What Car

So, Say you have a budget of 11k+or- and would like to buy something nice.
Rules,

Its got to be able to be used daily
Its got to be 200bhp or above
Convertible, coupe is fine
No practical requirement other than being easier to get in and out of than a mx5/rx8
It's got to have a bit of fun about it but retain ability to do long boring motorway drives

Cars looked at and discounted
370z as that dash is shocking
CaymanS as the more I read about IMB, bore scores and oil usage the mode I want no part of that bill
BMW z4 - I just don't like it

Would quite like a hardtop convertible, open to suggestions

Audi TTs, a mate has one, it's awesome

Get the dsg model and they fart between each gear change

Mercedes SL350?
Around 250 ponies of V8 noise and a folding hardtop roof.

335i Cab
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...0000&page=4

330d Cab
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...=New&page=1


135i coupe
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...cars&page=1

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...=New&page=1

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...-asc&page=3

Bmw m6 v10

wow, simply wow. I have to take a proper look at this now

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...41qw&page=1

Audi A5 3.0TDI 242BHP Coupe Quattro

Not feeling the Audi to be honest. The 335d is on the list to have a proper drive in, remapped they can be very quick and reasonable to maintain.
Fiat and Alfa have nothing of interest, and Jag R's are out of budget

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...%20Z&page=1

350z... Spend much less

XKR? https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201803264954237

Alfa GT? https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201803264941670

911 Carrera 2? https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201803305085585

Not an "R" but a lowish mileage 300hp V8 is not far away from your target price:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201709309828650

I can certainly recommend a Jag XK (with or without an R). Concern with a BMW M6 is parts cost and economy. My brother considered a V10 M5 briefly but discounted it on that basis. Looking at the average fuel economy on one of them it was single digit!

I do like the xk, and the M5 would be lovely but ongoing costs would be stupid.
Merc is something I haven't looked at but I'm liking the look of the sl350

Still a bit on the thirsty side but

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/lexus/is-f-2008-2012

The X150 XK is a fairly reliable car and if you stick to the non-R, which is still a rather nice car, parts prices are very sane and easy to get - many shared with S-Types and XFs of the same era. Mercedes and BMW pars for equivalent models is very likely to be noticably higher and whether they are more reliable is very debatable. The later SL though is reputed to be pretty solid - is this the one: https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/mercedes-benz/sl-r230-2002/

Town mpg on any a V8 is not great though whatever the specs say

If the budget allows I think the mid 06 onward 350 has the 272bhp V6 fitted which is a better unit and also the 7g gearbox which has a paddle shift too.
I tried the same setup in a CLK and the gearbox is a great improvement on the earlier tiptronic.

I really like my SL350. It’s the later generation (14) car with over 300bhp and a whole 50kg lighter but the shape has hardly changed. They make a great GT car - you have to concentrate if you’re going to throw it around (which I quite like) and, as I’ve said before, there’s plenty of power for today’s roads.

I’d be utterly astonished if a 2006 Merc isn’t more reliable than a 2006 Jag. Stay away from the period of Mercs around 2000-2002 (and maybe with a bit of a tail into later years) - this was a really dark period for Merc. But they spent billions on resolving this and my W211 Mercs have been in a totally different league from my terrible W210 (2001) car. Apart from that bad Chrysler period, Mercs are an utter joy to work on. The seats in my SL are the best I’ve ever sat in too.

All of that said, a current SL starts at around £75,000 - there’s inevitably some expensive bits in a car like that.

Same engine as the current Golf R. Sat nnav and all other mod cons. Remap gives 370bhp and returns over 30mpg combined and 40mpg 9n a run. Slightly over budget but not by much.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201803204742218?atmobcid=soc3

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?...amp;model=S2000

Got to admit not my thing, but it seems to tick all your boxes and i love an underdog!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ621aQB0hQ

Mk1 Focus RS

Fiesta ST with Mountune upgrade

Mini Cooper S Works

S2000

Impreza of some description

Volvo S40 2.5T

Giulietta Cloverleaf

My mate has the Fiesta ST Mountune and it is very quick. The corner speed is ridiculous.

It is a strange concept I agree but for example compare the types of faults and their frequencies here:

https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/mercedes-benz/sl-r230-2002/?section=good

https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/jaguar/xk-2006/?section=good

This type of conclusion is common in buying guides for the XK. All car models have spurious faults which are not common, however, the XK is a surprisingly well built car with few common faults and generally quiet forums because they don't often go wrong.

More recent Jaguars are nowhere near as bad as their reputation and German produced cars a nowhere near as good as their reputation. The reality is that the general standard is now pretty high with most of the stuff still screwed together in Japan being the most reliable.

Thanks
A car forum, who would have thought it was such a great place to get car advice

Here though you’re comparing faults from a 2002 (Dark period) designed Merc with a much later designed Jag. As before, the updated model (2006) update is much better. Since 2008, in back-to-back Mercs, I’ve not had a single fault on any of my modern Mercs - actually, not quite true - the lid of the little (ashtray-style) cubby hole on my SL wouldn’t always open properly without a prod - fixed under warranty (they even collected the car from 150 miles away and left me a courtesy car).

I’ve no doubt Jag have improved - frankly they couldn’t get a lot worse. My folks had one of the last XJSs and saying that it was a piece of rubbish would be charitable - it probably went wrong every 200 miles. My dad, who I’ve hardly ever seen cry, was in tears with it. It’s hard to get worse from there.

But to go back to my original advice - avoid anything that has anything to do with the 2000-2002 period from Merc - they totally lost the plot. But they recognised this and spent billions fixing quality.

This would be a fairer comparison R230 with the later model Jag - pretty short of issue reports
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/mercedes-benz/sl-r230-2008/?section=good

In the price range we are looking at - a bit over 11k, there are few of either car and the SLs seem to be the pre 2008 facelift, so I think the comparison is not that unfair.

Comparing a 1970 XJS is frankly completely pointless though. Mercedes in those days were some of the best built cars available. Jaguars on the other hand were close to the worst at any price from any country.

Today all mass produced cars are built intrinsically in the same way from similar parts from the same bunch of sub-suppliers, they just look different. We expect Mercedes to build good cars. They have the scale and the resources to do so. That expectation is not there for Jaguar even though they have also spent billions improving their standards and their products are similarly reliable these days.

Most of my friends and colleagues have German cars and I hear of a lot of problems. They don't seem to work like clockwork, especially the more affordable stuff. Things wear out quite fast. Design problems that the manufacturers won't fix. Expensive dealers that can't sort problems. Hence, I don't see that made in Germany always means better made. It is a great "brand" but the rest of the world has actually caught them up.

And don't forget that independent of the sticker price, each and every part on that hundred thousand euro car is built by the cheapest bidder.

I don't make cars, but for the things I do make, I spend days trying to save a tenth of a cent on the build price. If I can save half a buck, that's big time...

The XJS was being built until 1996 - that’s only 6 years from the start of R230 SL production - not such a pointless comparison - and only 10 years from the start of the Jags we are talking about. To go from the shocking piece of rubbish my parents bought to something Merc quality in 10 years is a stretch. My brother has had Discoveries from the same stable and there has been a slow improvement from the early really poor stuff to today where it is much better.

The other thing is that the SL at least isn’t built in the numbers that I’d consider as mass produced in the accepted sense of the word. They simply aren’t produced in big numbers. Mine has aluminium body panels and carbon fibre reinforcement. And, whilst I’m sure Mercedes have accountants like most companies, Mercedes design standards are way better than any car I’ve worked on. In fact, where Mercedes went horribly wrong in 2000 is that they tried to make cars like other manufacturers and simply didn’t know how to - they were crap at it.

I can’t speak much for the modern A Class - they’re incredibly successful for Merc - but at that end of the market money is tight.

The Japanese thing is also a bit of a myth in the luxury end of things. What the Japanese excel at is designing cars that are deliver just enough and no more. They find a way of doing something and won’t change it unless they’ve found something better. This is fabulous if you’re buying a real mass product. All of that said, I had a series of Imprezas and they were every bit as unreliable as any car I’ve owned. Parts were criminally expensive. Service was superb - way way better than Merc.

I’m not a “German” fan but I am a “luxury-end” Merc fan. I’m a professional mechanical engineer working in consumer electronics (and now automotive too ) and would like to think (at least) that I know quality engineering when I see it.

I think we are arguing around the subject. LR products still come up low in reliability reviews even though they are very popular these days. The complete JLR activities are not yet as good as they could be. Before Ford, Jaguar had little money and had to make models last a very long time. The last XJS's might have been built in 1996 but the first were built in 1975 and that era was not the British motor industry's best - poor design and production. The next XK was based on the XJS platform and its build quality is also poor and troublesome in some areas and that car, while nice enough, was not competitive even at launch.

The actual point was that the 2006- XK is not comparable to the old Jaguars. It was a clean-slate design using up-to-date techniques and materials, very competitive with the good cars of its era and to say that it will be crap because it is a Jaguar is just not true. Take a closer look and you will see that they are an excellent second hand buy as they are well made but because of Jaguar's general reputation, cheaper than they should be.

The XK was also built in small numbers 57k in about 9 years vs. the R230's 169k in around 9 years, also all aluminium construction, relatively simple with mainly trusted parts.

The Japanese still seem to screw things together better or their local component suppliers are better. Looking through our "TüV" reviews, Japanese produced cars, small cheap stuff or Lexus, etc., were almost always at the top end of the results. Cars from Japanese companies produced abroad were not generally better than any other competitor, even though there were one or two exceptions.

Some of our friends work at Mercedes. Some say there isn't a better car manufacturer, some only have problems with their cars (they get big discounts so all drive Mercedes cars). Making a one-fits-all statement for any manufacturer is not likely to be correct or fair. Hence my point about the XK being well worth considering, whatever one thinks of JLR reliability in general.

In those TV programmes about buying houses they always throw in something outside of what you were looking at.

My 3.0 Tdi Audi A5 is no slouch, sub 6 seconds to 60 and nice enough to chuck about a bit. But Last week one of these totally dropped me. It shot off down the "B" roads and looked to take the corners rather well too

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/...41qw&page=1

What was it Bob, the link is dead?!

bmw x5

Any good ideas for you Sam?

I see you are selling one of your Pandas on the pre 1996 FB page.

I am, and have. Been working my way though my collection. 2 more to go!
I know what I want now. 335d coupe convert but it's going to be a wait to find one I like

Got rid of the bravo yet?

Not yes Neil. I just spent a small fortune on it, belts, water pump, rad, oil seal in sump, service, shocks....
But it does need to go at some point

I'm coming to the conclusion I don't like the 1.6 eco; the low rev performance is so poor as to be dangerous if you're not awake and driving it is becoming a chore... the 1.9 was *much* better.

Perhaps it will fail its MOT in six months and I can nuke it

Well... I'd say sell your Nd grab a bargain?
Joe fixed everything that was wrong with mine

Its been my first oil burner and I have to admit I have really liked it and the mpg. Performance wise being the 165bhp version it goes well.

Its just the most dull car ever though. Excels at getting to b and back to a but it's hard to derive joy other than the simple fact its good at what it does

Glad to hear it helped, the 335ds certainly are popular.

Good luck selling the rest of your fleet - will you keep the newer panda?

New panda is gone as well

What do you think about this?

How about this?

And this?

Oops just realised you've already made a decision!

So these are all probably totally wrong.