Nicebiscuit

Saab 9-5. Cheap as chips. Wafty. Reliable. And lovely seats (get the heated leather ones) Or if you don't fancy that, a Volvo but it'll cost more. Can't beat a Swede for motorway munching. And don't worry too much about tax. Minor cost in the grand scheme of things... I'd choose more based on a brand you know can get reliably and cheaply serviced locally. So I'd go for Ford, Saab or Toyota but that's purely cause of who I'd trust locally!

I rather like them - best looking of the crop of new generation muscle cars in my opinion.

I love that my base spec model doesn't [emoji3] I just like starting things with keys [emoji41] I work in tech but I'm a complete Luddite. Give me aircon and decent tunes and you can keep all the fancy modern gadgets. Borrowed an up-spec Qashqai recently - completely did my head in! [emoji1]

I can't see how they're going to manage that. Would have thought they'll have all the challenges the Vulcan lot had, only more so... Plus to get a license to carry paying passengers is much harder.

Cheers for that Ian. I've ordered one too. At that price it only has to be better than a bucket... :-D

So was I. Quite something, wasn't it?

And paint them just one colour... Couldn't agree more - my wheels are going to have to go, and purely cause of the offset thing. Just looks wrong.

You should correct the 'tiles' bit. Makes it sound like you did this... Seriously though - I wouldn't have declared it. I don't think a track day incident counts as a road accident. Makes no sense anyway - they trying to calculate how much of a tool you are on the road. If you're doing all your daft sideways stuff on track well away from people they'd have to pay out to I'm sure the insurers would approve.

That's got potential. Slightly annoying if it's prettier than mine, but the option of swapping out some of the bits looks good, changes look 'bolt on'

I think you've completely understood the car. With me too it was a toss up between the 86 and the ST - in my view the best affordable FWD performance car vs the best affordable RWD one. No regrets at all and in the end I stretched to a new one, but if I had circa £10k I think I'd buy the Fiesta for now. They depreciate due to sheer numbers - I found a basic ST1 less than a year old with nominal miles on for £12k from a main dealer. That is a bargain... For me the 86 made more sense new, and the Fiesta more sense used - just down to the residuals. But if you really want an 86 - do the maths - they do hold their money quite well, and good deals are to be had on new ones... The 86 feels more special, and worth the extra, but I'm not sure it's more fun, just different. The ST is no shopping trolley, it's a proper little terrier of a thing in the footsteps of a Mini Cooper, golf GTi, pug 205gti, etc etc. If I could I'd happily own both :-).

Hello. Planning to do a bit of lurking, and hopefully in due course get me a GT86. Basically I want something fun, yet relatively sensible and have to at least pay lip service to having rear seats. There isn't really anything else is there? :-D Look forward to picking up some useful tips. Cheers all.

Well worst case - get them to swap it out for another car - I doubt you'd be unlucky twice... As you say, once it's sorted it'll be quickly forgotten. I've ALMOST forgotten that mine was run into... :-D Or you could just ship the Camaro back. That'd take the edge off :-D

If I'm honest, yes I do. You have one problem with the car, probably down to a fault with a single component. It's not actually stopped working - just lit up some lights. As with all consumer goods actually you're far more likely to have issues when brand new as whatever it is was probably faulty at manufacture. Once initial teething is over it'll probably be fine for years until bits start wearing out. Whilst no one here has had that problem loads have had little niggles in first six months that need a trip to the dealer and a bit of tweaking. It's the same as any car. However the frustration sets in when the dealer can't (or won't) fix the issue. So if you're not getting anywhere try a different dealer. I think you're overreacting to the issue with the car itself, but you need to have confidence with the people fixing it and to be honest it sounds like they're floundering a bit. Others have recommended RRG and they're right, but it's a long way away. Perhaps some southern members might recommend somewhere else. Ultimately if you need to reject the car because of the dealers inability to fix a fault than fair enough, (and I wouldn't blame you) but don't tarnish the car. Ironically in my experience it's exactly that issue that leads people to slag off Alfas. The cars are solid enough but the dealer network is....um...highly variable.

Don't be daft. I've turned 40. Can't remember anything from 24 hours ago... [emoji17]

Had a hybrid one for a weekend once. Wasn't as bad as I expected... A weekend was enough though.

Well I WAS going to post something incredibly witty, insightful and interesting yesterday... But the forum was down so....

Perfect. And stick a 'turbo' badge on the other side. Preferably in an entirely different font...

Nope. Just not black enough... [emoji6]

Have you got another car you can stick it on?

...I think Toyota should be applauded for building this car. I've been driving around on properly damp roads for the first time and this car is hilarious! It will properly let you do silly things. How did the lawyers allow it in an era when McDs get sued for making their coffee nice and hot? I've had to back off a bit, but only because it looks a tad irresponsible to onlookers if I'm sideways on EVERY roundabout... [emoji1]

Your treat is dinner behind? Ooookaaay. [emoji6] did spellcheck sabotage your post by any chance?

Yeah. The fronts look ok stock, but the rear arches look a bit like someone put pram wheels on there :-D

You doing the stock alloys gloss black too? I'm considering that - looks good. Mind you still tempted to get something that actually fills the arches...

The cool feature on the Alpine that the other units don't have is the split screen thing where you can see the nav instructions AND what the music/phone is doing. Was watching an old top gear last night where Clarkson pointed out the obvious flaw with modern integrated touch screens in cars (BMW in this case I think) - in that you're driving along, go to change your air con, and then miss your junction cause the nav screen disappears... Why I've stuck with my Neanderthal stuck-to-the-windscreen TomTom all these years...