Your fleet running reports

[integrale_evo]

I was kind of looking at these a long long while ago. Would have had to be a blue, manual estate, preferably with a black interior. As you can imagine, specific spec W8 passats don’t come up that often.

Plus they’re heavy, thirsty and not very quick. Still interesting though.

[Sundayjumper]

I found a 2017 Range Rover price list. A couple of slight surprises:

Electric towbar was only £985. Seems like a bargain.

Electric side steps were £3,270

All in all, it's probably depreciated about £1k pm over its life. Which doesn't sound too bad tbh.

[nuttinnew]

That's been for sale for ever

Oh, interesting. I'm not buying it don't worry. Is it a "known" car with some problems ?

I don't know anything about that specific car, I just recognize it/the advert. It feels like I first saw it years ago.

[nuttinnew]

Absolute best I could get from the W12 was just over 20mpg on a long run while concentrating. So this is 20 mpg while driving a Passat. And a person/people has done that for 185k miles. That doesn't even make sense.

B5 Passat fans are weird. They're like VW T4 fans and Ford RS fans.

How do they compare to A2 fans?

[Beany]

Audi A2s are actually interesting, at least. Fuck knows what anyone sees in a Passat or a T4 Transporter.

[mik]

W8’s are undeniably fascinating, but they fall into the same category for me as the ZT260 in that you wonder what became of the other 80+ bhp the spec sheet suggests they should have.

[Simon]

With the MG it was because they couldn't fit the 4 valve head under the bonnet so it couldn't breathe very well .

[jamcg]

Think the w engines have the same issue with breathing due to funny valve angles in the head because of the strange cylinder placement. All the w12’s and the Bugatti w16 are all turbocharged and the Passat is na, which probably explains its lackluster performance

I believe it was also seen as a real world test bed for the future of the w engines by vw

[Gavster]

Smart has been washed and advertised on eBay so that I can replace it with @Sundayjumper's Smart.

[Sundayjumper]

300

[mik]

300

That's numberwang

[Gavster]

300

That's numberwang

Steve is referencing the almost immediate onslaught of lowballers.

Maybe it was a film recommendation?

[Sundayjumper]

For the benefit of everyone else, the first message that Gavster received on ebay just minutes after listing the Smart was simply "300". No words, no punctuation, absolutely nothing except those three digits

[Gavster]

Incidentally, on the way there, at one of the big roundabouts near here there were some crusty protesters with "less solar more real farms" placards. I didn't realise anti-solar was a subset of environmental issues ? Anyway, I considered shouting "GET A FCUKING HAIRCUT, HIPPY" but they wouldn't have been able to hear me 'cos I was in my Ferrari and the exhaust always sounds FG when you spank it past poor people.

There was a press release from the Gov last week on this, it's not anti-solar, it is very specifically against building solar farms on land that can be used productively for growing crops. I guess that with the instability in food production inputs and dodgy weather, it's become tempting for farmers to simply produce power instead of food.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sola ... 20security.

[GG.]

I found a 2017 Range Rover price list. A couple of slight surprises:

Electric towbar was only £985. Seems like a bargain.

Electric side steps were £3,270

All in all, it's probably depreciated about £1k pm over its life. Which doesn't sound too bad tbh.

Sounds about right - I wonder at what point / age it starts to tail off. Looking at autotrader mine now is actually probably worth £35k so exactly 1k a month since I bought it but it would seem suprising if it was worth under 25 at this point next year. 2013 plates with similar spec are still £21k and up and they are 5 years older! That suggests the depreciation should slow pretty dramatically soon but maybe I'm kidding myself...

Annoyingly the GTS also looks like it has dropped £10k in a year but I guess by the time you take two years warranty into account from a main dealer that is really more like £7k.

[tim]

Jaguar XJ8 3.2 Tin-Worm Edition

So the Jag has sat on my drive without moving for 13 months as I've had the Mondeo to knock about in, and I knew it needed some mechanical work to make it MOTable again. I thought it was about time, with the nice weather approaching, to waft once more. So I booked it for an MOT (mostly so I could drive it there on a SORN) and a recommissioning inspection. I had the replacement steer rack in the boot ready, just needed as far as I knew rear shocks/mounts and an O2 sensor I couldn't unstick myself.

When they phoned me later in the day to ask if I could pop down and have a look, I suspected the news wasn't going to be good.

Sadly while it's sat, the old tin worm has been hard at work. I honestly didn't think it would need any welding this time after we dealt with it in '21, but none the less there was sufficient corrosion around the rear "within 30 cms of the seatbelt mounting point" that meant it needed sorting. And they couldn't really estimate how much until they started cutting in. The sills were looking ropey as well.

At this point, with a heavy heart, I had to make the gut wrenching decision to have Maurice humanely put to sleep.

It's being collected today. £351 in scrap value. I really am gutted because otherwise with a bit of fairly light mechanical work it would have been good to go for a bit longer yet, but I always knew this day would come.

RIP Maurice, you were 15,000 miles of wafty enjoyment (we'll skip over the will it won't it start episode, which turned out to be a fuse box issue).

[GG.]

RIP Maurice, you were 15,000 miles of wafty enjoyment

That's a shame - looks very clean otherwise

[ZedLeg]

That would be a great concept - "Let's give Steve a box of wine, load up eBay and an PayPal account with £5k in it. Come back tomorrow morning to find out what he's bought"

HOLD MY BEER

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/394077209447


And the W8 is one I need to cross off my list…

That's cool, I'm pretty sure a W8 Passat is one of the rarest cars I've seen irl

[Sundayjumper]

Sounds about right - I wonder at what point / age it starts to tail off. Looking at autotrader mine now is actually probably worth £35k so exactly 1k a month since I bought it but it would seem suprising if it was worth under 25 at this point next year. 2013 plates with similar spec are still £21k and up and they are 5 years older! That suggests the depreciation should slow pretty dramatically soon but maybe I'm kidding myself...

Put the details into WBAC and have a little cry They value my 2017 at £11,680.

All things being equal you'd expect rapid depreciation at first, that gradually slows, until there's an equilibrium. For a lot of cars that equilibrium is zero (or maybe a couple of hundred, literal scrap metal value) but Land & Range Rovers have a strong fan base so ultimate bottom is probably a few grand at worst. I'd guess that is at around 15-20 years old. After that cars may or may not become classics and head upwards again.

COVID was a big disruptor in this though. Prices were very firm for a couple of years. We might start to see a re-adjustment now, compounded in RR world by the insurance worries. I'd recommend that you keep it, enjoy it, and don't worry about it

[Jobbo]

Annoyingly the GTS also looks like it has dropped £10k in a year but I guess by the time you take two years warranty into account from a main dealer that is really more like £7k.

Is that a Cayenne? We've swapped our order to a GTS now that's been released. I wasn't going to initially but the base S price has gone up quite a bit for the new model year and the GTS has plenty of my chosen options as standard so it seemed worth the couple of extra grand for the nicer front bumper and (hopefully) slightly better residuals. Better keep it 8 years to amortise that depreciation though