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Post by racingteatray on Feb 4, 2024 20:27:25 GMT
Welcome to the 500 club!
Lounge trim comes with a fixed panoramic roof as standard. An opening glass roof was an option.
I was wondering why your road tax wasn’t zero but then realised it isn’t a Twinair.
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Post by racingteatray on Feb 2, 2024 19:47:58 GMT
The Macan averaged 30mpg on a run to East Sussex and back last weekend and says it has averaged 25mpg since new.
As for the Fiat, it does so few miles that you'd need the patience of Job to work it out, and I've never bothered.
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Post by racingteatray on Feb 2, 2024 12:43:06 GMT
I didn't even say how much it was Do you use Porsche dealers as well? I guess so, given the car. BMW dealers I always found well priced when I had the 330i, but everything is a lot more money now - we'll find out with the 330e how they fare these days, but I think that's over a year from needing anything! Luckily it's M Sport brakes have clearly been done all round not long ago, is on high 40's miles. I have a new found respect for checking out brake wear on SH cars, though as I said, what can you do about it - trade places often refuse to haggle these days. I've never had to face the famous "M" tax, but the 440i was a remarkably cheap car to run for something with its level of performance - always took it to BMW Battersea (part of Park Lane) for servicing over 50k miles and six years and don't think I ever had a service bill that was higher than middling 300s. In fact the servicing on our Mini Cooper isn't particularly less, despite having half the engine and nearly a third of the power. Porsche will undoubtedly be a different experience but it doesn't require a first service until Jan next year.
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Post by racingteatray on Feb 1, 2024 23:32:04 GMT
It’s a lot of car for the money.
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Post by racingteatray on Feb 1, 2024 19:14:09 GMT
I'd have an auto in the Z4 as well. Choosing the auto means you can have shiny green (San Remo) paint with a tan (cognac) interior I hadn’t noticed that until now.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 31, 2024 16:13:40 GMT
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 28, 2024 1:15:38 GMT
Personally I don’t like that colour much but it looks like it has night blue leather, which is rare and rather nice.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 26, 2024 13:22:46 GMT
I looked at it and thought - ah, a Macan that's been to the gym, put on some bulk and also bought some new flashy jewellery for its front and back. But it does look better than I expected. This Macan also incorporates two car trends that annoy me: Why is every generation of car getting wider? The roads are not getting any wider, nor are parking spaces. What is it with the screens in front of the passenger? Is it a "just because we can" gimmick? And of course the prices are eye-watering. Yes, I noticed the width increase. I already struggle with mine through a width restrictor!
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 26, 2024 11:43:04 GMT
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 25, 2024 23:26:11 GMT
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 25, 2024 21:34:40 GMT
I’m still not sure about it, will have to see one properly. I specced up a Turbo without going mad and it was £112k in a foc paint colour. I thought £87k was too much for a Macan when we quite seriously specced up a GTS for Lindsay, another £25k is a lot and like most more expensive EVs, too much for a private buyer. It is a ‘Turbo’ so a better standard spec than the GTS and you can now have Matrix lights (not sure why no HD Matrix) which I’d struggle to buy a car without plus a few other things you’d expect on a car of that price which you couldn’t get in the old Macan. How does a turbo work with an EV? It compresses the marketing hot air into a purer form of bollocks.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 25, 2024 21:32:09 GMT
Looks like a Chinese copy of the real thing. The product of a drunken night fumble between a Macan and a Ora Funky Cat. A "Porscha" Funky Macat perhaps...
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 25, 2024 16:02:27 GMT
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 25, 2024 15:54:09 GMT
Well, it's finally here: www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/porsche-macan-electricI hated this when I saw the scoop pics but the finished item looks more inoffensive. Launch colours are awful but I configured one in Oak Green with the RS Spider alloys and it actually looked quite nice. £110k for a Turbo configured to my liking though, which doesn't compare brilliantly well to £78k for my GTS last year.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 25, 2024 10:33:30 GMT
I was looking at G20 shape M4s even the last 20plate cars can be had for 30k. Saw a nice main dealer one for 33k. That is serious depreciation given they were pushing £70k new. You mean F30-shape... But yes. I do love the design of them. But for my money a 440i is a better car more of the time for most people. It has a nicer-sounding engine as well and you don't suffer the M tax.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 22, 2024 15:32:15 GMT
That's one of the things about ze Thomas reviews that I don't like - far too much focus on whether or not the seats are made from "animal-friendly" materials or not.
Talking about things that make one's teeth itch, this is definitely one that makes my teeth itch.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 22, 2024 14:29:01 GMT
I should add that I am not criticising choice of vehicle. I'd love to have an old Range Rover classic as a toy. Just observing that the remarkable success of the Range Rover brand has been achieved notwithstanding a reliability record that would have murdered most other car brands.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 22, 2024 14:24:39 GMT
Clarkson in the Sunday Times yesterday was on point here.
He wrote "I like to think our [motoring journalists'] constant ability to be unimpressed drove carmakers to strive for a level of perfection that only Kristen Scott Thomas can understand. And I think that about 10 years ago they achieved "peak car". The turbo lag really had gone. The panel gaps were invisible. The electrics were tried and tested. And for the most part, they'd given up with flappy paddle double-clutch gearboxes and gone back to traditional autos. Which had become smooth, seamless, fast and light.
And then came along the world's net zero kumbaya governments that wanted cars to be uncrashable and produce fewer emissions than a single grain of kale. Which meant carmakers had to abandon everything they'd learnt over the previous hundred years.
It's not as if they've had to go back to a time when the controls were on the outside and there were running boards. But backwards they have most definitely gone. I'd say the electric and hybrid cars of today are probably as good as proper cars were in 1986. And as a motoring journalist that makes my teeth itch".
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 21, 2024 14:05:12 GMT
It’s taken 10yrs and 2 months but finally today:
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 18, 2024 16:47:10 GMT
This comes back around to why, much as I might fancy something like a Velar P400 or even SV, I am not prepared to have an expensive modern vehicle as my daily driver that I don't entirely trust to proceed on all occasions required of it.
T'was ever thus - as I've noted before, my father had three Range Rovers in succession during the 1990s and not one of them was any sort of paragon of reliability - the first (Vogue SE) tried to kill my stepmother, the second (Vogue LSE) tried to kill me and the third (4.6 HSE) was almost never to be seen without some fluid or other piddling out of it in an unplanned manner. In fact the last one was so unreliable that he switched to one of the original Audi Allroads and has had German cars ever since.
In a way it's some kind of miracle that so many people are prepared to put up with it.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 18, 2024 16:35:57 GMT
Of relevance to this discussion, and according to Susie Dent from Countdown, there is a ye olde English word for people who insist they are right even when there is clear evidence that they are wrong, which is "mumpsimus"!
She also proffers up the relevant "ultracrepidarian" (also dating back to times of yore), which means someone who loves to talk about subjects they know nothing about...
So, for example, Donald Trump would seem to be an example of an ultracrepidarian mumpsimus...as would some Twitter-frequenting cyclists by the sounds of things.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 17, 2024 14:55:38 GMT
Yes, I have a Milgauss, but I have the modern version, which is worth much less!
The original Milgauss, launched for CERN scientists or something like that, which is what you are referring to, was not a great success in era and therefore later become a cult model.
Rolex caused a stir in 2007 by reintroducing a modern version of the Milgauss in three versions, one with a black face, one with a white face, and one with a unique green glass face (which I have). Initially it was very hot property and very hard to get hold of, but it never went on to become one of the really valuable and sought-after models, probably because it's not as sober-looking as most steel Rolexes and thus a bit marmite. In fact I gather it has a reputation for being a bit of a "geek's Rolex" - indeed James May wears a white-face one.
Anyway, Rolex discontinued the Milgauss again last year, so it's expected to become an investment piece in due course, but at the moment there are plenty around and you'd have no trouble picking one for £9-10k (which isn't much more than its last RRP, which I think was £8,750).
The second-hand market for top-end steel sports watches has definitely had a correction - I think if you'd bought a used one at the top of the market about 2 years ago thinking it was an investment, you might be quite upset.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 16, 2024 17:21:51 GMT
I have never been on Twitter. My wife tried to get me to sign up years ago but I ticked so many of the privacy settings whilst signing up that it decided I wasn’t human and got arsey. So I happily refused to engage any further.
We were talking in the car on Sunday night about getting a dash cam. This after a very tall man in dark clothes and a hoodie (they always are) on an e-scooter overtook us on the Earls Court Road doing I should think at least 25mph (it’s a 20mph limit, so the traffic tends to be doing 23ish). There was quite a lot of traffic, we were in the right hand lane and he overtook on my left between the car in the left hand lane and us, swerved in front of me and then swooped back across both lanes to pass another car, then back again and then shot off up a side street on the right, causing the car in front to brake quite hard. Insane.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 15, 2024 10:30:36 GMT
To be fair it's had an easy life! It's always enjoyed off-street parking, has only just over 22k miles on the clock and has been serviced religiously every year irrespective of mileage.
The acme of a "one careful lady owner" car.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 14, 2024 21:44:15 GMT
^ Put a pair of Marigolds on, and get the bucket and sponge out ! (other brands of washing-up gloves are available) As instructed albeit no marigolds were involved… There can’t be many 500s of its vintage that still scrub up so well.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 13, 2024 19:14:41 GMT
Residuals are generally better, but that doesn't detract from the fact that you need to tie up more disposable in the thing in the first place.
And in addition, in Italy at any rate, I think it is more than offset by the road tax, which on a Macan GTS would be c.EUR3,900 per annum. That's because while the UK imposes a blanket additional road tax if the original list price was in excess of £40k, in Italy they impose a "super bollo" on all cars with more than 250bhp - the more powerful the car, the more tax you pay, and it applies on a sliding scale (stepping down a bit every five years) until the car is 20yrs old.
Even normal road tax is higher - on our Mini in Italy it would be EUR258, vs £180 here.
Insurance is also quite a bit more expensive - we enquired on the Mini and it would be around EUR600 per year.
Quite astonishing really, for the country that prides itself on its supercar manufacturers.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 13, 2024 14:35:35 GMT
It's not just travel and accommodation, everything has rocketed in price and the UK seems to be more expensive than other places. My daughter bought me a Massimo Dutti shirt at Christmas which cost €49.95 in Spain but is £59.95 here. I also had some Zara aftershave which my wife particularly liked and that cost peanuts, at €15.95 in Spain. In the UK the same aftershave is £29.95. More to the point, as Brits we can also shop duty-free in Europe. Sure, through Global Blue etc, you don't get anything like the full VAT back - it's more like 12%, but that's still a worthwhile further saving if you need to make a bigger purchase. But we do get cheaper cars. The UK price of my Macan GTS with options today (it's gone up since I bought it) is around £82k (before tax etc). The retail price in Italy for an identically-specified Macan GTS is EUR116k, or pretty neatly £100k at today's exchange rate. And that's not a Porsche-specific thing.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 12, 2024 22:05:57 GMT
Our cleaning cupboard appears to always only contain a number of lefthanded rubber gloves. God only knows what our cleaner does with the righthanded ones.
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 12, 2024 14:53:32 GMT
I am very thinning on top and grey at the sides - my father-in-law, who has a good 30yrs on me, has more hair and less grey hair, which is mildly upsetting. My wife, who has thick dark hair that hasn't gone grey at all yet, isn't impressed. I am neither thinning nor greying. My beard is flecked with grey but my head is as suspicious as German ex-Chancellor Gerhardt Schrőder, although more red than jet black. I suppose I am thinning but given the density of my kids’ hair I guess I had longer to go before it showed. Yes, you don't look your age at all. Lucky so and so!
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Post by racingteatray on Jan 12, 2024 12:08:43 GMT
The rules of my job mean I effectively have to pay other people to take any investment decisions relating to securities for me. I can take my own decisions when it comes to say investing in gilts, which is what the smart bankers have been doing recently. But that's about it.
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