Category: Diary

First Drive For A Fit Body – Personal Trainer

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At the weekend it was time for Alison to meet ‘her’ car, so off I went on Sunday down to Street in Somerset to pick her up from a few days staying with family.

The original plan was to meet in Taunton, especially as Waze was showing road closures on the A303 around Stonehenge, but what actually happened was that they were governing closures, scheduled to finish at 9.00am on the Sunday and I didn’t leave until after then.

By the time I’d reached the usual turn-off towards Street, ETA to Taunton was showing as 11.15am and they hadn’t left Street yet, so I re-routed and was at Street by 11.05am, which meant I could unload the car (mainly gym mats and some left-behind grandkids’ toys).

We then drove to Taunton with me explaining all the killer features Alison would need to know, like how to quickly turn off the nanny nags and why she should always have it in ST Mode – like we do the Sport mode on the Abarth 124 Spider – and get her connected to the car for BT, CarPlay and the FordPass app.

Coming back to Street, Alison took over the driving: she’s not really driven that much since moving in with me 10 years ago, so familiarising herself with a new car – where the clutch bites, how much to accelerate and what the steering’s like – was what that was all about.

Her verdict? Very nice to drive.

That’s just as well given all the money we’ve spanked on a car ostensibly for her to take to the West Country for family time.

And then home, via a very circuitous route and re-route chosen by Ford’s navigation system to avoid some of the issues with the touristy route back.  We still sat in a lot of queues as usual around Stonehenge, so much slower coming back.  The M3 as we joined it wasn’t much better either.

The plan had been for Alison to drive back, but happily I was told to do the honours instead.  Alison couldn’t get over how much leg room she has with the ability to then recline the seat, unlike my lovely 124.

Overall? Fairly economical. Fast. Quick. Comfortable. Well-equipped. We even had a cool bag plugged into the 12V socket in the boot for perishables for dinner and a bunch of new plants in a tray and in the rear passenger footwell, including rose bushes and honeysuckle. Plus a carry-on suitcase. A proper family car!

Overall mileage when we got back was up to 362 miles with a busy weekend next weekend to look forward to as well.

Pick-Up

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No, it’s not a pick-up; it’s been picked up. Today!

I was dropped off at Group 1 Farnborough on the first wet and miserable day in a couple of weeks – with bonus mud all over our road thanks to the road builders further down – to do the final paperwork, pay for the dash cam we’ve had fitted and drive it home.

And here is is:

Its first longer drive comes this weekend with a 250 mile (or so) round trip with Alison getting to drive it back.

Order Update

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Last week we were on holiday on the BMW R 1250 RT LE driving through Spain, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium when we got a call from Group 1 Ford telling us that our car hadn’t actually been reserved!

That was the bad news.

The good news was that they could get hold of one with the same specification but with the Driver Assist Pack (Driver Alert, Traffic Sign Recognition and Adaptive Cruise Control) as well, but they’d need to charge me a little extra towards it.

I was concerned that would take it over the £40,000 list price issue, but I was assured that that doesn’t include the first year’s VED figure, so with that taken off, it’s still under the £40k ceiling.

The other news is that it should arrive in August: good because it means we get it sooner, but bad because that means it’ll be a 24 plate rather than a 74 plate.

So we went ahead and agreed over the telephone (confirmed by email the next day).

Order, Order!

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I finally went and did it: we wanted a second car that would be more practical than my Abarth 124 Spider, so we’d started looking at cars to do semi-regular trips down to the South-West, usually with a bit of luggage, birthday cakes and loads of presents for the grandkids (of which there are many, too many!).

Having seen a nice Kia Ceed GT-Line secondhand at a car dealer around the corner, we realised that they weren’t much more new and then we thought about the Proceed shooting brake version, etc.

Given I’d be driving it when we were both heading down, I wanted a bit more pep so we looked at some other options, including a Skoda Octavia VRS – we didn’t try one – and an Audi S3.  The latter we test drove and loved it, although I wasn’t a fan of the Sportback’s looks, but we did like the saloon version.  Despite the S3 having just been ‘facelifted’ the price was quite steep which put us off a bit, getting us to consider secondhand models which were still north of £40,000.

We then had an offer of a run-out Cupra Leon Estate which was very nice and a great price but it was only available in certain colours and we couldn’t do the deal in time thanks to delays by HMRC repaying me for overpaid tax as well as my bonus from work being late.

In the back of my mind, I’d thought about the Ford Focus ST and getting one in the Estate bodystyle, so I popped a thing into CarWow and asked for some quotes and SMC Slough came back with a decent offer on one.

Somewhat bizarrely, Ford’s colour options are a flat red as standard, “Frozen White” as a £300 option, even though it’s still just a flat colour, and everything else as an £800 option.  The metallic red favoured by Mrs RHM was actually disappointing in the flesh, and then of course there’s that £40,000 excess VED issue…

“Vehicles with a list price of more than £40,000

You have to pay an extra £410 a year if you have a car or motorhome with a ‘list price’ of more than £40,000. You do not have to pay this if you have a zero emission vehicle.

The list price is the published price of the vehicle before it’s registered for the first time. It’s the price before any discounts are applied.

You only have to pay this rate for 5 years (from the second time the vehicle is taxed).”

What this doesn’t say, is that the “list price” includes all the options, so in our case, the ‘basic’ list price is £39,105 and so any packs you add, or any colour you specify takes you perilously close to (or more likely, over) that £40,000 threshold.   If you go over £40,000 then you pay (at the moment) an additional £410 in car tax each year for five years from the second year onwards.  So going over by £100 means you pay an additional £2,050 for nothing, if you keep your car for 6 years of more, which we will.

At the weekend, we thought we’d see if we could take a look at an ST and preferably an Estate so we rang our nearest dealer, Group 1 at Farnborough, and spoke to Leon.  Yes, they had an ST-Line Estate in the showroom – not the ST – and yes, they had an ST hatch out back, so yes, we could pop in and have a look at the Estate to get an idea of luggage space, and yes, we could poke around the ST hatch to see what the seats and infotainment, etc. were like.

So we popped in, looked around and then thought we should just do it, so we haggled on price, spec’d it up to less than £40,000 – Frozen White and Parking Pack – and paid a deposit.  ETA 2 September 2024.