New car - Looking for some inspiration

nheather

Outstanding Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2004
Messages
23,168
Reaction score
14,276
Points
6,757
Location
Horsham, West Sussex
I appreciate this is a silly question to which there is probably no answer.

My current car, a BMW M Sport 320D, is coming to the end of a four year PCP. When I bought it I had every intention of paying the balloon and keeping it for many years. Problem is I don’t really like it. It’s a nice car but I’ve just never got on with it.

I have barely used it, partly because my commute pattern changed and partly because of the pandemic. It is on a 48k mile contract and I have done 16k miles with just five months to go - so it is barely run in.

Before then I had a succession of company cars, all hatchbacks or estates, mostly VW Golfs and soon after owning the BMW I realised that I missed the rear load convenience (the BMW actually has a huge load space but with limited access because it is a saloon) and the low driving position.

So the plan to keep it has mostly gone, but I’m not sure what to replace it with, I find I’m not really that interested.

We have a second car which is a full EV with limited range so would be looking for petrol, or maybe a mild or plug-in.

I have become used to the bells and whistles so that is quite important.

I’m not a speed merchant but at the same time all my past cars have been within the 7-9 seconds 0 to 60 mph, so I don’t want anything less than that. The wife’s EV is about 8 seconds and we use that whenever we can so I don’t want to get into my car and feel that it is sluggish.

I want a hatchback/estate type. Want to keep the list price below £40k to avoid the silly road fund licence premium. Been looking at SUVs like the Audi Q3 and the Cupra Formentor. But when I price them up they are very close to £40k and I’m not sure it is wise spending that sort of money.

I’m not adverse to buying used but it would have to be nearly new and to be honest when I have looked the prices seem high for ‘approved‘ cars.

And not sure that an SUV is a wise idea - I guess I’m looking at them because they are so popular but arevthey a bit naff - I’m not sure.

So I know it is a silly question to ask, just looking for some ideas.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
Just before I type a lengthier response, and I know I’m asking a daft question but you will be aware that there should be a lot of equity in the soon to expire contract due to the low mileage I hope?
 
Approved used/2nd hand cars are sky high currently due to demand. I’d be looking to use the equity in the PCP and maybe look at an X3/4 If you want to stick with BMW?

You could always get a settlement figure from the finance arm and then compare that to the 2nd hand typical price too of course. Pay it off then resell it maybe?
 
can't really go wrong with Skoda for all the bells and whistles and a VRS Octavia estate version would be quite highly specc'd and under £40k

The Superb Estate gets extremely good reviews too
 
TL;DR - buy a Golf.


Nigel, you clearly have 'a type' - 'mostly VW Golfs'. Why not another then? GTI/ GTD well within your budget, quick enough and full of tech. The adverts from years ago about people comparing their car to a Golf is well justified (and very accurate actually). I've heard a number of people saying things like 'Yeah, my Leon/ A3/ Octavia is based on the Golf platform y'know' I've said it myself! - the Golf is almost certainly the best car in that range imo. My next door neighbour has a 3 year old GTI and I look at it and think 'Nice' pretty much every time I walk past it.

With regards to your question: 'And not sure that an SUV is a wise idea - I guess I’m looking at them because they are so popular but are they a bit naff - I’m not sure.'

Yes, SUVs and 'Crossovers' are naff. I'm not sure what vehicle types they are 'crossing over' between, I can only think maybe an estate car + double decker bus :rotfl:

I've never liked the styling of these types of vehicles and really struggle to see why they are so hugely popular in the UK. If you want a car that carries loads of kit and your family, then an estate car is the obvious choice. Making the estate car taller and ride higher doesn't actually give much more room from what I've seen.
I blame Citroen for them, they made the Xsara Picasso in the late 90's and because it was so cheap and cheerful, plenty of families bought them. Then it was just a case of the more prestige companies seeing the gap in the market approaching and before long everyone was at it. Even the nicer ones are crap to look at.

Don't get me started on the upper end of the scale, Bentley Bentayga (say Bentayga in an Essex accent to make it sound really good) or the Aston Martin DBX - what the hell are these companies thinking of!
 
Damn it @Doug the D that's me sending the Bentayga back and hitting up a GTD. can't keep it now I've said it in an Essex accent!! 😠
 
Last edited:
Just before I type a lengthier response, and I know I’m asking a daft question but you will be aware that there should be a lot of equity in the soon to expire contract due to the low mileage I hope?

I haven’t tested that other with WeBuyAnyCar just to get a rough idea. That was showing only about £2k or £3k above the balloon.

But you are right, I’m certainly not keen on just handing it back to BMW finance.

So definitely going to use it in part exchange or just keep it for a few more years. Trouble with the latter is that I don’t really like it that much - I can see it is a nice car, not slagging it off, just doesn’t really float my boat.

As for approved/authorised - as far as I have seen, it might be cheaper to buy new, they certainly have dropped much in price.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
download (3).jpeg


Not sure if this floats your boat but im going to get a Mazda3 after my current lease ends. 2L skyactiv X (no turbo) engine, decent performance (8.1 secs to 60), every gadget and safety device you could conceivably want and holds its value well. The interior is up there with audi and BMW and the higher spec models have leather upholstery. Plus many reviews state the MPG figures they quote are actually realistic.

Not to mention it just looks stunning 😍 (caveat - eye of the beholder etc)
 
If you were to consider an SUV style car - then the Volvo XC40 plug-in hybrid might be worth a look? Can do full electric on journeys of around 20 miles from memory.

They are 2WD only in this format, as the electric motor is bolted to the engine, rather than on a separate driven axle.

Nearly new ones are very reasonably priced.

I have no experience of them, other than considering what my wife's next car should be - though it looks like we'll be going full electric now.

 
Had a look round some dealers today and have come to the conclusion that this IC chip shortage has screwed the car supply chain.

Was told by all that none of the cars that I enquired about could be delivered until next year, and even then they couldn’t be certain when.

The guy at Audi even said that the few cars that they have had through had all been delivered with one electronic key fob rather than two because if the IC shortage.

And this would explain why the approved used car prices are so high - they are practically all that is available to buy if you want a car any time soon.

Been reading up a bit and it looks like the car industry may have shot themselves in the foot. There have definitely been problems with semiconductor production, coronavirus, plant fire in Japan, storm in Texas, are temporary setbacks but have created a backlog. But the car industry added to this issue - because car sales dropped during the first year of Covid they cancelled production orders with the semiconductor plants. Now that they want to resume they find themselves at the back of the queue. So in the main, it appears that car companies will have to wait until the backlog has been cleared before their orders can be processed.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure that I can offer anything other than that my sister has just PXd her 56 A3 for a 17 A5 S-line 2.0TD 5-door - no idea on the finance situation but can say the ride (I've had one in it) and performance seem perfectly acceptable.
 
Seams all good to me, sold my bmw that I am not using due to COVID. Got 1500 more than expected. Using my SLK until things settle down. With electric cars up in the air at the moment. See what happens next year.
 
I’m just swapping my 2 year old Superb Estate for a Mitsubishi Oultander PHEV. Only reason. Is that we have just bought a second house that is a 300 mile round trip and we are doing that 3 out of 4 weekends minimum. I love the Superb but I need to cut the fuel consumption now I’m doing that many miles a year….. also must have 5 doors and absolutely must have a tow bar with at least 1,500kg capacity. Wanted to dip my toe in the electric waters (not full EV over here - nowhere near the charging infrastructure for trip lengths I do yet and not simply hybrid) and the towbar requirement certainly cuts the number of PHEVs I can buy. We are way behind here so there weren’t that many to start with!!

I’ll let you know Nigel - the test drives were good so hopefully I’ll lime it almost as much as the Superb.

If VAG would sell the Superb iV here I would likely switch to that - I haven’t checked towing capacity though since they have said they won’t sell it here anyway.

edit - and I forgot - the house is rural on 12 acres so also wanted a 4WD. That REALLY cut down my choices :)
 
Last edited:
Probably not big enough for you & budget end of market but just bought a Hyundai Ioniq plug in (easy does 30 miles electric range), top spec has lots of gadgets, drives nice & suits me well, second hand 3 years old with low mileage, still has 2 years of original warranty and 5 years battery warranty. Will see how it goes but of all the cars I test drove this ticked the most boxes
 
Last edited:
Don't buy a Golf- at least not yet... I've got a GTD on lease and I am starting to regret it.

The car is great, but the Infotainment and driver assist features are littered with bugs, some very serious. In the last 2 months, I have had the following issues:

Adaptive Cruise Control goes into "Safe" mode and thinks it's in Germany. Without warning, the speed will drop to the Km/h equivalent, so the car will suddenly brake from 70 MPH to 44 MPH and refuses to pass vehicles on the right while on dual carriageways as it thinks you are undertaking. This happens almost every time I drive the car. Only fix is to switch off the car fully and restart. Not easy to do on a motorway, so you end up having to turn off ACC and Drive Assist, making long journeys less relaxing.

As above, but cruise speed display jumps UP! I have been driving in 30mph and suddenly the the car started to accelerate to 130MPH! It has done this on at least 5 occasions in the past couple of months and each time the acceleration has been rapid and needed me to tap the brakes to disconnect the ACC.

Drive assist (Controls steering as well as throttle for hands off driving) is great on dual carriageways, but terrible on single carriageways. It makes dives for junctions and causes the car to veer unpredictably if the road width changes. Only usable for slow speed traffic jams and dual carriageways.

Infotainment crashes on startup. You have to hold the power button for 10 seconds to restart it. Probably once a week.

Alexa app cannot be initialised, as it needs to connect to Amazon.com to complete the setup and the car's internal data usage policy prevents this... Apparently the app is not supposed to be available in the UK at the moment, but is in the VW app store and allows you to install it.

Android Auto continually disconnects from my Samsung phone while in wireless mode, forcing you to connect to the charger socket for every journey.

Aircon went into "Safe" mode and temperature could not be changed. Needed to restart car to clear this.

Sat Nav crashes and restarts pretty much daily.

Sat Nav loses connection to traffic services regularly, so you end up in traffic jams you might otherwise have avoided.

VW do not have a fix for any of these. If you try and book the car into the dealership for investigation, they will just cancel the appointment, as there's nothing they can do currently. The only thing they can try is a full software update instead of relying on the smaller OTAs, which takes 5 hours. This does not normally fix any of the problems, hence why they are cancelling the appointments.

The touch buttons take a bit of getting used to, but generally work well. The IQ Lighting is brilliant. It gives you full beam at all times above 30MPH, but dynamically turns off the LED main beam segments that would otherwise blind other road users as you approach them. It's quite unnerving at first to see a darker shadow where another car or bike is, but works incredibly well and gives excellent visibility in all conditions.

A lot of these bugs affect other VWG vehicles including Skodas, as they use the same underlying system. If these sort of features are of importance to you, please consider before you purchase or lease.
 
Don't buy a Golf- at least not yet... I've got a GTD on lease and I am starting to regret it.

The car is great, but the Infotainment and driver assist features are littered with bugs, some very serious. In the last 2 months, I have had the following issues:

Adaptive Cruise Control goes into "Safe" mode and thinks it's in Germany. Without warning, the speed will drop to the Km/h equivalent, so the car will suddenly brake from 70 MPH to 44 MPH and refuses to pass vehicles on the right while on dual carriageways as it thinks you are undertaking. This happens almost every time I drive the car. Only fix is to switch off the car fully and restart. Not easy to do on a motorway, so you end up having to turn off ACC and Drive Assist, making long journeys less relaxing.

As above, but cruise speed display jumps UP! I have been driving in 30mph and suddenly the the car started to accelerate to 130MPH! It has done this on at least 5 occasions in the past couple of months and each time the acceleration has been rapid and needed me to tap the brakes to disconnect the ACC.

Drive assist (Controls steering as well as throttle for hands off driving) is great on dual carriageways, but terrible on single carriageways. It makes dives for junctions and causes the car to veer unpredictably if the road width changes. Only usable for slow speed traffic jams and dual carriageways.

Infotainment crashes on startup. You have to hold the power button for 10 seconds to restart it. Probably once a week.

Alexa app cannot be initialised, as it needs to connect to Amazon.com to complete the setup and the car's internal data usage policy prevents this... Apparently the app is not supposed to be available in the UK at the moment, but is in the VW app store and allows you to install it.

Android Auto continually disconnects from my Samsung phone while in wireless mode, forcing you to connect to the charger socket for every journey.

Aircon went into "Safe" mode and temperature could not be changed. Needed to restart car to clear this.

Sat Nav crashes and restarts pretty much daily.

Sat Nav loses connection to traffic services regularly, so you end up in traffic jams you might otherwise have avoided.

VW do not have a fix for any of these. If you try and book the car into the dealership for investigation, they will just cancel the appointment, as there's nothing they can do currently. The only thing they can try is a full software update instead of relying on the smaller OTAs, which takes 5 hours. This does not normally fix any of the problems, hence why they are cancelling the appointments.

The touch buttons take a bit of getting used to, but generally work well. The IQ Lighting is brilliant. It gives you full beam at all times above 30MPH, but dynamically turns off the LED main beam segments that would otherwise blind other road users as you approach them. It's quite unnerving at first to see a darker shadow where another car or bike is, but works incredibly well and gives excellent visibility in all conditions.

A lot of these bugs affect other VWG vehicles including Skodas, as they use the same underlying system. If these sort of features are of importance to you, please consider before you purchase or lease.
So glad I don’t have any of those features. I just use my driving skill to arrive safely at my destination. :)
 
I'd echo someone else's mention of a Skoda, with the addition that if you go for the "Saloons" you actually get a hatchback. Both Octavia and Superb have loads of space, are very comfy and have all the toys. If you want speedy the 2.0 petrol can be had with either 220 or 280hp, or could, not so sure about the newer version...
 
So glad I don’t have any of those features. I just use my driving skill to arrive safely at my destination. :)
If you drive in heavy traffic or where traffic speeds are yoyoing up and down due to variable speed limits and traffic flow, they are extremely useful. Trust me, once you've tried them, it's hard to switch them off in that sort of driving! Being able to sit back in a slow moving traffic jam and just lightly touch the steering wheel every 15 seconds or so is much easier than the stop - go you would normally be used to.

Same on motorways. The car just sits there at the speed limit until you come up behind another car, where it will match the speed or you can just indicate to move out and the car accelerates again. It also persuades you to drive at a sensible distance behind other cars and avoids harsh braking.

Of course, on that twisty back road, you turn them all off and enjoy the sub 7 seconds 0-60 and blistering 40 - 80 acceleration, which in a DSG is pretty much seamless...

My previous car was a manual Z4 and I really don't miss it.
 
I’m just swapping my 2 year old Superb Estate for a Mitsubishi Oultander PHEV. Only reason. Is that we have just bought a second house that is a 300 mile round trip and we are doing that 3 out of 4 weekends minimum. I love the Superb but I need to cut the fuel consumption now I’m doing that many miles a year….. also must have 5 doors and absolutely must have a tow bar with at least 1,500kg capacity. Wanted to dip my toe in the electric waters (not full EV over here - nowhere near the charging infrastructure for trip lengths I do yet and not simply hybrid) and the towbar requirement certainly cuts the number of PHEVs I can buy. We are way behind here so there weren’t that many to start with!!

I’ll let you know Nigel - the test drives were good so hopefully I’ll lime it almost as much as the Superb.

If VAG would sell the Superb iV here I would likely switch to that - I haven’t checked towing capacity though since they have said they won’t sell it here anyway.

edit - and I forgot - the house is rural on 12 acres so also wanted a 4WD. That REALLY cut down my choices :)
I would be interested to know how you get on in terms of fuel economy on long runs.

A few of my colleagues have PHEVs including the 2019 Outlander and they all complain about poor economy once the battery is depleted - which I gather is after about 20 miles at motorway speeds.

They have reported real mpgs as low as 28mpg on petrol only, which doesn't compare favorably to most diesels which manage well in excess of 60mpg on similar runs. To be fair, some of them never charge their cars, so they are simply used as self charging hybrids, which is probably as inefficient as you can get!

I wonder if a diesel 4x4 would have made more sense? I used to have an old Mitsubishi Shogun and even 20 years ago it would do better than 35mpg on average and much better on longer trips. I would imagine a more recent diesel would improve on this as well.
 
I would be interested to know how you get on in terms of fuel economy on long runs.

A few of my colleagues have PHEVs including the 2019 Outlander and they all complain about poor economy once the battery is depleted - which I gather is after about 20 miles at motorway speeds.

They have reported real mpgs as low as 28mpg on petrol only, which doesn't compare favorably to most diesels which manage well in excess of 60mpg on similar runs. To be fair, some of them never charge their cars, so they are simply used as self charging hybrids, which is probably as inefficient as you can get!

I wonder if a diesel 4x4 would have made more sense? I used to have an old Mitsubishi Shogun and even 20 years ago it would do better than 35mpg on average and much better on longer trips. I would imagine a more recent diesel would improve on this as well.
I’ll let you know how it goes on the longer runs. I have heard the stories before but after quizzing the dealer and trying to sort the facts from sales pitch, I reckon it will do better than my Skoda Superb on the run to the country. I’ve forgotten what mpg is after 15 years here :)

seriously though the Skoda on a steady run around 67 mph (limit is 100kmh which is 62mph) will do about 6.7 ltr/100km which is about 42mpg. Even as a hybrid the Outlander should do better than that. I’m not that fussed if it doesn’t get the tested 1.9 ltr/100km (149mpg) of the combined cycle in our tests. In fact I don’t believe it will ever do that in my world of driving :)

The Skoda on our combined cycle is 8.4 ltr/100 km (34mpg) and it does that or worse on my commute. A mixture of 100kmh, 80kmh and city. My commute there and back is almost exactly the electric range if forced to EV mode and a 10.8kW charge overnight is about a third of the cost of the petrol.

anyway I’ll start a thread once it is picked up and running :) it might still be an option for Nigel as a stepping stone to full EV :)
 
Last edited:
Don't buy a Golf- at least not yet... I've got a GTD on lease and I am starting to regret it.

The car is great, but the Infotainment and driver assist features are littered with bugs, some very serious. In the last 2 months, I have had the following issues:

Adaptive Cruise Control goes into "Safe" mode and thinks it's in Germany. Without warning, the speed will drop to the Km/h equivalent, so the car will suddenly brake from 70 MPH to 44 MPH and refuses to pass vehicles on the right while on dual carriageways as it thinks you are undertaking. This happens almost every time I drive the car. Only fix is to switch off the car fully and restart. Not easy to do on a motorway, so you end up having to turn off ACC and Drive Assist, making long journeys less relaxing.

As above, but cruise speed display jumps UP! I have been driving in 30mph and suddenly the the car started to accelerate to 130MPH! It has done this on at least 5 occasions in the past couple of months and each time the acceleration has been rapid and needed me to tap the brakes to disconnect the ACC.

Drive assist (Controls steering as well as throttle for hands off driving) is great on dual carriageways, but terrible on single carriageways. It makes dives for junctions and causes the car to veer unpredictably if the road width changes. Only usable for slow speed traffic jams and dual carriageways.

Infotainment crashes on startup. You have to hold the power button for 10 seconds to restart it. Probably once a week.

Alexa app cannot be initialised, as it needs to connect to Amazon.com to complete the setup and the car's internal data usage policy prevents this... Apparently the app is not supposed to be available in the UK at the moment, but is in the VW app store and allows you to install it.

Android Auto continually disconnects from my Samsung phone while in wireless mode, forcing you to connect to the charger socket for every journey.

Aircon went into "Safe" mode and temperature could not be changed. Needed to restart car to clear this.

Sat Nav crashes and restarts pretty much daily.

Sat Nav loses connection to traffic services regularly, so you end up in traffic jams you might otherwise have avoided.

VW do not have a fix for any of these. If you try and book the car into the dealership for investigation, they will just cancel the appointment, as there's nothing they can do currently. The only thing they can try is a full software update instead of relying on the smaller OTAs, which takes 5 hours. This does not normally fix any of the problems, hence why they are cancelling the appointments.

The touch buttons take a bit of getting used to, but generally work well. The IQ Lighting is brilliant. It gives you full beam at all times above 30MPH, but dynamically turns off the LED main beam segments that would otherwise blind other road users as you approach them. It's quite unnerving at first to see a darker shadow where another car or bike is, but works incredibly well and gives excellent visibility in all conditions.

A lot of these bugs affect other VWG vehicles including Skodas, as they use the same underlying system. If these sort of features are of importance to you, please consider before you purchase or lease.
I don't have a single one of these issues on my GTD. You might just be unlucky, but my GTD is faultless. I don't use Alexa or Android auto, but the car features are spot on.
 
I appreciate this is a silly question to which there is probably no answer.

My current car, a BMW M Sport 320D, is coming to the end of a four year PCP. When I bought it I had every intention of paying the balloon and keeping it for many years. Problem is I don’t really like it. It’s a nice car but I’ve just never got on with it.

I have barely used it, partly because my commute pattern changed and partly because of the pandemic. It is on a 48k mile contract and I have done 16k miles with just five months to go - so it is barely run in.

Before then I had a succession of company cars, all hatchbacks or estates, mostly VW Golfs and soon after owning the BMW I realised that I missed the rear load convenience (the BMW actually has a huge load space but with limited access because it is a saloon) and the low driving position.

So the plan to keep it has mostly gone, but I’m not sure what to replace it with, I find I’m not really that interested.

We have a second car which is a full EV with limited range so would be looking for petrol, or maybe a mild or plug-in.

I have become used to the bells and whistles so that is quite important.

I’m not a speed merchant but at the same time all my past cars have been within the 7-9 seconds 0 to 60 mph, so I don’t want anything less than that. The wife’s EV is about 8 seconds and we use that whenever we can so I don’t want to get into my car and feel that it is sluggish.

I want a hatchback/estate type. Want to keep the list price below £40k to avoid the silly road fund licence premium. Been looking at SUVs like the Audi Q3 and the Cupra Formentor. But when I price them up they are very close to £40k and I’m not sure it is wise spending that sort of money.

I’m not adverse to buying used but it would have to be nearly new and to be honest when I have looked the prices seem high for ‘approved‘ cars.

And not sure that an SUV is a wise idea - I guess I’m looking at them because they are so popular but arevthey a bit naff - I’m not sure.

So I know it is a silly question to ask, just looking for some ideas.

Cheers,

Nigel
Do you not have the option of a company car any more?

That said, you can't go wrong with the Golf GTI. Not overly fast, lots of kits, nice styling, hold their value.
 
I don't have a single one of these issues on my GTD. You might just be unlucky, but my GTD is faultless. I don't use Alexa or Android auto, but the car features are spot on.
That's good to hear.
Please can you tell me which software versions your car has?
 
Had a look round some dealers today and have come to the conclusion that this IC chip shortage has screwed the car supply chain.


Been reading up a bit and it looks like the car industry may have shot themselves in the foot. There have definitely been problems with semiconductor production, coronavirus, plant fire in Japan, storm in Texas, are temporary setbacks but have created a backlog. But the car industry added to this issue - because car sales dropped during the first year of Covid they cancelled production orders with the semiconductor plants. Now that they want to resume they find themselves at the back of the queue. So in the main, it appears that car companies will have to wait until the backlog has been cleared before their orders can be processed.
My new car is not getting certain features due to the shortage, which absolutely sucks, but by removing the features I get the car earlier. 3 month lead time. Real shame as one of the features I REALLY wanted (Harmon Kardon stereo system) is a no go.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom