Not kidding about the C3 build quality being ropey!!

My brother had one of these as a hire-car over the weekend. Laughable. The doors sounded as if there were bits rattling around in them when they shut (my 13yo Nissan sounds better), the back of the rear seat is bare metal, no covering and the dashboard is as plasticky as they come.

I can see why these things are so cheap -- poor fit and finish.

I was let out by a BMW today so the drivers

are not all as arrogant as people make out. I

wait politely as my boyfriend comments on what type of dealer

they are esp if its an X5

sounds like its getting itself ready for next saturday night....

What Car - right at the end - has a (usually) helpful list of PX values. It doesn't go far enough back for the '97 Hyundai, but I'd guess between £1k and £2k.

Unfortunately it lists the Clio Extreme only as a 53 registration - must be an error. 52-reg 1.5 Clios are quoted bwteen £3k and £4k: depends on whether it's a 65 or an 80 bhp. Mileage is a little on the high side so maybe nearer £3k.

If you're PXing - best only to PX the Clio and try to sell the Hyundai privately. Generally, the newer the car you're buying the better price you'll get.

One final thought - if the Hyundai is in good condition and you're fond of it, but you're offered peanuts for it, consider keeping it: it may not lose much more than it has already.

As a student (going back ...er....about 36 years!) I used to work for the Leicestershire Highways Authority during college vacations, and I used to be involved in the maintenance of cat's eyes. These were the genuine self-cleaning rubber ones, not the modern-day plastic stick-on type. I seem to see very few of that type these days as I suspect that the original design would be too expensive to maintain, and the degree of wear would be so much greater with today's levels of traffic.

If you haven't seen one close-up, the old rubber type were cleverly designed so that water collected in the cast-metal base plate would be squidged up by a vehicle passing over. This water would clean the 'cat's eyes'. Maintenance problems occurred when the base plates sometimes clogged up with grit and when the rubber wore. We used to walk miles with a special metal tool to take out and replace the rubber units. Another major cost occurred when the road was re-surfaced; if this was just surface-dressing, then the cat's eyes could be covered with a large patch which could be removed later but for any other surface replacement work, the base units had to be dug out with a jack-hammer and replaced after re-surfacing - a very expensive operation, I would think.