I see the occasional newish Ford Fiestas for sale mainly by dealers with an alleged "£30 Annual Road tax" in the advert blurb.
Ford UK state this car is VED band D meaning 122mgs which means
for 2016 £110
After a bit of research I found the following information on the Parkers Site relating to the same vehicle
Ford Fiesta 1.25 82bhp 26/11/12 to 2/02/15 VED band C (120mgs)
Ford Fiesta 1.25 82bhp 2/02/15 onwards VED Band D (122mgs)
Can anyone explain more about this and in particular are there any owners of 2012 to early 2015 Ford Fiestas with the 1.25 engine which are VED band C ?
( meaning they pay £30 road tax)
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Hi,
my friend is planning on buying a 5 year old van at a car auction this week.

the vehicle is 'VAT qualifying net' thus he will have to pay VAT on the hammer price as he is not a trader.

how does it work? do they simply add the VAT to the hammer price and buyers fee total?
or is the VAT 20% only on the hammer fee and not the buyers fee?

how old does a van need to be before it is no longer VAT qualifying?


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Hi i have just had my timing belt fitted by a mechanic in june 2016 on a diesel 2009 1.6TDCI fiesta. This was done at less than 84,000 

Since then the fuel seems to not last as long, although it has been a while since i filled it full to the brim.

Due to usage and costs i've been running it on supermarket diesel and generally filling up from empty (fuel light on less than 50 miles) to half a tank.  I used to run on BP and BP Ultimate.

After zeroing the MPG and using for a week with £15 of BP ultimate it did read as getting 55 MPG so could be psychological. I'm starting to log miles per trip after every fill up moving forward.

Can anyone offer advice please ?



   







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I have £7,000 to spend on a car. But, just when I think I've decided on the make/model, I check on this (and other) site under the Good/Bad section for said car and there is always a list a mile long under 'Bad'. For example, VW Golf Mk6 is riddled with reliability issues such as oil/engine and DSG boxes breaking all the time. Same thing – red X's in abundance for pages – for BMW, Audi and other so-called top marques. I always thought you paid more for top marques because they were better cars, better components, better built and more reliable etc, but it would appear that (according to this site) that you pay a ton more money for a car that breaks down ALL the time and when it does it cost 10 times more to fix than say a Ford or Vauxhall.

Apparently, according to this site, ALL cars are totally and utterly unreliable, if you go by the Good/Bad section for any given car; there is always a ton of red X’s with a zillion complaints. I have yet to find any car on here that isn't riddles with reliability issues and call-backs. It seems too scary to buy ANY car if you go by the Good/Bad section on here.

I have even typed into Google ‘Most reliable cars’ and several sites always give their top 10 most reliable and least reliable cars and with consistency I read, surprisingly, of cars such as Peugeot, Seat and Korean cars being in the top 5 for the most reliable, along with Honda, Lexus of course, but this surprises me. What surprises me even more is that BMW, Audi and VW are always way down the list of most unreliable cars.

Could it be that most of these sites cut/paste details off the Warranty Direct or Warranty Wise sites so the source of these so-called best/worst cars are all coming from one place and that WD and WW use all sorts of algorithms such as ‘cost to repair’ (which is why Bentley comes up as most unreliable car according to their site)?

I am totally baffled by all this stuff I read online about what I always thought were the best cars in the world coming up at the bottom of the list of reliability and those cars that I always thought were rubbish (French, Korean for example) are coming up top. Am I just out of date and stuck in the 80’s? have things changed. A chap at a Honda dealer recently told me that French cars are way more reliable than German cars, is this true?

Your suggestions please on a 'reliable' car that won't break down every day and that won't cost a fortune to repair when it does. I fancied something a little nicer than usual: BMW, Audi, VW etc, really don't want to be stuck with a boring old Focus.

I’d decided on an Audi TT Mk2 2 litre petrol TFSI Auto, but then I read about the TFSI oil issues and broken timing chains and DSG gear box issues in abundance. Then I decided on a VW Golf 1.4 auto petrol TFSI, but read, on here, the same issues. Then I looked at a BMW 1 and 3 series, too many issues. Doesn’t matter what car I look at, they are all riddled with issues. I’m almost thinking of buying a Ford Capri 2.8 injection from 1979, with no sensors, electric or other stuff to go wrong, but they are all rusty ;)

I recently sold my BMW M5 as it always cost stupid money to fix when it went wrong, and it was getting on a bit anyway. I recently bought – as a temporary runaround while I find my ideal car – a cheap 14-year old Vauxhall Corsa automatic. I have 7K to spend on something nice, but all cars seem to be demons just wanting to break down and cost you a fortune to repair. Unfortunately, the internet gives us a means of researching these things.

Seriously, what should I do here?

Finally, no flaming please, this is a serious question. I'm not silly, I'm aware that there are thousands of parts, many of them moving, in a car and things ware out, go wrong and they need regular servicing and maintaining. But I just want to know, for sure, what the deal is with the Audi, VW, BMW type car and all these horror stories I read about them breaking down every five minutes. Read more

Audi A4 sline 2007 170 bhp

Hi there, I was just wondering if anyone can offer me some advise. Last week I took my Audi into the garage because of an engine management light and loss of power.

They had it for most of the day and replaced the EGR valve but then removed it again as it hadn't fixed the issue. Said that I would need to bring it back for a full day for more diagnostics. So I booked it back in for the first available day which was the following week. I was charged £54 for diagnostics despite the fact that they still had not diagnosed the fault.

When I took it back in they said they would keep me posted and I left it with them. Around about 4.00 I called them for an update and they said they would call me back. At about 4.30 I still hadn't heard anything so I called again and they they said it was all sorted.

When I got there I got a nice bill for £544.96.
They had replaced the ERG value and the throttle body. Plus 2 hours labour. At this point I was happy that the car was sorted. They did mention that the wheel was pulling to one side which reminded me they I had wanted to get the valve replaced on the back alloy as it had a slow leak. They kindly offered to do this for free if I brought it back the next day.

The next day I did about 40miles and the car seemed to have the power back although it seemed to wobble a bit when idle.

When I went back for the new valve they discovered the tyre was damaged and said it would need a new one so I the had to go home on my space saver! While they ordered a new one. £75 ish

The next day I headed straight back to the garage to get my wheel back. Half was into my 10 mile journey back the front of the car just started shaking out of nowhere! Slowed down and eventually stalled. Had to push the damn think across oncoming traffic into a lay-by ??.

I called the garage who said they could even come to me so I had to pay another £40 for my own recovery to them! When I get there they opened it up and said that a glow plug had snapped off into the engine and it is likely to need a new one! (Engine) ??.

Now I don't like confrontation and I want to get to opinion of experienced mechanics like yourselves before I say anything here, but is this just coincidence should they be taking some responsibility for this latest disaster?

I really am keen to hear your views on this. Many thanks in advance for any replies.


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