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Anything Vauxhall do can't be faulted and the new Vectra is magnificent - nearly as good as the Mk3 Cavalier in fact. Another link to keep DD happy - four new awards for Vauxhall:- www.vauxhallheritage.com/articles/wk04-40/040927_p...p
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Anything Vauxhall do can't be faulted
Wow. Even the Corsa?
That's a level of blinkered-ness even Alfa nuts can't approach.
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Careful, my wife owns a Corsa and you wouldn't want to upset her .... or all the other owners who have made it the best selling super-mini in the UK.
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Careful, my wife owns a Corsa and you wouldn't want to upset her .... or all the other owners who have made it the best selling super-mini in the UK
Actually, the biggest selling private car in the UK has recently been the Peugeot 206. The Corsa does well on the overall charts only cos of fleet sales.
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Of course, a cynical person could suggest that the only reason it has won this award is that it is perceived to be such a bad car that the value suffers, thereby making it a cheap 2nd hand buy.
I wouldn't ever go down that road though, certainly not while I'm driving an Alfa :D
BTW: Notice the difference between 'is perceived' and 'is'.
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enhanced by moi ! No need to thank me, Dave.
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Is the queasy vertical motion of that text intended to indicate the Vectra's ride quality, its resale value, its coolness rating, or its frequent adventures on the garage's hydraulic ramps?
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What exactly is it about the new Vectra that makes it such a good used buy?
The fact it'll be worth 10p when you come to sell it?
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enhanced by moi ! No need to thank me, Dave.
Where were you when I was struggling with the HTML code I use for the BR poll?
TVM, BTW.
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\'scuse me, you never showed me any HTML problems. Loads of remote site issues, but no HTML challenges.
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> > (And only moderators can make text scroll across the screen)
Seems to be so. :-(
I have tried before on this site to use HTML tags beyond the basic bold and italic options, such as the marquee option that permits the horizontal scrolling seen above, but no joy.
For anyone who wants to take a gander though, a pretty comprehensive list of tags is available here:
www.willcam.com/cmat/html/crossref.html
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Huh?
M a r q u e e is what is hidden behind the asterisks.
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Industry back slapping simular to the Oscars or the Soap awards. It's all rather meaningless like Tow car of the year or caravan toilet seat of the year.
If anyone buys a used car this year and they're delighted then to them THAT'S the used car of the year, nothing else matters.
The Vectra winning this won't change my mind, I'd still never buy one.
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Don't forget that the vast majority of private buyers want a used car that is excelent value for money, will not cost much to service or insure, and have good access to plenty of dealers for when they need to buy spares etc. Japanese cars may well be relaible but they tend to be more expensive to insure, parts can be horrendously expensive, and you may need to allow half a day for a return trip to the "nearest" dealer.
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NW
Interesting what you say about the biggest selling pvt car in the UK being the 206, and the Corsa only doing well on the charts because of fleet sales. Could you tell us what your source is?
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On the 206, see (amnogst other places) the first para of www.carkeys.co.uk/road_test/peugeot/379.asp
On the Corsa, take a look at any rental fleet
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The Vectra designer obviously had a senior moment when he designed the rear:-)
Used cars: you can only tell how good they are at 5 years old when wear and tear start..
madf
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.... but this article is dated 2nd June 2001 - the Corsa C was only just out then??? I'm sure Peugeot would like the 206 sales to come from private & fleet purchases and wouldn't really care where the sales were from if it made them number one in the UK. This thread started as a light hearted comment by DD on the Vectra & Jeremy Clarkson and has degenerated into the usual list of Vauxhall bashing comments.
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Victorbox, why sell your production to the fleets at huge discounts if you can sell it to private buyers at near list-price?
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This is getting a little tedious...
Nonetheless, whilst it may be that private buyers will give you at least a seemingly higher profit, and perhaps actually so, the fleet advantage represents an important market;
Volume
Servicing
Lower overheads
Second Hand market (servicing, maintenance, upgrades)
etc. etc.
It is a mistake to see the two markets as an either/or situation. The ideal position would be to be maxing out in both.
And on the overall Vauxhall comments; I\'ve had a couple of Astras, two Chevettes, 4 or 5 Cavliers, a couple of Vectras and an Omega - for varying lengths of time and mileages;
They\'re not particularly exciting cars, but I\'ve always found them reliable, well equipped, reasonable performing and generally good at what they do. You might not like them, you might not be inspired by them, but that does not make them rubbish nor does it mean that they need to be despised.
Consider all the cars that are seen to have character - Lotus, TVR, Alfa, Lancia, etc. etc. etc. Isn\'t it strange how often they are also the cars where character materialises as endless, trivial hassle and faults.
Where as the cars seen as boring; Mondeo, Cavalier, Vectra, Volvos, Saabs and others; how equally strange that often they seem to be the ones that don\'t breakdown repeatedly or have strange foibles.
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or have strange foibles.
I\'m relieved to say that was not on the list of optional extras available for my Vectra ;o)
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>>> or have strange foibles.
>>I'm relieved to say that was not on the list of optional extras available for my Vectra ;o)
I understood it had one on the driver's seat.
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I understood it had one on the driver's seat.
only when there's the letter "y" in a day of the week.
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>Consider all the cars that are seen to have character - Lotus, TVR, Alfa, Lancia, etc. etc. etc. Isn't it strange how often they are also the cars where character materialises as endless, trivial hassle and faults.
>Where as the cars seen as boring; Mondeo, Cavalier, Vectra, Volvos, Saabs and others; how equally strange that often they seem to be the ones that don't breakdown repeatedly or have strange foibles.
Oh, dear, I wish I had not read that! Now it seems that Toad the twin turbo Supra is boring with no character, and I am paying that extortionate insurance (for a 3000 mile classic policy) for nothing! :-(
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Tomo - I didn't say "always". Now go out and tell Toad you're sorry.
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Nonetheless, whilst it may be that private buyers will give you at least a seemingly higher profit, and perhaps actually so, the fleet advantage represents an important market; Volume Servicing Lower overheads Second Hand market (servicing, maintenance, upgrades)
Leaving aside the question of whether the cars are good or bad or indifferent, the mnaufacturing economics must surely prefer higher-profit private sales, if sales volumes can be manintained.
Acording to something I read a year or so back by Garel Rhys, most car production lines have a fairly narrow band of optimum efficiency, so if you can only shift 100,000 cars a year at full price, it makes sense to shift an extra 50-100k a year at a hefty discount to maintain volumes.
The financial success of the venture depends on optimising that balance between profit and volume, which is something that Ford and GM have tended to be very good at. But if they could sell all of their production at full price, I'm sure they would.
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