Show Us Your Motors!

Man of Honour
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The manuals for BMW M-cars disagree!
That's a massive con with the later engines according to many engine builders.

Manuals suggest running in to allow tyres, brakes, clutch etc to bed in properly. It's not going to be good for an engine to stay less than half throttle for 1000 miles and not take it above 4k rpm and then at mile 1001 give it hell for leather.
 
Soldato
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After 'running in' double-digit volumes of new cars over the last 9 years I can tell you that they certainly do not perform properly straight out of the box. The engines start off typically feel 'tight', and somewhat gutless. They improve dramatically over the first 500-1000 miles, and then continue to improve more slowly even up to 10k.
I agree. My M135i felt very tight to begin with, and once I'd got over 13k miles on it the fuel economy was significantly better, presumably because everything was nicely run in by then. Over the next ~35k miles the fuel economy got gradually poorer, which I believe was due to engine deposits building up (I ran it on any old UL95 at the time), and then I switched to exclusively running on either VPower or BP Ultimate for the remaining ~30k miles I owned it for, and over the next 10k miles or so the fuel economy got steadily back to the point it achieved at its best.

BMW M cars (not the M135/140 etc) have a mandatory running in period followed by an oil change (normally 1200 miles). If you don't adhere to this your warranty will be void. They certainly used to use a different oil for running in, but I'm not sure if this is still the case with the F generation and later.
 
Soldato
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A lot of people think because I have a Ferrari it must cost over a grand a month in payments, its £300 because I put a lot of cash into the car and servicing is free.

Is that a succession of lucky GFV's leading to equity over a few deals, or a fat wadge of cash from savings? I'm not trying to be picky I'm just trying to learn more about car financing, and what it really takes to be drive big boy cars :p. Only ever bought cash so far but I am thinking about an R8 next and the numbers are getting scary.
 
OcUK Staff
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Is that a succession of lucky GFV's leading to equity over a few deals, or a fat wadge of cash from savings? I'm not trying to be picky I'm just trying to learn more about car financing, and what it really takes to be drive big boy cars :p. Only ever bought cash so far but I am thinking about an R8 next and the numbers are getting scary.

Basically money invested in cars, then cars sold led to have a rather large sum of cash, I owned the SVR outright and sold it privately, then put money towards it so I could put as big as deposit down as possible. I then also re-financed with a different broker who gave me a more aggressive APR and paid another lump sum of the balance owing, hence paying less than £300 a month and as the car essentially has no running cost other than fuel and insurance, well Ferrari ownership so far has being nothing but amazing, the free holidays / events they take you on is a nice bonus.

The Ferrari to us is a car to enjoy and could also be an investment, their values for high specification models are strong and our plan is to have it near as dammit paid off in another couple of years and to then either just keep it locked away in the garage only bringing out on nice weekends if values look to be going up up and up or if they just seem stable and not showing much signs are moving up more then probably just sell it and bank the cash, but until that time comes we've both decided to just keep it because for me there is nothing better in existence, I drove everything and the 458 won by miles, everything else just felt nowhere near as special. But I do know now Winter is moving in I am certainly going to be missing the SVR, that remote start, heated screen, heated seats and AWD were a joy in such conditions, though the Abarth will do the role OK and the Ferrari can remain locked up. :)

All being well the Clio shall be gone this weekend too, as the M3 went a few weeks ago.


P.S. If your thinking R8, forget new, you will loose money so fast, they depreciate like crazy, I've seen V10 manuals for 40k, that is a good place to put your money, downside is lack of warranty and potential bills. But an R8 V10 manual will give you all the smile and giggle factor pretty much of a brand new R8 V10 S-Tronic, maybe more so if you prefer idea of a gated manual. I'd look for one at 40-50k, then have 10k in savings in case it decides to have any moments, but with a manual you should be safe. Finance wise magnitude, HMC, Paragon are all good finance companies that will generally give you somewhere between 3.5-5.5% if your credit history is good!
 
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Soldato
Joined
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P.S. If your thinking R8, forget new, you will loose money so fast, they depreciate like crazy, I've seen V10 manuals for 40k, that is a good place to put your money, downside is lack of warranty and potential bills. But an R8 V10 manual will give you all the smile and giggle factor pretty much of a brand new R8 V10 S-Tronic, maybe more so if you prefer idea of a gated manual. I'd look for one at 40-50k, then have 10k in savings in case it decides to have any moments, but with a manual you should be safe. Finance wise magnitude, HMC, Paragon are all good finance companies that will generally give you somewhere between 3.5-5.5% if your credit history is good!

That's exactly where I'm thinking, but also a V8 S-Tronic. It will be a daily and it seems that the manuals eat clutches for breakfast. On the flip side the V10 seems to be generally more reliable, but something about it terrifies me.
 
OcUK Staff
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That's exactly where I'm thinking, but also a V8 S-Tronic. It will be a daily and it seems that the manuals eat clutches for breakfast. On the flip side the V10 seems to be generally more reliable, but something about it terrifies me.

Well without a warranty if you get unlucky they can throw bills around 30k if S-Tronic fails, maybe a specialist could repair for less but your still talking 10k plus. Maybe try to find a dealer network S-Tronic car around 60k with warranty, then stick 20-30k down and finance the remainder with a competitive company with good rates. Also get an extended test drive, if you want fast and capable with awesome soundtrack then great fun, but you gotta be going fairly fast in them to get a sense of enjoyment, at legal speeds they can be somewhat underwhelming something many modern cars are like now.
 
Soldato
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19 Oct 2008
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Yes Housey's bill was 28k on his R8 V10, which in his case the warranty covered.
And there was me thinking paying a chunk of £30k for a new car was expensive :p.
Should be picking up my 30th Anni RF this week as well. Top choice sir :cool:
Did you pick up your new car? How are you finding it. And did you get locking wheel nuts with yours? I'm waiting on mine. They should have come with the car apparently as part of the dealer install kit but according to my dealer there are none in the UK at the moment. They only offered this info when I asked where they were as I saw there were none installed. I wondered if they were being truthful as I later received a call that they were in the parts department but apparently they phoned the wrong customer - seems like maybe the dealer has a habit of not installing them.
 
Soldato
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17 Sep 2007
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It has been on the cards for a while now but finally got the black grills fitted.

Keeping the chrome just in case I change my mind but I do like the black.

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