New car time

[AtW]

A6 Ultra

Audi A6 Ultra review | Auto Express

2014 Executive Car of the Year.

S-tronic dual clutch transmission.

Much loved by wealthy yet frugal crustaceans.

P.S. The worst drivers on the road now drive Audi...

[Qdos Contractor]

I've got an XF and my last car was a C220. Both utterly solid (although I had 2 Alfas before that so perhaps not the best judge of reliability).

Overall I prefer the Jag; slightly more style.

[greenlake]

Much loved by wealthy yet frugal crustaceans.

[DimPrawn]

Oi, stop stalking me.

[woohoo]

The BMW 520d is a pretty good car, we had the m sport version with the trim. Looked good and was pretty reliable for the most part. We did have a cracked alloy which BMW said was a fault with the alloy. To source a replacement took a couple of months. Also, had a massive diesel leak after about 3 years. Great for motorways but it is a big car.

We have the Mercedes a220 amg on hire and looks great, Mercedes have nailed the look but it's a crap car. The handling is poor, like driving a boat. There is a noticeable lag when accelerating and it inside it looks like someone has puked up a load of gadgets on the dashboard. Doesn't really fit together well, really disappointed because it looks great. If it's an indication of the other cars in the range I would avoid.

We have the Volvo xc60, I think its much better than the 520d. Handling is great for a big car, the driver assist pack is actually useful and the car is fairly fast. Might be something to consider. I'm personally making Volvo cool again, so get in now before the prices shoot up.

[PurpleGorilla]

New car time

Looks like the 520ED keeps the 181bhp unlike the 3 series which drops the bhp.

[Churchill]

So after 150,000 miles the trusty Mondeo is going to be replaced now I'm not doing the slog up and down to Portsmouth / Southampton every week.

In the running are :

Jaguar XF 2.0d R-Sport
BMW 520d M Sport
Mercedes C200d Sport

Not buying brand new.

Opinions?

<retires to the bunker and wonders why he asked...>

I recently bought a 9 month old E220 Bluetec. tuliploads of toys, £30 roadtax and 70mpg. Very comfortable.

[darmstadt]

What part of stats as opposed to anecdote do you not understand?
Everyone knows someone who smoked 60 and drank a bottle of whisky a day and lived to 100.
Merc became so tulipe when they merged with Chrysler that they had to overhaul their quality, hence why they're better than the other 2 now. sOmehting similar may happen to Audi now they've had a crisis.

All modern cars today are extremely similar to another manufacturers model, a Jag will do something slightly different to a Merc which will do something slightly different to a BMW. As I said, its a personal choice and your personal choice is the Merc because you drive one, probably if you had a BMW you would propose that. You can read all the reviews of the cars, test drive them, ask on an Internet forum and then decide on what you want. The first day you drive it and (a) it ****s up or (b) someone drives past in a different car which you either never considered or actually did but now looks better shows that for all the research you did, it makes not one iota of difference to what you now have apart from a deep down feeling of dissatisfaction. You just buy the car you want, not what some numpty on on forum tells you to

[sasguru]

All modern cars today are extremely similar to another manufacturers model, a Jag will do something slightly different to a Merc which will do something slightly different to a BMW. As I said, its a personal choice and your personal choice is the Merc because you drive one, probably if you had a BMW you would propose that. You can read all the reviews of the cars, test drive them, ask on an Internet forum and then decide on what you want. The first day you drive it and (a) it ****s up or (b) someone drives past in a different car which you either never considered or actually did but now looks better shows that for all the research you did, it makes not one iota of difference to what you now have apart from a deep down feeling of dissatisfaction. You just buy the car you want, not what some numpty on on forum tells you to

You're missing the point. The data show that Mercedes have considerably fewer faults in the first 3 years than BMW or Audi, on average. At least for the previous models, now there's a raft of new models, may no longer be the case.
I was looking for a small estate, test drove all the usual suspects in the end it came down to the Bmw or the Merc.
You could see the cost cutting in the Audi, no wonder they were forced to cheat: indicator stalk felt flimsy, pedals not metal, my new test car had a rattle in the door.

[Wilmslow]

Hyundai i10 - While a lot easier on the wallet than the Aygo, it is I think a far superior car these days.

If the budget will stretch the Fiesta is a good car. You can limit the fiesta to 80mph which will save on the speeding tickets.