Thread: The trials of buying that new car

I woke up last week, to my better half informing me that it was time to get a new love of her life. This initially had me worried, until I remembered that I come fourth in her life of loves after cars, guns and knives. So I tactfully asked, so you've got your gun licence sorted out? no silly she said, that will take forever, I'm getting a new car; its the car show next week, I'm bored with toyota and i'm bored with getting 10km/l; i fancy a nissan

This one word filled me with dread, nissan, the only company that managed to make every volvo ever built look like a work of art, a company that thinks 'teana' is a cool name for a car. It proably is a cool name for that buxum 20 something leggy secretary sat on your knee with a belt for a skirt and an IQ to match... and whilst you might want to be in one, you certainly would not want to drive around in one.

So its Friday and were off to the show, she's ideally wants to spend about 6-800k but can go to about 1400k for something special. first its chrisler, the cruze, its borning and lasts about 30 seconds until its decided that we take a look at suberu not expecting see anything affordable. In engineering terms, lovely cars, but what they have in engineering they certainly lack in beauty. It turned out this was a productive visit. first they are selling a model called the brz, and well its the first suberu I ahve ever seen which I would call atheistically pleasing, completly impractical and looks like if can go like a bat out of hell, a nice car. but its 2.6 million and out of reach. Then there was the new XV, its 1.3 million and its a bit like a small toyota fortuna for civilized people who don't mind the lack of a free gun with everyone sold. This got added to better halfs buy me list.

next stop nissan, she didn't want to tena, too expensive and way too big. no she was interested in a small model which I will call the nissan syphlus, many because its so boring i cannot rember its name but also to demonize it. fortunatly for me we discover you cannot fold the rear seats down to make the boot bigger. who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea? obviously nissan. so to a great sigh of relive nissan's out of the running.

Next its toyota, talk about usless sales people, loads of customers milling around waiting to be served and a couple of dozen sales people sat around the stage making the place look untidy and playing with their phones. then theres this lass that came to us, gave us 2 minutes handed us her card and pissed off leaving others to sell the car. clever of her really as by doing this the hard work of the other sales people gets assinged to her and she gets the commission... lovly

the cambery is too big, so it comes down to the new preus at 1.2-3 million. nice car with very good urban and praticually rot dit fuel consumption. seriously impressed better half. then there is the altis, which is fine, its an ok car. but its a little bit same same as we currently have a 17 year old corola

Then its Mazda, now they make the imaginatively named mazda3, which for a car in its class has a very nicely designed interia, not as nice as suberu, but better than Toyota and nissan. to be honest is about the same price as the toyata altis, and so much better, apart from the argument second hand spares, resale value and wide availablity of serveice senters I cannot see why anyone would by an altis after seeing the mazda.... better half thinks this so the altis is out

So by saturday we have it down to three cars the suberu xv, maza 3 and the toyta prius. it looks like the prius is winning as this afternoon we went to a toyta dealer thats not at the show to get a better deal, so test drive tomorrow. i think it was suberus engine being fussy about its fuel, that put her off itr and the mazda's fuel consumprion wasn't that different from what we get with the current car.

so after boringyou to shit with that deitribe i guess i should ask the bettyboo question. what do you chaps think of the prios any you got one.

And whilst i know why cars in thailand are such crap value for money, why unless you love white, silver and black do they have such a shit range of generall crap colours?

The test reviews seem to be unanimous about the Prius, it's dead boring to drive.
Unless you take it out of eco-mode then you will die of boredom.

might find out about that on the test drive. better maker sure its in eco mode.

You're obviously not serious about getting the most car for your money, so go and get a Nissan or be arse raped by Toyoya's BS 'green' credentails.

I'm not buying the car directly or indirectly so it not like I have a huge amount of say in the matter. But given that 80-90% of your driving in urban Bangkok driving with its traffic jams, I would have thought the preus would be well optimised for this usage.

Marmit in the last week you've been nice about Ozzies and now you recommending essentially Japanese renaults.... Are you feeling unwell?

Originally Posted by hazz

now you recommending essentially Japanese renaults

I don't recall recommending any car in this thread.

Originally Posted by Thetyim

The test reviews seem to be unanimous about the Prius, it's dead boring to drive.
Unless you take it out of eco-mode then you will die of boredom.

driving in Bangkok has not been universally acclaimed as exciting, unless you count the dents

Sorry marmit. Those hints of kindness towards Aussies and me being a little off my game... I didn't realise you were not recommending nissan but simply stating that you dislike the Toyota prus more than you hate French cars.... Which is much more like marmit.

Andy I can assure you we have more than enough chicken headed motorcyclists in Bangkok to provide even the most boring of trips with the odd moment of exstreamly excitement. It's even better at night with the ech minded chicken heads that improve their fuel echonomy by using no lights

If Prius is an "Eco car" why is the new one 1800cc when the old one was 1600. Surely a new one with better tech would be less. Say 1400cc?

Eco my ass, its a car for George Clooney wannabees.

Sat in a Prius Sportivo red. Inside very nice. Spacious. Etc etc. BUT, brace yourself when you have engine problems. A guy in my wife's school had the Camry Hybrid, after he got the quote to fix the engine he decided to sell it and leave it like that.

Also Hybrid cars are way overpriced here.

My Civic has that ECON mode. I've been drivin it like that since day 1. I don't mind it. I do mostly highway miles. If I step on it, it goes if I need to pass someone. But I like it nice and steady. The more you drive the higher the FE goes. Going not that far from here it almost hit 14km/L. I'll stretch its legs with the commute this week and see how it goes.

An unbiased view of the Prius .... I keep one in the US (split my time between the motherland and the kingdom).

The Prius is very functional and utilitarian. It does, in real world driving, get 50 mpg, or about 22KPL. It is comfortable, has a lot of room, and can carry a lot of stuff. It is well equipped. It is, in my opinion, a nicer car than the Altis (excluding anything to do with the hybrid system). In the US, it has just about the highest residual value you can find in a car.

It is boring to drive. Power is adequate, but not stellar. It is, in the eyes of many, unattractive. I could care less about what it looks like.

It is rock-solid reliable. People sometimes whine about how much it will cost to replace the battery. The warrantee on the battery is longer than the warrantee on the engine. I know a lot of people that own Prius', some quite old, and I know of no one that has had to replace the battery. In the US, I have never heard anyone complain about repair costs. I have never had to repair mine, so I have no data on these costs.

In Thailand, the premium for a hybrid is, indeed, quite steep. In the USofA, the premium is about $1-2K. On the Camry, the premium is about $6k.

In the US, compared to competing cars, I think it is a good value. In Thailand, I think it is overpriced compared to other cars.

With cars in thailand there is no such thing as value for money. The governernment uses high import duties to raise tax in a country where income tax payers are less then 10% of the country and to support a kind of indigenous manufacturing base of which the factory owners take full advantage. So whatever better half buys we get ass raped by a fat cat with a cigar and there's a grinning politician waiting for seconds. but like all british tax payers, gordon brown and a long series of pfi/ppp contractors have taught us how to take this with a smile

This still does not explain seriously restricted choice of colors for cars.

Anyway it looks like she's going to go for the Prius Sportivo in metallic white.... unless the test drive, which didn't happen today, goes real bad. Personally i would like to rent one for a couple of weeks for her to get a good feel for whether she likes it or not, but I cannot find anyone who rents them out ion bangkok. Personally I perfer my cars where I control what the car does rather than for me to tell a computer what I want to do and have it drive the car for me..... which I suspect root cause of lack of control that troy is warning about. Given my professional specialism is working on computers that are working hard to distroy the businesses that depend upon them and make them reliable, functional and boring.... trusting a computer just does not come natural, shredding them into gravel is.

^In the UK after a spell in London I lost my addiction to car ownership and I found a combination of public transport, rentals and home delivery to be far more agreeable. But bangkok's a long way from that especially for those of us out in the urban sticks like dusit

Originally Posted by Troy

Trial the prius on a wet day is my advice....I think you'll find you have no feeling for the road at all. The other thing I dislike about some of these eco thingies is that the throttle is either totally unresponsive or lags so much that it becomes a danger in slow speed/stop conditions, e.g. city driving.

I won't argue economy with cars in Thailand...too far behind Europe....
I am not really a fan of city cars and prefer to park up and use public transport.....but I guess that is even more boring....

I'll disagree with the 2 points above. I'm in northern California at the moment where we are having torrential rains. No issues at all driving in wet weather, even the current mnsoon we are having.

Completely disagree about throttle response. IMHO driving a hybrid feels no different than driving a regular car. The hybrd aspect is pretty invisible. And with a 1.8 liter engine, the prius' power is adequete.

and pet peeve of the day, these buggers v-cool.com, recon that 30,000B to put their film in a car is not comical!

You're lucky you're in BKK, Hazz. If you were in CM there's the additional excitement of finding out how many months you've got to wait for delivery of whichever tin box you chose.

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

If Prius is an "Eco car" why is the new one 1800cc when the old one was 1600. Surely a new one with better tech would be less. Say 1400cc?

Eco my ass, its a car for George Clooney wannabees.

personally Ive always found 1.6 engines to be very asthmatic and developed a prejudice against them. saying that ive been told that modern 1.6's are mroe like the old 1.8's I used to drive. Given that all that echo stuff shutssown once you get to, i believe 60km/hr. you really want a decent engine for performance on the expressway and if thats the kind of driving your doing most of the time, you really should be thinking about why your buying one.

Personally I like saab's. but thats not a very practical choice now

Originally Posted by hazz

next stop nissan, she didn't want to tena, too expensive and way too big

Quite shit too, I've got one.

Given your a kiwi, there's no shame in not knowing just how shit all french cars are

what do they do, get a parking attendant to push them upto CM?

Yep, in reverse. I don't know what the deal is, even under normal circumstances you usually get quoted a three month wait - although my experience is it usually ends up being 6 - 8 weeks.

Something similar... I simply can't leave the car (an auto) in neutral. Same thing with my old Co. car too (a Camry).

Mine wont let you take the keys out unless you are in park and then wont let you move the gearstick until the keys are back in it.
There is a little cover near the gearstick, which if pried open has a button or switch that will let you leave the car in neutral.This should disable all the various interlocks.

On a side note, they go to an awful amount of trouble with Autos to make sure you are in park. But on any manual it's a free for all. Does anyone know why they do this?