Morris Minor Owners Club

The only time I've driven an Autobox I felt totally out of control, the use of a manual gearbox allows so much subtlety of control for conditions and performance.

As I walked past the garage near the shop today, the proprietor said "Come and have a look at this", about a Peugoet people carrier on the ramp for it's MOT. The car looked quite clean and was apparently not high mileage, The rear suspension beam was full of cracks. There are perhaps a few explanations, like overloading or frequent bumps and kerbs but I don't suppose low profile tyres help. There didn't appear to be marks resulting from being jacked up. The steel looked to be about 3/16" or 5mm thick.

My wife never ceases to amaze me. She has suddenly announced that she is thinking of swapping her jeep for a thing called a PHEV...
Some kind of hybrid 4x4.
I'll research it,but any comments gratefully received...

PHEV -Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle apparently. First time I've heard that acronym.

SteveClem wrote:My wife never ceases to amaze me. She has suddenly announced that she is thinking of swapping her jeep for a thing called a PHEV...
Some kind of hybrid 4x4.
I'll research it,but any comments gratefully received...

Probably the Mitsubishi PHEV, it is the most popular as it attracts considerable purchase assistance from the Government? It is a SUV type vehicle but it doesn't get great reviews for its dynamic performance it also has a smallish petrol engine which also doesn't get great reviews. On the plus side they are reputed to be reasonably reliable and durable.

I always go with bangernomics, the price and depreciation of new cars is madness. For the price of the PHEV £35k you could buy a used low mileage car of your choice and have £15000 left for petrol. Or build a cracking Morris hotrod, which would keep its value.

TDV102 wrote:I always go with bangernomics, the price and depreciation of new cars is madness. For the price of the PHEV £35k you could buy a used low mileage car of your choice and have £15000 left for petrol. Or build a cracking Morris hotrod, which would keep its value.

A few years ago one of my work colleagues was explaining to me how he had bought a new Mercedes at £30K and his road tax was only £30 a year and it was a saving compared to his old Volvo which was worth £500. I did point out to him that he had spent over £29K to save just over £100 a year, hardly the saving of the century. His PCP was a 3 year one and at the end of 3 years the car was nominally worth £13K so just a £17K loss or nearly £6K a year, £500 loss plus PCP payments every month, bargain.

TDV102 wrote:For the price of the PHEV £35k you could buy a used low mileage car of your choice and have £15000 left for petrol.

Would that include an Audi R8?

Possibly not but it would buy a very very good Quattro which appreciates faster than inflation.

I think that increasing computerisation could possibly scupper bangernomics. The people, who do my MOTs, have been in the trade years and they have gone into selling nearly new cars (Often still under warranty). Both the brothers are within 15 years of pension age and the older one described their future plans as an exit strategy. They feel that cars will end up like white goods, where when the item fails, it is taken off your hands, when the new one is delivered. They see cars being sold by large retailers and that the warranty will be quite lengthy (Provided the vehicle is serviced by the dealer at the requisite times) and that once anything goes wrong, after the warranty expires, it will be curtains. The car will be scrapped, you will sign up to another seven year finance plan and as such, they see the demise of the used car trade.

I don't know whether it will ever work but if ever driverless cars become practical, I wonder whether cars will effectively become taxis? Yes there are enthusiasts but I can't really see that a driverless car would cater for enthusiasts. Perhaps it depends on your definition of enthusiast. I believe that vanity is the most popular hobby in the world (Certainly in the western world), which just happens to manifest itself in people buying certain types of car or other so called aspirational products. With that in mind, some people would always want some kind of automotive handbag parked on the drive (Where the neighbours can see it), even one that drives itself.

At the moment, what you call an automotive handbag is the Mercedes, the world and his wife seem to have one!
Maybe it's this safety in numbers thing.

I had an SUV in mind (Near me every other person has a Datsun...I mean Nissan Joke) but a Mercedes is certainly an aspirational product. Fashion has always been a follow the leader kind of thing and things don't necessarily have to be good to sell or poor not to sell. I said earlier, that if Reliant still made Robins and got the marketing right, a 3WD Robin SUV would probably sell. That said, there was a time when I wouldn't have said no to a Kitten estate. At the time, they were thin on the ground, as were Mini Clubman estates. I have to confess that a Minor Traveller never occurred to me at the time .

les wrote:At the moment, what you call an automotive handbag is the Mercedes, the world and his wife seem to have one!
Maybe it's this safety in numbers thing.

Had a few mercs over the years. They've not been great to be honest.

TDV102 wrote:I always go with bangernomics, the price and depreciation of new cars is madness. For the price of the PHEV £35k you could buy a used low mileage car of your choice and have £15000 left for petrol. Or build a cracking Morris hotrod, which would keep its value.

Seems you can get a 3 year old one, with 30k on, for less than £14 k.
Still don't get it because the old jeep seems to be bombproof.

My 2002 Focus has 30k on it!

TDV102 wrote:My 2002 Focus has 30k on it!

i have a 2002 Focus as well.bought it cheaply 3 years ago,with an engine problem.
one of my 'must do's',for 2018!

Built-in obsolescence!!! Or just bad luck?? It seems that modern cars can acheive some very high mileages without the need to rebuild/replace major components. It's the other bits that don't always survive. We're having to replace Mrs PB's 2007 Astra. With 94k miles on it, a whole raft of potentially very costly faults have revealed themselves over the past 3 months. Camshaft rattle on cold-starting. Non-functioning aircon. Sloppy steering. Lateral movement in the rear suspension. Service warning light is on (3k miles since last service and re-set).
With an older, easier to work on and potentially more valuable car, I'd be addressing the problems myself. With a modern, I'm fairly clueless and totally disinterested. Even my local garage have made the 'good money after bad' comment about it.

I'm sure I've mentioned what an ex motor trader said about modern cars being crammed with so many gimmicks, you can't expect them all to last much over 7 or 8 years. When one of the gimmicks goes, you often have to remove half a dozen other gimmicks to get at the broken one. As I observed, most cars are left out all the time and only see the inside of a garage when in for service or repair. Electrical appliances are water don't go well together, so it is little wonder that things fail, given our damp climate.

Even my Golf GTI was fairly basic. It had a multi function display, to give MPG, oil temp and a few other things, which I can't recall now. Therefore I am not used to gimmicks. What you've never had you never miss but in all honesty, I find the equipment in my cars more than adequate. My father remembers my grandfather's first new car (Ordered in 1946 as an Austin 10, delivered 1949 as an A40 Devon) and that had no heater, so they used to take hot water bottles and blankets on trips in Winter. I can see that a heater is useful, if only for demisting and I like a rear screen demister but I agree with the great Sir Alec, that gimmicks distract the driver. Even a radio can do that and if I need to concentrate, it goes off. Perhaps my Snooper is a gimmick but it's not part of the car and I find that it helps with speed limits and cameras, thus enabling me to concentrate better on driving (And not having to peer into overgrown verges, to see if there is a buried speed limit sign). Satnav - I can still read a map, though I can see they could be useful.....except when they send you down forestry tracks but again it's not a part of the car (I wouldn't want one built in).

I lot of it comes down to laziness/softness and vanity. I remember one such type bragging that her new car had four speakers (Just remembered my Golf GTI had that). I remember thinking, nice speakers, shame about the car. I think because fewer people understand anything beyond whim and aesthetics these days, little logic is used when buying. Beyond being a means of transport, cars are a status symbol and lots of people are like the ones in the story of the Emperor's New Cloths. I suppose many Minor Owners are like the little boy, who said the Emperor had no cloths.

If you look at the advertising for new cars it is all about the extras, very little if anything, is mentioned about the ability of the vehicle just that it has satnav built in, bluetooth, six/eight speaker sound system, wifi, built in tv, available in masses of nice colours and you will look cool in it. The basic utility of the vehicle is accepted as being taken for granted and it is just the extras that differentiate our brand from the others, given that most cars will end up spending a large part of their time in jams probably the most useful information for the prospective owner on how to while away the otherwise wasted time.

A few years ago I had a job that required me to make frequent 300 mile round trips and each time I had a hire car, in all honesty not one stood out as any better or worse, some were faster, I remember a V6 engined Vectra was very quick, some just ok. The only concrete fact was that after 300 miles the petrol cars were all almost out of fuel and the diesel ones had at least half a tank left other than that just bland.

The beauty of new cars,according to the tv adverts,is that you never see another car on the road.