Kent

It is illegal for the selling dealer/manufacturer to fit bull bars but once you drive out of the showroom you can have them fitted by a specialist or do it yourself. Bear in mind your insurance company needs to be informed and you may have to pay a premium. I am not sure if there is any reliable evidence that "A" bars cause more injuries in an accident. I am sure that the 4x4 brigade would claim the opposite. However if you did injure somebody badly and the bull bars were thought to have contributed then you will have to face the inevitable consequences.

Don't like the posturing much but I have no problem with the new law except that it didn't go far enough. Why did it not apply to heterosexuals as well? Say two sisters living together.

Probably a silly question but is it an automatic by any chance? ← No it's a manual 5 speed, the multitronic (CVT) type was not very good in the 1.9TDI when it came out in 2002...I can PM you some details if you want...? ← I'm afraid I can only drive autos or manuals with ultra light clutches these days due to some problems with my left leg. I think that you have been really unlucky with your trade in. As you say, the A4 holds its value with the very best of them and I would have thought that you would at least have been offered book price for it. I have an IS300 SportX Navigator with 53K on an 02/02 plate for sale on commission with a trader friend and he hasn't had a sniff at £1K under book so far (£12.5K). What a market!

The bottom line is that the trade guide will be a guide only and will not always take seasonal/economic slump/ all market conditions into account...at the end of the day a car is only worth what people are prepared to pay...and how many are "glutted" around the country... I tried several car traders/buyers myself, and they confirmed exactly what the Leicester Lexus told me...down to the nearest pound :yack: even though Leicester Lexus is part of the Sytner group (and they have 12 Audi dealerships too). I tried to force Lexus Leicester to give something more reasonable, stating that they were selling it to one of their own Audi dealerships etc...but the answer back was that there are loads of cars like mine available, and they see no reason to buy this one for more when they can get one for a lot less. In the end, I quoted "drivethedeal.co.uk" and managed to get a £1k reduction in the IS220d (base with MM and metallic)...so it's not too bad. If I had traded my car early in December I would have got £9675 and that was the best price (it ranged from £7950 upwards - a real b****y bargain)... However as it stands, I needed it for the whole of December and the early part of Jan for work...too much hassle and expense to hire cars etc. I thought it would be a doddle to sell it privately.... especially when the private ones in the condition mine is in (Immac) are all around the £10k-12k mark... The selling it privately has been a total disaster...£10750 = 20 odd calls, one genuine buyer, but has to sell his C220CDI coupe first (and who in their right mind wants one of those...?), and the rest were canvassers...! The predicted figure quoted in Dec for January for PX is £9000, March it would be closer to £8500ish, but that's too far off to confirm. The beauty is that Lexus Leicester have been quite good overall...they have offered to take my car 7 weeks before mine arrives, pass it to the trade...the new year will have less travelling at the start, and I will make do with hire cars... The car industry is clearly in a dire shape, and even though my Audi is a very sellable entity no one is willing to pay reasonable money for it...a bad time to be selling, and no one's got cash anyway!! If the diesel is a bad one, I have been told I will get my deposit back...which is fantastic..confidence or what? Then I keep the Audi and wait for the new A4 in 2007 me thinks... Heres the plug... So if anyone wants it as a 2nd car/for a mate etc, PM me...I can send over some pics and the full spec (One owner from new (me), 1.9TDI 130SE silver, Sony satnav, 6CD, Nokia, 46000 miles, FASH etc etc £2500 odd extra's in total. ← Probably a silly question but is it an automatic by any chance?

"My Audi A4 (02/52) is dropping by £675 in value between December and January" How do you know that? The trade guide for January has not yet been published.

Glass's Guide sees no difference in value. A 55 reg will run from Sept 05 till march 06 and then it will be 06 from March to September 06. Then it will be a 56 from Sept 06 till March 07 etc etc. Effectively there are three different plates around in each calendar year. However there are still a lot of private buyers who would rather buy a car registered in a later year even if it is the same registration number so obviously it is better for you to wait until January. Ask them to take £250 off the car if they want a December registration. It just could be worth it to them if it earns a target bonus. If you trade the car in to a dealer in three years time it is unlikely to make any difference to what you are offered. As far as bulk of the the trade is concerned a 55 is a 55 is a 55 and so on.

Leave it until you are selling and only then get it done if you intend to sell it privately. If you are trading it in you will only lose the trade cost of respraying. If you really want to do it then most professional body shops would do an excellent job for about half of what you have been quoted.

Be like winning the lottery if I could find out the whereabouts of these sub human sons of a diseased union. I'd be tempted to ring the murdered policewoman's husband first though.

I am staggered by the the deluge of ill informed critisism of George Bests Liver Transplant. I have cirrhosis of the Liver caused by excessive social drinking when I was younger and although I have been teetotal for over five years there is still a better than even money chance of further problems developing which will leave only transplantation as a possible treatment. The nationally agreed guidelines for acceptance into the transplantation programme are that patients should be accepted for transplantation only if they have an estimated probability of being alive 5 years after transplantation of at least 50% with a quality of life acceptable to the patient. Should the patient’s condition deteriorate whilst waiting for a liver so that these criteria are no longer met, the patient should be removed from the list. Other medical and social factors (such as alcohol or drug mis-use, age or antisocial life style) are not directly relevant other than whether they affected the above criteria; In other words it was felt that George had at least a half chance of a reasonable quality of life for five years following a transplant. A minimum period of abstinence from alcohol of 6 months is required and whilst you would not be offered a liver if you told the doctors that you intended to carry on drinking afterwards the fact is that nobody intends this. When you consider that he died of multiple organ failue triggered by a bacterial infection of the colon which spread and ultimately proved untreatable due to the immuno-supressant drugs he had to take and that he lived for almost three and a half years following transplant then his undoubtedly foolish lifestyle afterwards did not, in the end cause his death. Amost 20% of recipients die in the first year following transplant and this rises as each year passes. Only a Post Mortem will establish the damage, if any, to George Best's new liver and I await news of that with interest. So, all of you who have never smoked, done drugs, driven a car too fast (or drunk), climbed mountains, worn shoes too tight for you, eaten too much, crossed the road, played sport, contacted VD, or in any way contributed to your own ill healh can look forward to being treated in empty wards with doctors and nurses fighting to take care of you. After all, if we don't treat those whose lifestyle is a little dodgy then that's what will happen.

Best one I've had was the Landcruiser Colorado. Should be plenty big enough for most purposes. I drove to Benidorm and back last November in that one and it was faultless. The 3.0 L TD is pretty good but if you can run to a 3.0 Direct Injection then they are much better. Had a 2.8 Shogun but found it very wallowy and noisier than I expected. I've also had a Jeep Grand Cherokee with the (very, very) noisy 3.1 Turbo Diesel engine which was a magnificent vehicle but again you really need the 2.7 Mercedes sourced engine for any kind of refinement.

Thanks kaz! I test drove all three cars. I found the beemer to be quite comfortable and a very solid drive - just as good as the IS. The beemer lost out though because there was nothing in it from my perspective to make it stand head and shoulders above the IS and to justify it costing an extra 4 grand! I just didn't like the merc at all - for some reason, I imagined my age increased by 40 years when I started driving the merc. Very inhibited experience altogether. I'm not looking for performance at all as my current car is an absolute beast and it will now become my track day car as every day wear and tear is too much on it. I like the grunt off the IS200 although it does feel quite sluggish - i.e. it could do with an extra 50bhp or something like that? As said though, it's by no means a point of failure for me as performance is a non-issue for this purchase. To be honest, if wheel corrosion and some dodgy stereo's are the worst problems that people can think of about a car, then it really does speak volumes about what a truely top-quality car it is. Many thanks for all comments and thoughts - you've all helped to afirm my hopes that the IS200 actually is as good as I thought it was B) Cheers Keith. ← More grunt? Why not try an IS300? Fantastic 3L engine but same shape as the 200.

Guy Ritchie? Good Movies? A classic oxymoron.

Many thanks. I'll have a lookie.

The worst carrier by a million miles that I have ever come across. Speaking to them (if you can get through) simply leads you back to the online tracking. The truth is they simply do not give a s*** when your parcel gets delivered.

Hi Brettster, Where would I find this hack? Is it easy to do? I assume that SNR is Signal to Noise Ratio? Many thanks, Kent.

Make sure that the connection from Telewest's modem is compatible with the Netgear which uses an ethernet one I believe. Some use USB.

You can. I've done it twice. As far as I know the Lexus SATNAV simply reads the info on the DVD and displays it if it can. If Lexus bring out a version which will disable the Sat unit if you inadvertently put it in the wrong car then I think they should be liable for the repair and also an award for stupidity. Normally an incompatible DVD will simply refuse to load and usually display an appropiate message on the screen. ← This depends. On the older 1st gen units (2000 - 2001) the first disc update upgraded the unit firmware which meant the older disc wouldn't work again. ← I don't doubt you are correct. Mine is/was a 2002 with the original DVD in it. Surely the firmware should be updated or downdated every time you insert a genuine DVD. Paying the best part of £300 for an updated DVD, perhaps more than once, means I would want to put the original disc back when selling the car. You don't get any extra for a later version when selling so the obvious thing to do is dispose of the later one(s) seperately. Do you know if Lexus advised purchasers of the earlier models that there would be an irreversible firmware upgrade? It is things like this that encourage illegal copying.

You can. I've done it twice. As far as I know the Lexus SATNAV simply reads the info on the DVD and displays it if it can. If Lexus bring out a version which will disable the Sat unit if you inadvertently put it in the wrong car then I think they should be liable for the repair and also an award for stupidity. Normally an incompatible DVD will simply refuse to load and usually display an appropiate message on the screen.

I use Netgear with no real problems. I have the DG834GT which is a modem and router in one. Be aware that if you use MIMO Rangemax you will still need a Broadband Modem and all your equipment needs to be compatible to take advantage of the extra range offered by MIMO. I have a small 3 story Hotel and my DG834GT is in the cellar. The range extends even to the top floor albeit with a weaker signal and every guests Laptop, including those with Centrino technology, has connected with no problem.

Fast, good looking, reliable, automatic with a reasonable amount of versatile space and most of the toys (especially the IS300 NAV model. Go for it!

As far as used cars are concerned then yes I would always haggle hard. But the markup given to the dealer on most brands of new car is very very little these days. You might get a decent discount at the end of a month if the dealer needs to shift a couple of cars to meet his target quota which will in turn earn him a bonus based on monthly sales. If a model is selling well enough for him to meet all his targets then there is no incentive for him to discount. Hence the position with the new IS which will be discounted as soon as the market dictates it.

Dealer profit on new cars is laughable, they make their money on servicing etc. Used cars are a different kettle of fish. A few years ago when I dabbled in buying and selling computer parts a typical £200 inkjet printer made just £10 for the retailer. The real profit was made on ink which cost something like a zillion pounds a bottle for coloured water.

There is no new S/X as far as I know so the old model would not be affected by the new one. Just for your information an 05 IS200 S/X NAV with 8000 miles on the clock has a current trade price of £16,575 with a retail of £18,175. Lexus Dealers are more expensive than that on the retail side. List price new was £24,529.

The IS300 Nav has dropped by £200/250 per month for the past 4 months in GG. This is pretty normal depreciation for a quality car. Now the real world is different. Because dealers are overstocked and cannot shift what the've got then they don't want to buy at all at the moment generally speaking. This filters through to the private market and so everybody wants a bargain. If you are buying another car then you should demand the same keen price as you are being offered for yours. It's the cost to change which is important. After all if you take a £5K hit when you sell and get £5K off when you buy then it all becomes irrelevant really. What were you asking for yours?

Forget Parkers. Take around 2 to 3 Grand off of the Lexus dealer forecourt price of an IS on an 04 or 05 plate and you are close to the private sale value. I can't emphasise enough how easy it is to lose big money when buying from a main dealer and then trading back in or selling privately. The dealer needs to have £3K or so in the car to make a living so the private value of a £16K car is £13K as soon as you drive it off the forecourt. Factor in depreciation and then a bit more to reflect the very depressed state of the market at the moment and you can lose £5K or £6K after only a year. Keeping any car for three years or more partly negates your loss. I still maintain that, as MacRS200 says, Its the current used car market which is causing problems. The new IS will not badly affect the prices of the old model unless you have bought a new IS a few months ago for close to list. After all, its not even here yet and it will be another two or three years before they hit the forecourts in any great numbers by which time your three year old Lexus will be five or six years old.