On a slightly more upbeat note than the 'worst car ever owned' thread, what has been the best car you have ever owned.
Try and do this without putting on the rose-tinted spectacles! Bearing in mind cars are generally better than they have ever been.
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when i start my 51 reg 307 after 5-10 seconds the temp gauge goes to red hot & display reads engine coolant temp too high & stop,fan runs constantly, checked wires for brakes, new senders,relays, its been on computer & comes up with error code p118 or p180 cant remember which but it says cooling fault, contact gap too big. totally baffled any help would be apprietiated Read more

Can anyone help me please.

My partner was driving the car this morning when for no apparent reason, the engine stopped whilst doing about 40 mph. She pulled over to the side of the road and tried to re-start the engine but it would not start and the Diesel glow plug light was lit on the dashboard. After about 5-10 minutes, she tried again and it started. She then drove home with no other problems.

I then drove the car to work tonight and had the same problem. I must have been driving for about 5 minutes when the engine just stopped doing 30 mph. I waited 5 miutes and it restarted.

I am guessing that it may have some thing to do with the injector pump, possibly the cam sensor but i'm only clutching at straws. I will have to take it to either ford dealer or diesel specialist.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what it may be causes the engine to cut and stop whilst in motion? Read more

Here's a long preamble to a question that possibly answers itself. The High milers thread has some bearing on this too. In short, I have a biggish but fuel-efficient car that is on its way to being a high-miler, but which is starting to cost a little more than I expected. Anyway...

I absentmindedly followed a link from here to Autotrader yesterday, and something prompted me to have a look for cars similar to mine. It was a shock: last time I even looked at its value was about two years ago, when it seemed to be worth about £7,500; now, traders are advertising tidy-looking Volvo S60 D5 manuals of similar vintage and mileage to mine (six years, 83,000) for £4,500, and in one case, less than £4,000. From which I deduce that mine is probably worth between £3,000 and £3,500.

This has set me wondering again about the wisdom of my plan to keep the S60 going for another year or two. I?ve had it since new and bought it for about £11,000 at two years old when I left the job it used to go with. So my four years since then have cost me about £8,000, in which time the car has needed nothing but fuel, tyres and routine service items.

So far, so good. Life has moved on, and the S60 has ceded the role of family wagon to our new Toyota Verso. Its main purpose now is to get me down the M40 and back on my unfeasibly long journey to work. (Leave the ?sports saloon? nonsense to the marketing department; the S60 was made to cruise motorways and does it superbly.)
So, reasoning that the car was paid for, reliable and well suited to the task, that it had done the worst of its depreciating, and that it was unlikely I could justify another car with a five-cylinder engine, I thought it made sense to run it on for another couple of years before trading it in for something a little smaller ? I?m one of the few to have an eye on Volvo?s perky little C30.

But now the S60 seems to be costing me more than I?d expected. I hadn?t appreciated how far big car values have fallen ? curious in this case, since the S60 does 48mpg and my last VED disc cost just £160. And it?s starting to want parts: the last service bill included £450 for suspension and engine-mount bushes and the dealer also wants to replace some other oily underparts and ? gasp ? the original brake pads. Then there?ll be the timing belt to do at the next one; it could easily add up to £1,000 in the next six months.

So ? at last ? the question. Have I already had the best the S60 has to offer in terms of low-input, comfortable, economical travel? Is my seventh year of ownership going to cost me another £2,000 in depreciation as well as the maintenance bills? And, if so, should I offer it to my dealer, while it?s still a presentable example of a current model, in the hope of a good price on smaller alternative?
Or would you take the view that the big drop in value has happened and is unlikely to happen again; that replacing a few biggish items now will set the car up for another two or three years; and that I might as well enjoy a little more of that five-cylinder warble?

Discuss.
}:---) Read more

I have just bought a Micra 1.2 07 Reg. 7000 miles, still under warranty. Lovely! but the throttle began to catch, then suddenly kick in, as if fuel wasn't reaching one cylinder, at any revs or in any gear. Then the orange malfunction light came on and stayed on. Any ideas?


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