11 years ago I had a Cavalier diesel, that did over 100 mph, around 45mpg, was roomy and comfortable, had electric gizmos, cost around 15 grand new, and there was a speed camera in charlton village
Now i have a VAG group diesel, does over 100mph, around 45mpg, roomy and comfortable, electric gizmos and cost around 15 grand, there is still the same camera in charlton village
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11 years ago I had a Cavalier diesel that did over 100 mph around 45mpg was roomy and comfortable had electric gizmos cost around 15 grand new and there was a speed camera in charlton village
This Charlton village - anything to do with Charlton and the Wheelies?
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"This Charlton village - anything to do with Charlton and the Wheelies?"
It was Chorlton and the Wheelies. And the name Chortlon came from the location of the production offices - Chorlton cum Hardy (M21 postcode). It was Cosgrove Hall (www.chf.co.uk/contact ).
I know this as I leaved in Chorlton as a student for a year.. In fact a housemate had some mail delivered addressed to him as "Mr X, xxx Road, Chortlon and the Wheelies" :-)
Really trivia is Chortlon on Medlock basically does not exist anymore - it's where The Victoria University of Manchester was built.
Edited by rtj70 on 16/11/2008 at 21:23
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I stand corrected. I was more a Hammy the Hamster man myself.
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Nothing to do with political influence but the biggest change in my motoring life has been the availability of cheap reliable sat nav. I know it might be regarded as an indulgence by those who mainly only use regular routes but for me, it has been a godsend. I have to find my way to new destinations every day. In large cities here and abroad it just takes so much stress out of the process. I can remember poring over maps trying to memorise routes prior to journeys, inevitably forgetting a turning, getting lost and trying to drive while reading a map or A-Z. Used for their intended purpose and with appropriate care and circumspection, these must be about the most useful thing to have been developed in recent years. For certain types of users anyway.
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and universal mobile phones for better or worse.
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Apart from whole armies more of drivers totally incapable of any form of car control, very little in most forms.
It could be me getting older, but i get very little pleasure from driving now, unless very early or very late when the roads are relatively clear, and then only on known routes where i will know where the static cameras are, and where the likelyhood of the Northamptonshire, but there are no doubt others, camera van night shift is slim.
Before the self righteous get finger to keyboard, i don't mean blasting through towns, i'm talking about using the open road and my old car in the way it was designed.
Vehicles have got very complicated, so now unless you can renew frequently, you must choose carefully, no different than before then, but it can be an expensive gamble to get the wrong choice.
There are improvements though, t'internet has made buying parts, tyres etc a better value option, if only through gained knowledge, but possibly at the cost of the small independants which we here often mourn the loss of.
11 years ago i had my old landcruiser, now our main use vehicle is the hilux, so for us very little has changed....yet.
I doubt if there would have been much difference had the other lot stayed in, they're all wooing different groups, and most politicians would sell their granny for a dozen votes.
This will be an interesting thread in another 11 years when road pricing may have made us virtual prisoners in our own localls.
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Apart from whole armies more of drivers totally incapable of any form of car control very little in most forms. It could be me getting older but i get very little pleasure from driving now unless very early or very late when the roads are relatively clear and then only on known routes where i will know where the static cameras are and where the likelyhood of the Northamptonshire but there are no doubt others camera van night shift is slim. Before the self righteous get finger to keyboard i don't mean blasting through towns i'm talking about using the open road and my old car in the way it was designed.
I cant help thinking all the carp fitted to modern vehicles doesnt help there... the car does a lot of the 'thinking' for the driver - im not sure thats really a good thing, as when the systems fail, or when the driver uses a vehicle without the systems all hell breaks loose...
... but a decent driver could probably get out the trouble by themselves!
as someone suggested on another post, maybe what we need is a spike in the centre of the steering wheel!
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HJ lists the essentials, the nitty gritty. They boil down to higher costs, less fun and motorists feeling hunted and anxious in more and more places and situations. The point about complexity, often raised here in one way or another (DMFs, DPFs, common-rail misfuelling, etc.), is the most interesting to technophiles. Roll on the new, clever and evolved forms of simplicity, if they are allowed to come into being!
Even among car owners, even among members of this very forum, there is already a substantial undercurrent of moral disapproval of the privately-owned automobile per se. This will continue to develop. Eventually we will be seen by extreme anti-car ideologues as morally equivalent to ivory poachers or child molesters.
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I had one of those Cavalier diesels, like Altea Ego's.
Lucky car for me. I bought it the week I got the job on The Telegraph.
It was me talking about buying that and a couple of other Vauxhalls at CMA at Wimbledon, and carrying £20k cash in my pocket that gave Eric Bailey the idea.
I also know the camera in Charlton Village.
They hang flowers around it in the summer.
HJ
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Obscure and tangential I know but possibly pertinent nonetheless.
Eleven years ago, if I wanted to post a letter or parcel, I could walk to my local post office. Now, I have to drive into town.
That seems silly.
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Ditto. Same goes for the shop + papers.
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Ditto. Same goes for the shop + papers.>>
Plus the free CDs provided by newspapers that you have to collect at a well known supermarket if the disk you want is involved.
As a result my carbon footprint can be increased quite unnecessarily three or four times a week by having to use my car and, if I get to the store too late, the disks have been snapped up by people who don't even buy the paper...:-(
I know that because one assistant told me that the occasions on which people actually handed over the required voucher were very few and far between.
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I also know the camera in Charlton Village. They hang flowers around it in the summer.
I suspect nowadays they hang burning tyres on it.
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not in charlton village they dont.
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Yes, and when I was a boy my Mum used to give me her shopping bag and send me to the corner shop to get groceries.
Now, all of a sudden, using your own bag is deemed as being somehow miraculous - bet some whitehall madarins got paid vast sums to come up with that idea - and I used to take the same egg box back week in week out to fill it up with eggs.
Nowadays, Councils are fining people for putting eggs boxes in the wrong recyable bin.
Oh, and my Grandad used to give me his old Corona pop glass bottles to take back to the shops and get a refund before buying some more dandelion and burdock.
Actually, this post is now being back some warm, happy memories of childhood with my loving family. Thanks for making me think about them OP.
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One of the biggest differences I have noticed is the amount people seem to spend on cars even if they are not otherwise flash in terms of their job. To take an example (as I don't live in the burbs) where my Dad lives in an average market town in the South West it is all 1960s fairly bog standard family housing, not the poshest part of town at all but look carefully and you see that at at least one house in three there is a pounds 30K plus vehicle or two sitting on the drive. next door neighbours have a brand new x5 and a A6 and another new supermini, three doors down someone has a cayenne, across the road someone has a Merc CL500, alot of driveways have a BMW in them, hardly anyone seems to have just one 5-15year ordinary old car on its own. All under three years old, all costing over 35K...even if bought second hand likely to cost 18K min. This is not the poshest part of town yet somehow people are sitting with maybe 35-70Ks worth of vehicle outside a house that is prob worth 200k or so.
I really really do not remember that being true in the early 90s or definitely growing up in the 70s and 80s. Then a street like that would have had at most one or so BMWs, a few people mending their own cars, a few people running old banger type cars and the rest with run of the mill cars that were not brand new.
Another example - mate of mine has a brother who is in mid 40s, copper but not a Chief Inspector or anything, average house, has a new shape BMW he bought as a demonstrator..6 mths ago. Can someone explain to me how a police constable on averagish pay is buying a 30K car?
Interested if anyone else would concur?
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But this is why the country is in the mess it is in now - millions have been MEWing from their houses and buying ridiculously priced cars, expensive hols, etc.
The average wage in Swansea is 21K but you can't move for 25K plus cars all over the place. A combination of good ole' British Class snobbery combined with the biggest housing bubble in history has allowed people to take tens of thousands of equity out of those house prices and buy such cars.
Alas, the bubble has now burst and we have both estate agents and car dealers seemingly ignorant or still in denial about what has happened.
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>>Can someone explain to me how a police constable on averagish pay is buying a 30K car?
Overtime. A PC or a DC can double their salary with judicious selection of overtime, working on rest days, less than 5 days notice and so on. Many Sergeants elect not to go for the promotion to Inspector - can't afford the drop in wages!
Edited by NeilS on 16/11/2008 at 21:42
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Discounts as well - a Bobby will get 17% off a Vauxhall without starting to haggle.
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>>Can someone explain to me how a police constable on averagish pay is buying a 30K car? Overtime.
Lucky them. If we worked overtime it was unpaid. If you refused you were very soon "down the road" by one means or another.
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Getting dangerously close to a thread which was kicking around recently but a statistic to ponder.
Up to about twelve years ago my cars value at date of purchase represented the equivalent of 50% of my previous year's gross salary.However, for the past twelve years I have never spent more than the equivalent of 7.5% of my previous year's gross income on a car. I use my cars a lot and could probably justify more but I find it a good discipline and it has the effect of making my cars in effect disposable, which is just as well given the amount of abuse in mileage terms that they get. If I then factor in the tax relief I enjoy as they are used for business purposes the purchase costs become almost negligible.
The running costs far outweigh that on the other hand with my single biggest ongoing cost being fuel.
I simply would not borrow money to buy a car which will inevitably depreciate and always use savings. My circumstances are such that I have no idea how much I will earn each year and I have got used to only buying things which I can easily afford and not buying things which I can't or which would need to be financed. Always been a mug's game in my humble.
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"Can someone explain to me how a police constable on averagish pay is buying a 30K car?"
Getting to drive such a car is not so difficult if that's what you want - I saw an XF advertised today for £380 per month on contract hire - that's almost £40k worth of car. Just because he drives the BMW, doesn't means he owns it.
You also know nothing about his financial circumstances to make a judgement on whether in his job he can afford such a motor.
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Yes, millions confuse credit with ownership whether that is credit on a car or on a home.
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I am just wondering how given his take home pay after tax and stuff and along with everything else working out how he has made the leap to financing or buying outright a car that is getting on for 80% of so of his takehome pay gross. But then I've wondered that of a heck of alot of people - all those people listed in places like What Car who are in features on buying cars..people who sound like they're not in high powered jobs and yet are saying they are in the market for a new 20K car and they're 24 yrs old. Do 24yr olds not buy secondhand cars for 1500 or so and tinker with them these days?
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One of the biggest differences I have noticed is the amount people seem to spend on cars even if they are not otherwise flash in terms of their job.... there is a pounds 30K plus vehicle or two sitting on the drive.
I really really do not remember that being true in the early 90s or definitely growing up in the 70s and 80s.
Interested if anyone else would concur?
Jasper Carrott* summed it up in the earky 80s - "Surface wealth, two cars in the driveway, and s*d-all in the fridge".
Another poster noted that people are confusing credit with ownership.
Forunately for us, the government here, last year, introduced a national credit act, which in effect said that IF you lend money/finance goods and services for people, AND you haven't checked their credit-worthiness, AND THEN they default, then tough cookies for you!
This was to curb the aggresive selling of goods (normally furniture and clothes, but often expensive cars) to the ill-educated masses, on the basis that stretched over 5 years, it works out cheap...
Another problem was the old Micawber scenario - earn R15K a month, spend R16K. Easy - just slap it on the plastic, and the bank will, sooner or later, bump up your card limit. Next month, same thing...
The government, realising that the rates being charged were close to usury, and the admin fees when folk fell behind were HUGE, plus the garnishee problem, nipped it in all the bud.
Yes, it had a knock-on effect on the economy, but had settled down when this year's crisis hit.
* back to Carrott, circa 1978... he did those marvellous Mother-in-law-in-car stories, which I heard on the radio the other day, for the first time in years.
Absolutely brilliant stuff, still relevant these days, and much funnier now that I am a driver myself.
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I hate the modern shape of family cars, reduced visibility, high top, so curvy you need a reverse sensor, alloy wheels your're scared to death to scrape on the kerb. As Bruce Willis said in SIN CITY "They look like electric razors".
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If I had replied 6 months ago I would have said:
more cars more traffic many much more expensive cars.
Now I reply: speedhumps, cameras.. not more traffic.
We have seen a SIGNIFICANT traffic reduction when fuel prices soared on $147 oil.. and it has hardly recovered...
Lots more 4x4s needed for the snow and ice we encounter in British summers.
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Not sure about that... there was a decrease in traffic when the prices went up, but since they went down again things seem to have got back to normal again... worse luck!
Changes over last 11 years? I don't think that things are really that much different to 1997... except that there seems to be a lot more traffic which leads onto other things such as road rage, but it was still there 11 years ago... now if the OP had said 30 years... then a definite yes! Things have got far worse!!
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Overall I don't think motoring has changed much over the last 10 years. The economics might be a bit different and vehicle technology has progressed.
I haven't noticed much change in driving standards.
I think speed cameras are a good thing. Lots of people get caught - for them, that's when the deterrent effect kicks in - when they've been fined, and more importantly, when they've got penalty points. Whenever I'm following an BMW that's sticking to 30 mph, I think 'penalty points' - the driver know's they're probably likely to get banned if they get caught again!!!
Lots of drivers with penalty points = lots of drivers who obey speed limits!!
Edited by Sofa Spud on 17/11/2008 at 11:10
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I'd say the biggest change I have noticed are the roads are a lot busier. And too many car drivers drive far too close to cars in front, especially on the motorways. And if you leave a safe gap on a motorway someone will probably try to undertake and fit in that gap.
Another big change are the complex but powerful (and relatively efficient and low polluting) diesels of today vs. the old ones of old. It's amazing how refined they are let alone how much power and torque they have. Look at the BMW 335d/535d - amazingly powerful and quick but good MPG too....
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We have seen a SIGNIFICANT traffic reduction when fuel prices soared on $147 oil
Not round here we haven't. It took me 60-90 mins to do the car part of my commute when I started doing it in 2006, and it still takes me 60-90 mins today, as it did when diesel was £1.30 a litre.
In terms of what's changed, I would agree that the number of "premium brand" cars on the road has exploded in the last decade. I suspect this is because company car drivers have been hammered by the taxman, and the increasing number of people opting out find they can lease an Audi, BMW or Merc for less than a Ford.
Government tax policy in general has ensured that emissions play a conscious part in most people's buying choices now. A decade ago, who cared?
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Another poster noted that people are confusing credit with ownership.
Not motoring-specific at all, but the simplest solution I've come across for that one is to replace the word "credit" in your mind with "debt". Buying your new car, or sofa, or flat screen TV with "6 months interest free debt", or going out on a shopping spree and running up hundreds of pounds on your "debt card" somehow doesn't sound quite so attractive.
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Thats a damn good idea GJD!
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Women drivers have changed - a lot ! They used to dither about, smile, and wave apologies - very feminine.
Not today though, especially the teeny / twenty muppets. They zoom around with just as much skill and road sense as their male counterparts.
That is, er -------- none.
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Women drivers have changed - a lot !
Not that i disagree...but..i'm off, you're on your own mate, time for a sharp exit, tin hat on, prepare for incoming, and swmbo has just read this so good luck..;)
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One of the changes for the worse are the speed humps, as mentioned earlier. It's a pity they couldn't put the tarmac to better use and fill all the potholes in which neccesitates owning a four wheel drive with balloon tyres to cope with Third world road surfaces. Probably explains why magic carpet ride Citroens sell so well over here too ;-)
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