Opted out of the company car scheme in 2001 and thought "If I'm buying my own car, I want one that'll be good for 8-10 years. 'cos I don't do much mileage working from home and I don't want to take the hit on PXing low mileage cars every few years".
So I got a Volvo C70 convertible, it was my first convertible and also my first automatic. Stylish enough and goes alright in a kind of "arm on the sill cruiser" type of way, which is all I want from a car 'cos I've got a Ducati to go fast on. And it's a Volvo right? Built like tanks, should last forever if looked after right and take 50,000 miles before it's run in properly...well that's the popular opinion.
So 8 years and 50,000 miles later (told you I didn't do much mileage) it's failed it's MOT for the first time. Why?
"Needs two new front discs sir, and the pads, well past their service limits, and the rear discs and pads are in the same state, and one of the rear coil springs is broken. The power steering pump is leaking so the steering could suddenly lose all assistance, very dangerous if you're in mid corner sir, Oh and we've found a small bulge on the inside of one of the rear tyres. And the cause of the occasional poor starting turns out to be the antenna ring on the immobiliser - you don't need that for it's MOT though sir" So how much is that little lot going to cost me then?
Front Discs and Pads fitted: 266.00
Rear Discs and Pads fitted: 243.00
Power steering pump fitted: 505.88
Rear Coil Spring fitted: 107.00
Antenna Ring fitted: 112.00
New rear tyre: 125.00
Plus the MOT and service
Total £1471.00
All this on a car that only gets driven to a customer visit in Slough once a week plus a few weekend trips to the shops. Average of 6250 miles a year, and quite a bit of the total mileage was down to some very occasional holiday trips to Ireland and Devon. Nearly all the driving I do is on the motorway where I hardly ever touch the brakes except on the slip roads and if the traffic comes to a complete halt, the rest of the time I try to anticipate the traffic conditions so that I don't have to be on and off the anchors all the time, and how the feck does a coil spring break when all it does is plough up and down the motorway with only me in it, especially when I've never clogged this car - just wafted around in cruise mode.
I've had 'lesser' cars like Peugeots that I've thrashed mercilessly bouncing of the rev limiter around potholed old A roads, slamming on the brakes and doing high mileage - the last Peugeot had 168,000 miles on it after 3 years and it never cost me this much in it's life - and I never wore the discs out.
I think there's more than a bit of **** taking going on here - Dealers can't flog new cars to anyone at the moment, so just look for service customers to give a good shafting to.
Rant Over.
Mrs Jools needs a mobility scooter these days anyway, and you can't get one of those in the back of a convertible or into her Smart, so I was going to take the car with the top down on a nice sunny day to a dealer with a Grand Espace worth around the same as the Volvo and see if I could persuade them to just do a straight swap....just wish I'd done it last month
