Oh, don't worry. I didn't take it as an insult! I mentioned it to communicate I'm no expert in repair cost.
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The Car Thread ... !
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Okay, fair enough. So what is the excuse for the Alfa Romeo 4C? It's an ICE not EV. Why can't we easily pop the hood like most cars? The sucker is bolted on.😮😶😶
I only remember the 4C as the fussily-styled 4 cylinder follow-up to the incredible 8C Competizione....probably the most 'affordable' carbon fiber car out there, but of suspect build quality (it's an Alfa!).
An automatic gearbox on a 2013 Fiat 500 costs nearly that much in dollars I would imagine. My mum bought her 500 brand new and around a month after warranty expired the gearbox casing split. She was quoted around £3.5k to replace it and the car had done around 12k miles. Fiats customers service was truly abysmal and after many arguments they agreed to pay just £800 towards the repair. She got rid of the car soon after and many of us learnt never to ever touch a Fiat again. Every time I see them on the road I wonder how much money the owner has spent on them. Whenever I look up the number plate on an MOT history check they are often a sea of red warnings lol.
I suppose they are a bit like the modern Mini in terms of reliability.
This is a misconception and not entirely accurate.
@fridayxiii I don’t mean to put you in an uncomfortable spot on this discussion (I get it if you don’t want to comment, but I know you’re passionate about the Mini), but I know you’re a Mini owner, you’ve talked about how the reliability is not an issue with the late modern Mini’s from past discussions on this thread, especially given your experience with modifying/driving various models.
It is accurate to a point though which drew me to making that comparison.
Sorry for being late to the discussion, just haven't checked MR forums in a few days.
I think that MINIs can be a reliable car, especially the 3rd Gen (2014 +). I have a very good friend who works at a local MINI dealer in the service area as a team lead, and he attests to the small number of cars they have coming through. A friend of a friend is a regional exec for MINI and confirms that many dealers do not make the same profit on service they once did because of the 3rd gen cars.
I've spent many years on MINI forums researching & learning the cars. I first drove a 2006 R53. The Getrag gearbox was known to be bulletproof, and the engine was solid, but regular maintenance of the supercharger was imperative. Some MINIs (I forget which years offhand) had a CVT that was suspect, and the 2007/8 R56s were known for a timing chain "death rattle". They also suffered from massive carbon build-up and required regular walnut blasting. But a 2009 or 10 R56 was a great car. Aside: my focus was the 2 door hatch, I'm not as up-to-date on issues with the Countryman or even Clubman.
Many MINIs have done 200,000, 300,000 miles with regular maintenance but not other "gotchas". Like any car, there can be outliers & lemons. And like many other cars, more modifications may mean more problems. I was at a local MINI club meet last night and saw an old friend who drives a 2006 R53, nearly bone-stock and nary a problem.
Reliance on a dealer for service can be costly. I've been lucky to have some good indie Euro shops near me, and I get replacement parts better & cheaper than OEM online and let the pros do the wrenching.
Would you be willing to pay a monthly fee to use your heated seats (or some other feature on your car)? I wonder if anyone on here is willing to defend this 'idea.'
Not for me. I avoid monthly subscription models at all costs. The Renault EV’s for example you lease the battery. Because of that I didn’t even look at them when choosing a car.
There would be a black market for unlocking those features I think. It’s also extremely disrespectful to buyer to sell a car that’s tens of thousands of pounds, only to restrict features and charge monthly. My car, my features I would say. I hate the fact everything is swaying towards screwing the consumer out of more cash.
Couldn’t agree more. If you’ve paid the price you own it period. Imagine buying a three bedroom house and be told you can only use two! Plain greed.
Short story of it:
At auction, found a black Jaguar X-K8 convertible/4.0 supercharged V-8, 70,000 miles, excellent condition, clean title-collectors, includes a travel trailer for a steal of a price. I normally wouldn’t purchase ‘British cars’, but there was a lot of work that was put into this with new struts, plugs, tires/brakes and runs perfectly. (There is some minor cracking into the leather, and I think the battery likely needs to be replaced, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.)
What I’ll likely do, is drive this around for the summer for fun, sell it privately for profit in the fall, but keep the trailer to haul the other cars to the track. Who knows, if I like it enough, maybe I’ll keep it, but too early to tell.
If this was in ‘British racing green’ [BRG], it would’ve really made this more authentic!
If you zoom in on the tachometer, you’ll see where it says ‘Bonnet’. I had no idea what that meant, but that’s apparently British wording for the ‘hood’ known here in North America.
At auction, found a black Jaguar X-K8 convertible/4.0 supercharged V-8, 70,000 miles, excellent condition, clean title-collectors, includes a travel trailer for a steal of a price. I normally wouldn’t purchase ‘British cars’, but there was a lot of work that was put into this with new struts, plugs, tires/brakes and runs perfectly. (There is some minor cracking into the leather, and I think the battery likely needs to be replaced, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.)
What I’ll likely do, is drive this around for the summer for fun, sell it privately for profit in the fall, but keep the trailer to haul the other cars to the track. Who knows, if I like it enough, maybe I’ll keep it, but too early to tell.
If this was in ‘British racing green’ [BRG], it would’ve really made this more authentic!
If you zoom in on the tachometer, you’ll see where it says ‘Bonnet’. I had no idea what that meant, but that’s apparently British wording for the ‘hood’ known here in North America.
That’s interesting. Have you never heard that term used or just not realised what it meant in car threads? I think between our nations we have some unique descriptive words for these things. If you see the word ‘boot’ mentioned in the handbook it’s the equivalent to the American ‘trunk’, and ‘indicators’ you’ll know as ‘blinkers’.
Hopefully your Jag is reliable as it’s a beautiful car. Geoff Lawson was one of the most iconic British car designers and is an absolute god to Jaguar enthusiasts. A friend of mine has two sofas (couches) in their home that were designed by Lawson and used on Jaguars stand at the Geneva motor show. They still look amazing 30 years on.
I think there might’ve been another member who is British in here that might’ve mentioned bonnet, but I didn’t know what it meant, until they explained it. But it didn’t click with me until I realized bonnet means ‘hood’ when I was reading it on the display.
It really is a beautiful car, and I’m not familiar with these cars at all, and surprisingly when it was at auction, nobody was bidding on it, and I think it’s because people generally don’t understand these cars and likely are afraid that they may not be able to find someone who can make repairs, being it is a British car. For a car that’s just over 20 years old, it really still looks modernized enough where it doesn’t look ‘outdated’ either, so I agree with you on the design was ahead of its time.
And here in North America, I rarely ever see the X-K8 on the road, whoever owned it, definitely didn’t neglect it, and it was a rumored that it was stored in an airplane hanger, so it hasn’t experienced a whole lot of weather conditions.
They are incredibly rare now in the UK to be honest. I can’t remember the last time I saw one on the road here. Then again it’s rare to see 20+ year old cars on our roads as they’ve usually rusted away by now. I love Jag’s but wouldn’t own one personally as they can be expensive to maintain. Your car is perhaps an occasional car and you’ll likely be ok. A friend of mine bought a 2017 Jaguar XF R-Sport in January and I voiced concern prior with him about reliability. He had a couple of months trouble free but is now back and forth to the garage to put it into diagnostics to solves some worrying issues with it. Great looking car though.
So I was just doing some reading, it sounds like the XK8 actually uses a lot of Ford parts in the vehicle and Bosch electrical switches/output. So that’s kind of interesting. If this car becomes too much of a burden with repairs, I probably won’t invest too much into it and sell it. It really depends on how it does over the next several months.
Overall, other owners were saying that it’s pretty reliable, being that it’s kind of a mix and match of domestic and foreign parts. Just looking at the overall tech in the car, really straight-forward and nothing advanced at all. Which is probably better for a car at this age, which keeps the repairs not too advanced.
I don’t mind black, even though it shows like every scratch and dirt easily, it would’ve been really cool heritage to have this car in British racing green personally, which will probably make it more attractive to the next owner who likes British cars. But it is a really cool ride from your part of the world!
But this is precisely what auto makers do for satnav.
The hardware is all there - but updating the maps is often ludicrously more complicated than it need be - and very often a substantial cost. Considering we can get up-to-date maps from Apple (or Google), it seems very unsatisfactory.
And here I am, thinking of a modern future classic to purchase before all the cars go the way of the electric toothbrush 🥲.
That’s why my car has Apple CarPlay. Then you can decide if it’s worth it or not. Plus generally SatNav continues to work without the updates.
I would like CarPlay - but not present in my car.
Continue to work - yes. But in areas where there have been significant changes, they are worse than not having them at all.
I’ve used Sat Nav’s that haven’t been updated in years, and generally they get you where you need to be, or close enough that you can work it out. But then I’m from the pre Sat Nav generation, so I’m probably better at it than the generation who’ve always had a Sat Nav with them.
I still navigate by the sun.
But we have too much overcast weather.
Seriously, I have a good general ability to navigate, but there have been some truly major changes about 40 or 50 miles away - and an out-of-date satnav truly would be a liability. I haven't been there since they rerouted roads, changed one-way systems, etc. So an up-to-date satnav really would help.
Talking about monthly subscriptions. There was a short window where BMW was either charging or planning to charge for customers to use Apple CarPlay on their CarPlay equipped vehicles. It was so silly...