2.4 EXEC AUTO

Simply the best car I have owned in over 30 years of driving

I bought this car after 3 years with a BMW Z4. It was 10 months old, 11,000 miles and about £8,000 under list. It is now 3 and a half years and 45,000 miles later. Plus points (not in any particular order) are huge boot, lovely interior (I have the beige leather) very quiet apart from on really bad roads (17" Penta alloys), super smooth engine. It is amazingly economical - 32 mpg is normal and I expect to get around 38-40 mpg on a long run - pretty good for a 2.4 auto. I find the Sat Nav very complicated although usable and gave up trying to programme the voice activated Blue tooth hands free telephone. I never use the voice activation for anything. Performance and handling are superb - I have recently discovered that dropping into 2nd at around 50mph gives you fantastic acceleration for overtaking - prior to that I had always used 3rd. Whilst there will be some doubting Thomas's this car is much more fun to drive quickly than my 2.5 Z4 - I'm not saying it's faster - just more planted, more feel. It feels as if it will never go wrong and I intend to keep it for a few more years yet. I have never kept a car this long before and still been happy. I can't say more than that. I am not so keen on the local dealer though and will be taking it to a non-franchised gargage for the next service. I had a small crease in the front bumper - dealer - "new bumper mate", Scratch Match sorted it for £120. Rear bumper replaced by dealer after some unknown had hit it - £350 ready to fit from Honda and the colour didn't match on the sides due to lack paint. No restitution despite repeated complaints ("they're all like that mate"). Every fixed price service bar one has doubled (discs need skimming etc). All in all a great car - why did they replace it with the ugly new one?

Report as offensive