Discussion
hi guys,
is the below a true reflection of Noble?? Its just i'm very interested in buying one.......
Any advice etc that you can give me would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
My mate has just got shot of his. i drove it a couple of times inc a lap at the Ring.
the reason for him selling was that in 2004, servicing, tyres and non-warranty repairs cost him 10,204 to run the car
Noble's approach to supporting customers over repairs was appalling. On 2 occasions they used the line.."has it been on the track sir!" (remember this car cost 50K). The car had done 28,000m in 18 months. Good drive but unreliable and very poor manufactuer support.
is the below a true reflection of Noble?? Its just i'm very interested in buying one.......
Any advice etc that you can give me would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
My mate has just got shot of his. i drove it a couple of times inc a lap at the Ring.
the reason for him selling was that in 2004, servicing, tyres and non-warranty repairs cost him 10,204 to run the car
Noble's approach to supporting customers over repairs was appalling. On 2 occasions they used the line.."has it been on the track sir!" (remember this car cost 50K). The car had done 28,000m in 18 months. Good drive but unreliable and very poor manufactuer support.
I would tend to agree with caccobra
Buy it! You will not regret it.
I have had no problems with Noble/factory, on the contrary, absolutely fantastic.
I have had a few mechanical issues, they know I track it, makes no difference to them, all issues resolved, at no additional cost to me.
When it is time, I will be going for an M400.
Can not recommend them highly enough.
Buy it! You will not regret it.
I have had no problems with Noble/factory, on the contrary, absolutely fantastic.
I have had a few mechanical issues, they know I track it, makes no difference to them, all issues resolved, at no additional cost to me.
When it is time, I will be going for an M400.
Can not recommend them highly enough.
Experience is variable - I'm not the only one to have had a lot of things go wrong (19 at last count in first year - some repetitions of same fault)- and if you're a long way from the factory, getting them sorted out can be frustrating.
But £10K per year seems wide of the mark.
Brian J
But £10K per year seems wide of the mark.
Brian J
Had mine for allmost 6 months now and the only things to go wrong are a loose wheel nut, a broken exhaust bracket, the indicator stalk not returning, and a couple of plastic clips have fallen off the seats. I f the same or less happens in the next 6 months I'll be more than happy.
Martin.
Martin.
There are always two sides to a story.....
Mine cost me well over that, but then I did, stupidly, blow up an engine that was my fault, had £5000+ worth of upgrades done to it, and bought the very first model for list price just after it had been released.
You can't have that situation anymore, and even during my well documented problems, the factory and dealer were excellent in service and sensibility.
Despite the cost, I was and still am very happy with Noble, so much so I just recently upgraded to a M400. You don't need to spend as much as I did, even if you do track them, so work out your own budget, have a look at www.lotus-elise.org.uk, www.gto3.com for some real life diaries and costs, and make up your mind yourself, not on some "quote".
J
Mine cost me well over that, but then I did, stupidly, blow up an engine that was my fault, had £5000+ worth of upgrades done to it, and bought the very first model for list price just after it had been released.
You can't have that situation anymore, and even during my well documented problems, the factory and dealer were excellent in service and sensibility.
Despite the cost, I was and still am very happy with Noble, so much so I just recently upgraded to a M400. You don't need to spend as much as I did, even if you do track them, so work out your own budget, have a look at www.lotus-elise.org.uk, www.gto3.com for some real life diaries and costs, and make up your mind yourself, not on some "quote".
J
Factory! Dealers worldwide! Everyone! Martin says he'll be happy. nildram said:
I had my Noble for 15 months. In that time it cost me about £25k in depreciation and repairs etc. Not the cheapest experience I've ever had, and it did spend quite a bit of time at the factory rather than in my garage. That's why I'm back in an Elise.
I'm curious how much of that was depreciation vs running costs? I know you tracked yours a lot, so splitting out what was tyre/pad wear etc. would be handy as these would be a fixed cost on a similar priced car.
The Elise should always be a lot cheaper to run. Consumables cost less, its lighter and significantly less complicated.
To the original poster, one needs to know how many track miles etc he covered and what went wrong. Without that its hard to know. Has he run a 50k porker on track to contrast with, or is he comparing to an Elise or caterham?
28k in 18 months is a lot of mileage for a car like the noble. Its got 6k service intervals IIRC? If you drive it as its intended that far, its bound to go through a few bits. Ball joints can wear reasonably quickly for instance, but they last about as long as they did on a mates 355. Another chap on PH was complaining that his GT3s dampers were shot after 10k. I'm not trying to say the noble is cheap, but if you heavily track a 50k car, you can expect some pretty considerable bills whatever the marque.
If you want budget track usage, take the performance hit and get an Elise imho, or maybe a caterham if you like that type of car.
My car cost the previous owner about 2800+vat in consumables over 2 years with reasonable track usage. That excludes servicing+insurance+upgrades. 870+vat of that was some was some pirelli rosso corsas so not that necessary!
>> Edited by DanH on Thursday 10th February 16:18
I only did about 3 track days in mine, so running costs weren't high. I spent out on various upgrades, including:
LSD
6 speed box
Track day sump
Oil temp & pressure gauge
Brake pipe upgrade
The real killer was the depreciation, which wasn't helped by the fact that most of these upgrades found their way into the standard car without affecting the retail price. I also managed to blow 3 engines, but was only asked to pay for the first (no track day sump at the time).
I've switched to an Elise with a Honda Type-R engine, which is supposedly bullet proof, and so it has proven so far...
LSD
6 speed box
Track day sump
Oil temp & pressure gauge
Brake pipe upgrade
The real killer was the depreciation, which wasn't helped by the fact that most of these upgrades found their way into the standard car without affecting the retail price. I also managed to blow 3 engines, but was only asked to pay for the first (no track day sump at the time).
I've switched to an Elise with a Honda Type-R engine, which is supposedly bullet proof, and so it has proven so far...
Yeah those upgrades can kill you. My car had them too, but to be fair thats entirely self inflicted so I didn't think it fair to include them.
Depreciation /shrug. Its better than a TVR, worse than a Porsche, although not as bad against a Porsche as it might look since dealers take such huge margins when you trade one in.
No Lotus said:
I'm going to track my Noble when I get it, but wow, I certainly hope to avoid blowing three engines in 15 months.
Don't take that out of contex.
The engine problem was firstly down to the car generating so much lateral G that oil starvation happened, but in fairness none of the factory cars had the problem. If you buy car <100 of any manufacturer like Noble you are going to find things like that. On the flip side the cost of my new engine was nothing like the "real" cost.
My second problem was down to a) two Garrett turbos throwing their contents into the top end of the engine and generally wrecking it. Given that Garrett are a major OEM manufacturer you could call that dead unlucky, and b) an OEM radiator core being sub standard made and causing cooling problems.
Again, you have to go eyes wide open into buying an early car of a new design. It's not an dig at Noble, heck my original (early model) X5 has had 3 "it might kill you" recalls, so you can't hide from OEM kit going wrong on you whatever you buy.
My third was a pure fluke in that the fuel filter got bunged up with "all sorts of c**p", which meant that it couldn't supply the correct amount of fuel at full throttle, and hence melted the top end. Unluky, yes. Forseeable, probably no.
However, compare and contrast the M12 experience with the BMW experience....
X5, recalled for fault that could cause "total brake failure".
* No letter from factory
* No letter from dealer
* No communication
Find out about it via AA's website, go to dealer, show AA website printout, ask for immediate appointment. Lots of head scracthing, with final reply "oh, don't worry about it, we haven't any parts, it'll be five weeks until we get them in, just bring it back then".
To which I reply "so you want me to drive around for five weeks in a car that has a known fault that could, at any time, cause total brake failure and kill me".
Silence.....
Noble goes bang
"Sorry, our fault"
I have a track day the next week, already paid for. Without hesitation I get "Here, have the keys to the factory car, go and have fun out there"
Decide yourself which has the "better" customer service - BMW or Noble.
J
As I said earlier though, variable experiences (what hold do you have over them, Joust?!) - my experience of Noble includes unanswered phones, unanswered e-mails, lost orders; the dealer that I bought new car from was sacked and I was caught in dispute on my warranty parts between Noble and dealer, the replacement dealer closes down for a week at a time when you have an emergency; but also the factory can be a great source of advice - on the right day!
The car is fantastic and so far it's been worth the hassle but go in with eyes open.
Brian J
The car is fantastic and so far it's been worth the hassle but go in with eyes open.
Brian J
I think like any high performance/low volume car it's going to be prone to issues. Additionally the early 2.5 cars like mine turned out to be a little fragile.
I had my car 2 years (new June '02) and did approx 25k miles. I've never worked out the exact costs over that time but it would make your eyes water! Dropped £22k in depreciation, approx 9k in servicing excluding tyres/pads and 2k power upgrade. A large part of this was replacing the loom and MM ecu which spontaneously combusted whilst driving down the motorway (not covered by warranty as car was 14 months old at the time - Noble agreed to pay 50% of parts costs). I did 5 or 6 trackdriving days and it let me down at 4 of the 6. In addition I had 5 AA flatbed recoveries for various issues, mostly dumping coolant from overheating. Several attempts were made to resolve the overheating issues, but never managed it.
HOWEVER i intend to get a used M400 later in the year, as a Noble is sublime when it's working, but sadly i lost all confidence in my M12 getting from A to B without incident. The later 3L cars certainly seem much more sorted, as you'd expect given the development time since the original 2.5.
I've recently bought a 355 spider and the major 18kcambelt service at £1800 was less than the 24k service i had done on the Noble just before i sold it!
I certainly think my problems were the exception, but i think you need to go into ownership with your eyes open and a handy pot of cash to cover any eventualities and hope to get lucky! I ran TVR's for 3 years and they never missed a beat..........
I had my car 2 years (new June '02) and did approx 25k miles. I've never worked out the exact costs over that time but it would make your eyes water! Dropped £22k in depreciation, approx 9k in servicing excluding tyres/pads and 2k power upgrade. A large part of this was replacing the loom and MM ecu which spontaneously combusted whilst driving down the motorway (not covered by warranty as car was 14 months old at the time - Noble agreed to pay 50% of parts costs). I did 5 or 6 trackdriving days and it let me down at 4 of the 6. In addition I had 5 AA flatbed recoveries for various issues, mostly dumping coolant from overheating. Several attempts were made to resolve the overheating issues, but never managed it.
HOWEVER i intend to get a used M400 later in the year, as a Noble is sublime when it's working, but sadly i lost all confidence in my M12 getting from A to B without incident. The later 3L cars certainly seem much more sorted, as you'd expect given the development time since the original 2.5.
I've recently bought a 355 spider and the major 18kcambelt service at £1800 was less than the 24k service i had done on the Noble just before i sold it!
I certainly think my problems were the exception, but i think you need to go into ownership with your eyes open and a handy pot of cash to cover any eventualities and hope to get lucky! I ran TVR's for 3 years and they never missed a beat..........
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