Cotswold Pete

Supafly, Interesting to see your comments on Mercs, I recently had a go in SL500 and CL500, nice cars, certainly tighter than my 22 year old LS But comfort was not there at all for me, and the noise seemed to be on a par with 400 with marginal less road noise. Since having a hearing aid, i have noticed rattles (minor) in the LS, and the road noise on concrete surfaces more annoying. I am in same boat in terms of my LS is old and needing work, but I really struggle to find a 'good value' replacement for my barge, might try a 460 just to see, but my plan (if wife does not stop me) is to get soemthing like a Toyota Auris as my daily and get the LS looking tiday and sorted as my 'I need a nice drive' motor. My only other comment is a Range Rover is a quite car as is Audi Q7, just not sure I would want to own one even though both comfortable to drive for hours on end

My insurance has gone down this year, not by much. My theory is that they maybe see most over 60's as not commuting to work, rather reading the paper and popping of to Tesco at 10 for a coffeee and buying some new wamr sock. So less of us oldies (I am 64) pottering about in the 'dangerous' rush hour. I do drive to work in the peak rush hour, but it is a drive through the Cotswolds, so not that busy

This thread is waking up in my head the remembering of my French car feelings, and recalling our Volvo with Renault engine (I think it was) and my Peugeot company cars (never again). So maybe I just forget the idea of an open top, cannot afford and LC, not keen on the looks of the 430, and anyway thinking of getting an e-bike for my local short journeys to do bird watching at Slimbridge when I retire (or cut my days right back) soon. An e-bike is as fresh air as you can get. Then I was thinking a Toyota Avensis as my 'shopping' car, and then (this really miffs the wife) keep the LS, and get it fully sorted for the blasts of fun. My main problem is post heart attack/covid hit, I find driving more than 200 miles in a day is a bit wearing - this means I now rely on the wife to drive to Lake District / Chester/ Liverpool / Cornwall etc, and she hates the LS (to big). Well these are all first world problems, and paying for the winter heating is a bit more pressing at the mo

Now I want to go drive a 430 and compare it with a Saab9-3 (2.0 open top), to compare. I liked the Saab the one time I got to drive one about 12 year ago. I have never listened to car reviewers, just like I have never listened to music journos, my taste is my taste and I know what i like only when I have had a chance to taste

I have started noticing Prius taxis with 'This car is fitted with a cat cage' on the side, it is a shame that dishonest people (polite term) feel the need to nick what is not theirs.

I get the same feeling myself, but then take it for a 200 mile spin to work on clearing my fathers house, and I just cannot let go. I know mine needs work, so am thinking of getting an Avensis as my daily and keeping the LS as my 'nice to cruise somewhere' car.

All this is putting me off ever trading in my LS, which is so simple on the 'bing-bong' front. Mind you every now and again I wish it would bing-bong to say you have left your umbrella on the rear seat

By my quick reckoning once the cost of a KWh gets to 51pence (which is current end of year prediction) then to go 200 miles in EV is going to cost about £30 in electric. My wifes Mazda will do 200 miles for £20, my Lexus for about £45. (paid £1.59 per gallon to fill LS up yesterday) However I am not coughing up £700pm for a car that cannot get me from home to Perth without refueling (not that I do that trip often)

That link now takes you to a list of 600's for sale. Totally amazed at the prices and the generally low mileage - I guess some were used for trips to the supermarket. Maybe when time comes a 600 should seriously be on my list, though I hear the boot is a tad small compared to 400

Jim, envious of that lovely paintwork. I am with you on spending on 'apparently' worthless motor. My only challenge is the missus now saying 'Are you going to keep spending money on that boxey looking car'. So might have to sell the missus or the car. Not sure if a 460 counts as 'not boxey', but could think about keeping the 400 out of sight (heaven knows where), and treat her like a mistress with rare days out with my first love the 400. On the other hand could go ES300H and be damned

I paid £2250 for my Mk4, 13 years old (with over 100K on clock). Coming up to 10 years of Mk4 ownership, will need a new cam belt soon, and work on suspension. Not got away with as little as £1200 on core parts, but still say it has been the cheapest car ever owned, might use a little more gas than a fiesta, but a fiesta with 220K on clock would be a bit of a sorry thing to drive. I count myself more than lucky to have been an LS driver for 14 years in total, long may in continue

Well this book has to go onto my reading list - along with the huge pile already beside the bed I might then write a book called - 'The relentless pursuit of cheapness', this will be concerning the manufacturing sector of that little know country trying to annex Taiwan. This could be in pursuit of being better than the Trabant.💀

Interesting to see the prices adjusted for inflation (at 26:45). I heard the original LS never made a profit, so was it underpriced?

Well while I have been alive we have had 50% Labour leadership and 50% Tory leadership, and most analysts seems to be saying for last 50 years we have been under-investing in infrastructure. So we have poorer railways, poorer roads, poorer sewers, not far off breaking point electric supply, and lack of investment in gas storage. So we can expect broken suspensions (as I have had with my LS), less electric for your EV, and to be enjoying smelly water for some time to come. Welcome to Broken Britain (I was once in a Citroen C2 and hit a pothole at 20mph and it stalled the car and cut the electrics out for 3 minutes. Heaven knows what actually happened, I suspect my LS would have registered a complaint but not stopped for 3 minutes while it gathered its senses.)

But buying a house with a bigger parking space, would have meant winning the lottery, so money would not be a problem, and I might even buy a Maserati Quattroporte 🤑

Just found this on Gumtree - Silver 460, not quite ready to leap to a 460, but if I was I would be on M6 right now Gumtree link or ebay link Also some nice looking Jags, but thats for another day (and another house with a bigger parking lot!!!)

I had same issue with my Mk3, which slowly got worse. I had a clean throttle It was the ECU, but never got around to fixing when I gave my car away to a mate for spares on his Mk3 But once the problem started occuring, I did find that initally putting the AC on kept the problem at bay, but after about a year, even this trick was not helping. I also resorted to Malcs trick when coming off a motorway, but I found it a little stressful on busier junctions. My MK4 never had the problem, and I think that is coz the capacitor problems had been drained out of the supply chain by the time Mk4 came along. Though mine is a very late Mk4, so not sure if earlier Mk4s ever suffered.

Not my choice of interior colour, but does look like new. Looks like nearside rear seat has been sat in more than the drivers, but that might just be the light Is it worth 20K, not so sure, but rather spend on this than 20K on equiv Bemear or Merc. I prefer the boot of the LS, and an LS is quieter than a GS, but not a lot in it from my experience

I loved his conclusions at the end, and having watched his other videos, always informative. And he knows owning a car for 15 years in something worth aiming for (though that in itself means you have to be a Jap car owner)

I wonder what the ML syste msound like when new, I assume car systems degrade espercially due to the extremes of heat and cold the whole car suffers. I have just replaced the tweeters in my home audio system, after the ferro-fluid in them was causing the sound to degrade and crack up. So if a home stereo goes a bit AWOL after 15 years then a car stereo must benefit from a total replace at some point. Mind you looking at the prices for replacing with genuine ML spares is a little eye watering. I think I'll not be poking around with the speakers in my 400, but totally aware sound is nothing like being on the sofa listening to speakers that cost £1000 15 years ago.

I had exactly this experience about 8 years ago, with RAC going (battery okay), but it was not. As I recall when I got a local motor factor to look, they could see one of the cells knackered so that it would look like it was holding right volts, but voltage dropped like a stone under load of the LS starter motor. I actually had been taking out battery to charge up (on the basis of the RAC man saying all tickety-boo) and after two mornings of this shenanigans just got a new battery.

Crikey, I have had to replace the brake lights on mine twice in nine years, maybe the W (about 1/2 mile of 10-15%) burns them out as that is a lot of braking. I wonder if the drives on Holland (or Norfolk) never have to repalce their brake lights??

Dan, I see what you mean, I maybe need to observe exactly what happens when mine goes illegitimate alarm

Nice one, I assume your lights just flash and silence prevails. My random alarm is really random, sometimes a long motorway drive is the trigger for it to go off 20 seconds after locking, sometimes it seem the be using the moonroof, and I wonder if when I close the roof, some sensor is not quite engaged (but that seems like a silly suggestion). I might have a look at doing the same thing, as notice as the car gets older the alarm does seem more random

I think it alludes to Only Fools and Horses, where the first brush Trigger bought was the original, even though it had the handle changed as well as the broom many a time, so a fully replaced original