, it might be very long - friends in Anglesey, parents in Bavaria, stuff like that. She (and the kids) liked the Tesla we hired in Florida (hence the electric obsession), but a hybrid works better for her. She was keen on 330e's as I mentioned before (and I concur as 3-series are always a great steer) and had been holding out for a black or grey 330e Touring (the vast majority are saloons) with HK stereo, around 2020 plate (we previously tested a saloon in that spec at carshop Swindon). Late last week a black 70 plate 330e touring came up at carshop Northampton and she reserved it before we all went there on Sunday to, as it turned out, test then buy it.
I'm embarassingly short of details I'm afraid other than it has the M sport brakes, HK stereo, and HUD on top of standard M Sport spec. I have not even been in it yet - I drove the A5 back after we rejected their trade in offer, was in London for a few days, now I'm home but she is in Germany until Monday night and the car at the airport! In the one day I was here with it, I took this pic (which I had to screenshot from Google Photos on my PC as I have a new iPhone and the file format isn't recognised by windows
). Carshop Swindon a few weeks ago was well organised and a nice site to visit, if pushy. Carshop Northampton was a total mess, they couldn't give a shit, and despite us having reserved the car 2 days before, hadn't cleaned it and were not ready for us, so we tested it then waited ages while the car was valeted and the payment side took ages as well (which obviously the kids loved). All of my Saturday was sorting out Lu's car, all of Sunday buying this one. The car was a single owner car, very straight and unmarked inside and out bar one deep chip on a headlight lens. The wheels are perfect and it feels recently waxed - I think it just then got dirty on their site from dust. They have good prices but won't negotiate anything, their "match" price offer only works if the other car is the exact same colour and spec, so is effectively worthless as ads all tend to list different parts of the spec! I'd rather pay a little more for the very good customer service I had in all 3 of my Jaguar main dealer purchases personally.
The biggest annoyance now is the tyres. They were below 3mm all round, so were all changed - for utter crap. I was a tyre nerd well before I ended up working for a tyre company, if people think I overdo the shittiness of budget tyres, have a look at the only reviews I could find for the rear tyres, below. The fronts are not the same and are even more obscure with no reviews visible. Utter lunacy - we'd rather have had the car on the old tyres (if legal) and saved whatever price (£400 ish) they paid to have this crap fitted. Having just had the tyres on Lu's Fiesta swapped over for some from my employee purchase scheme, I'll now be doing the same with these and either ditching runflat for Bridgestone all-seasons, or going for Turanza RF summer tyres if she wants runflats. Tina's control inputs are not especially sensitive and she has a lot of seat time in 4WD, with the torque fill from the electric motor and RWD, this may not be the best combo...
Anyway, I'm happy to have another 3 series Touring in the family, my old one was one of my best cars and for practicality they are superb. I've already done one tip run in the Quadrifoglio and stacking sharp-edged stuff - even on a sheet - on hand made italian leather was not a great feeling, and I got some funny looks at the tip - more people than I expected, know what the Giulia QF is. This is much more suitable (though the seats in it are lovely). I'm sure it will be a lot more fun to drive than the A5 was, for me anyway - I prize feel over raw pace for the family wagon, it has more of both.
This does mean that the 2014 74k mile A5 cabriolet (3.0TDi S Line Quattro with B&O) will be up for £10500 shortly when I've washed it
My daughter is totally immune even to fairly on the limit cornering and big gobs of oversteer, Tina is less keen unless we are on the Autobahn...
I'm off to Wales for a walking day trip on Saturday with my brother, I would have been lucky (and £300 lighter even for the smaller fronts) to get another PA4 in time. Last time (summer 22 in the Jag with a nearly new rear) I was not so lucky, it was central but a huge hole. 
