Jamie Edmonds

Future classics from 90s and 00s? I'd bet on the following: Peugeot 106 GTi & Rallye - the Saxo was more popular but that's because it was cheaper, most people wanted the Peugeot Peugeot 306 GTi-6 Audi TT - for reasons stated above Ford Fiesta Zetec-S - underrated warm hatch Ford Puma - as per TT, late 90s coupes are due a comeback Fiat Coupe How many people have scrapped something which would now be worth good money? I binned a 2 owner from new '84 Golf GTi with un-ripped seats,P-slot wheels and centre caps still present after it failed an MoT back in 2001...

I guess the old car dealer's answer of 'whatever got traded in with tax on it' doesn't work now with the new system? Mk1 TT is a surefire future classic car I think, totally 'of its time' and still looks good today. I'd like a 225 in silver with the chunky 5 spoke alloys and baseball leather please. I guess I don't strictly count as I'm not really a dealer but I 'drive' the road bike pictured to the left of this post, the Range Rover Evoque Si4 Prestige below

You can fix the breather pipe with a bit of the right diameter fuel hose - costs a fraction of the price of the Fiat part and is easy to fit yourself when you take off the air box. Ours failed on the car's second birthday, it started pumping fumes into the car through the climate control system so not very pleasant!

I guess the reason to refuse the work initially was that they felt the oil filter caused the issue rather than the fact non-OE parts had been fitted to the car in itself. I've seen a few instances of warranty claims being turned down when cars have been serviced outside the dealer network, but usually they focus on oil specifications rather than the parts themselves. If the owner or servicing garage can't prove that they used an oil with the correct OEM approvals then they can technically invalidate most engine related claims, but if you make enough of a fuss they will often reverse the decision where it isn't totally black and white because of the risk of bad PR and reputation damage among their big fleet customers.

Pretty damning statement from the administrators - basically the market has moved on, the business hasn't and the brand is toxic. Will the issue with warranties, service plans and breakdown cover being cancelled cause consumers to be wary of buying from businesses who don't offer an underwritten product or is it too complex for most of the market to understand?

The Times now reporting that Grant Thornton have been appointed as administrators. The MBO didn't go through that long ago so something has gone very wrong here. Finance rules? Inability to source stock? Who knows?

Apparently. Various reports of bailiffs and Police on site on Twitter, could be messy given the volume of stock they hold.

On the spark plugs, you either follow the manufacturers schedule or you don't, there is no grey area. If you don't do the plugs then that gives wriggle-room to get out of a warranty claim down the line as 'car has not been serviced in line with the manufacturers recommendations' so on a two year old car I'd just swallow it your position. I'm not up on current MoT rules, but I'm sure there's no requirement for the kit to be there, so remove the out-of-date sealant and the problem would go away anyway. Sounds like the dealer wants to make a sale of the new sealant...

In answer to the original question, the Megane is similar in that the manufacturers are trying to position the three door versions as more desirable and pricing them accordingly, whereas previously they would be sold as a cheaper alternative to their more practical five door siblings. I think the new Hyundai i20 is following a similar route in marketing terms as well, and VW are considering dropping the three door entirely for the next Polo.

Still not managed to kiss and make up then James? You're missing out, the base spec 1.6 petrol Astra I inevitably get given as a hire car whenever I fly into Gatwick is quite a machine...

Hmmmm

Possibly a little unfair on some points I think, but not all... MG is a 100% retail brand, so selling nothing in Feb isn't a big surprise. Dealers won't be registering demos in Feb either, unless they're pre-registering stuff to hit a target which I doubt the MG guys are doing. The cars aren't that bad. Sure, I wouldn't spend my own cash on an MG6, but the MG3 is OK and at the price compares well with the competition from Suzuki, Vauxhall, Kia etc. I agree though, they need a new PR agency very badly indeed (James, you should put in an opportunistic pitch for this one!) and of course the main point of them being in the UK is to boost Chinese sales but that doesn't mean that they're not making a small effort to be successful here. I'm sure Hyundai and Kia were at least this bad when they first launched in the UK so there's hope yet...

I found the Peugeot bit funny but maybe I'm naturally childish, but was expecting them to go onto saying something about the 508, or 308, or 2008, all of which are class leading. Instead, it just seemed to end with nothing at all, like a feature which was written and produced but someone lost the last three pages of the script. I'm not sure why they picked on Peugeot though, surely the manufacturer who makes cars for people who don't like cars is Vauxhall, but by providing the 'reasonably priced car' maybe Luton have bought themselves immunity from this kind of ridicule?

I'm like you James, email is just easier than phone as you can ensure you get all the questions written down and not risk getting sidetracked when on the phone and missing something important. When I bought my last car out here I was totally ignored by my local Land Rover dealership when I sent a mail asking for some info and to book a test drive of a car they had in stock, and got the same (lack of a) response from another one I tried as well. It seemed like Mercedes were the most switched on when it came to replying to mails, with both dealers responding quickly and helpfully, and the Volvo dealer replied too but didn't have the right car in stock (I'm not buying an XC60 D5 with cloth trim). In the end my wife didn't like the GLK though, so we bought an Evoque from a third Land Rover dealer, and the two I tried to email first missed out on the chance for a nice sale with some finance commission on top.

But where are all the mk1 Priuses (Priii?) There are three on Autotrader at sub-£1k, are the rest all languishing on suburban driveways with terminal faults?

Yup, I still can't believe that an interstellar mileage ex-minicab 7-10 year old Prius retails at over £3k - the battery must be down to well under 50% of its original capacity and there are so few places which know how to fix them that they must be due to take a big bath soon. For the same money you can have a nice petrol Auris with less than half the miles, and I know where my money would go.

It might mean they get scrapped slightly sooner, but with most modern common rail diesel cars the size of repair bills they manage to generate once they reach 10 years old and about 150k miles is enough to see them off anyway. The CO2 based road tax has been so 'effective' at getting manufacturers to build low CO2 cars, and drivers to buy them, that the annual revenue from RFL has fallen drastically. In 2001 there were a handful of diesel city cars which qualified for the sub-120g £30 tax band (VW Lupo SDi did, Peugeot 106 1.5D didn't) but now the best selling BMW 5 series is £30 to tax, and you can buy a regular petrol Fiesta (not even an eco-special model) which qualifies for zero RFL. I'm sure this will have an impact on government taxation policy going forward, the problem is that motoring taxes are now considered pretty toxic so most politicians will shy away from them where possible.

In reality though, diesel was the better choice at the time. If you had to drive a 2006 Mondeo and had the choice of the 2.0 TDCi or the 1.8 or 2.0 Duratec petrol when new I bet most drivers would prefer the diesel irrespective of the fuel economy. Now that petrol technology has caught up in terms of torque and driveability it's a more even fight, but at the end of the day company car tax is still CO2 based and favours diesels, so they're far from dead yet. The fact VW isn't going to import a petrol Passat and you can only buy the new Discovery Sport in the UK with a diesel engine shows (you can order them here with the 2.0T 240ps Ford EcoBoost engine) the manufacturers don't think there's a wholesale switch any time soon. Is there a new car today which isn't a con? Diesels are causing huge public health problems in spite of being sold as the eco-friendly choice, downsized turbo petrols can't get anywhere near their published economy numbers in the real world, the Euro 6 Fiat 500 1.2 is tuned in a way that means it can't pull away on a hill...

I have a set of 16" Renault Nervastella wheels with good-as-new Matador Sibir winter tyres fitted for sale. The wheels have a good few scuffs and scrapes but are straight and come with centre caps and the key to remove them. The tyres are 205/60 16 size, were fitted in December 2013 and have done about 3k miles (one trip to Switzerland and back, basically). I had them on an '05 Grand Scenic but they'll also fit a Megane and possibly others too. Located near Brighton, East Sussex, £250.

In a lot of areas it's the MoT which drives the rest of the work. Car owners are putting off routine servicing to save money and the annual test is what drives a lot of business, especially as things like ABS and airbag warning lights are now testable items. If you're setting up a new centre then a one man MoT bay is a must-have, it's cheaper to operate and will feed business to the rest of the workshop. Diagnostic kit is where it gets really complex, most of the guys I know run three or more bits of kit to get the coverage they need, so you need to understand your local car parc, and the kind of vehicles you're going to be working on to make sure your equipment allows you to do the jobs in house and not have to send them out to a specialist as this eats into your margin. Courtesy cars are an interesting topic, they can be a big cost and a lot of businesses go down the route of leasing new cars (costs circa £100 per month) rather than running old cars. If you want to do lease company work, which is generally fairly easy stuff (routine maintenance on 1-4 year old cars) you'll need courtesy cars available. Of course, you also then need the diagnostic kit to turn the service lights off, or you'll have to outsource it which will eat all the margin from the job. As other posters have mentioned, there are a lot of low quality parts around, and many companies will quote based on low end bits as standard. This is something you have to deal with, and a really good service adviser will help here, selling the benefits of fitting a Bosch battery against a white-box one year version or Dunlop tyres against their Triangle or Sunny competitors. Talk to a few equipment suppliers, and some other workshop businesses, and take it from there, it's not cheap to set up but if you do it right then running a workshop can earn you a decent living.

Surely at £75 that Safrane is worth more weighed in for scrap?! Great result overall though, congratulations.

I remember Simon Wight biffing around in a Civic he'd taken in p/x from an old boy who was clearly hard of hearing. The indicator system had been hooked up to a DEAFENING buzzer which when off whenever you signaled to make a turn.

I use an online notebook system called Evernote which has apps for iPhone, Android and Windows as well as a desktop application so then everything you do is synced across all devices and you always have a record of it.

Interesting strategic shift, when Kia offer 7 years and most other Asian brands have 5 years cover that Vauxhall have gone back to the old standard of 3y60k. I guess the sub-text to this is that Vauxhall has become almost entirely fleet-focused, and these customers aren't prepared to pay more for longer cover as it has a negligable effect on the three year RV figures. Also, the percentage of buyers using finance, and especially PCP penetration, quoted in the article are lower than what I understand is the industry average, so it suggests that private Vauxhall buyers are probably more likely to make use of a longer warranty than those buying a Hyundai...

I thought it might be interesting to share my experience of buying (or attempting to buy...) a car here in Switzerland, and show how from a customer perspective the UK market seems to be far more advanced that it is out here. First some background, I live in Zürich in Switzerland, having relocated here from the UK at the start of the year, my current car is a 2013 Renault Koleos diesel which I'm bored of and want a change (tried to be sensible when buying a car when we arrived here, big mistake)! I'm in the market for a small-mid size 'premium' SUV, up to 3 years old and ideally with a decent size petrol engine, which is typical bread and butter stuff out here and given that I (like 10-15% of the population of Zürich) don't speak especially brilliant German I sent off a few emails. Most didn't even bother to reply, including the Land Rover garage in one of the biggest ex-pat areas 5 minutes from where I live. Being Switzerland everything is shut on a Sunday, but closing at 4pm on a Saturday, and only offering test drives on weekdays feels a bit like we're in 1982. When the discussions of a part exchange began some dealers just said 'no' while my favourite response came from my local Mercedes dealer who offered the princely sum of CHF 18,000 within 5 minutes of me sending the email - book trade is 23,000, the cheapest one on our equivalent of Auto Trader is 23,500 with 25k more km and I have an underwrite from Renault of 21,000 so you can guess how much effort he put into getting that price.... As I write this post a leasing price has just arrived for a GLK from the other Mercedes dealer. Which he said he would send last Wednesday. Talking to colleagues here this experience is far from unique, and seems to be similar for both Swiss and ex-pats. Thankfully Land Rover dealer number three seem to be rather more helpful and keen to do business, so all being well I'll have a deal put together on a 2 1/2 year old Evoque Si4 this week, but it really makes me appreciate how much easier and more pleasant it is buying a car back home!