New addition / a crazy two car fleet / EPIC MAN MATHS
Discussion
Hi everyone,
I haven't posted in here for a while but I couldn't really hold in the excitement.
Until recently my daily runaround was an E36 328i I never really took to. My second car, which I still have, is a Noble M12 GTO 2.5
I've wanted a this new car ever since I saw it on Top Gear in November 2003 but unfortunately was only 17 at the time and had been driving a mere 5 months when the episode aired. I've thought about them ever since and looked at getting one a couple of years but after a very brief test drive I came away cold after I complained there was something odd going on with the gearchanges and cut my drive somewhat short, not to mention it would have meant selling my other car first. Things have changed a bit this year; I paid off my student loan in february and have done a rather large amount of overtime. I'd been almost absent mindedly scooping the excess off the top of my bank account into a savings account and before I knew it I had a nice little nest egg ripe and ready to put a deposit down on a house... But that's not me, not yet anyway...
So I started looking for a replacement for the 328 as my daily. First on the list was a Megane 250. I never actually drove one before I realised I was only a few thousand off a V8 M3. Drove both a DCT and a Manual and whilst they're very nice cars I didn't think they were special enough, not to mention being "just a few more thousand off CSL territory". So I started look around, saw that the prices had once again risen since I last looked but noticed a certain higher mileage car. Initially I dismissed it and thought I'd missed the boat but I just happened to be travelling back to my parents house and gave the seller a call as it wasn't far out of the way. The car was still for sale. On the way down I'd convinced myself it was a terrible idea. High mileage, no transferable warranty, no safety net, what was I thinking?
...And then he opened the garage door, and one of the cleanest CSL's I'd seen was sitting there looking at me. Sir, you had my curiosity but now you have my attention. Unfortunately it was raining so we chatted for a while about the car, about ownership etc. and rescheduled for a drive, weather permitting, on the 11th May. I had a trackday booked the day following the drive with the Noble and so if nothing went wrong then that would be the decision point. A CSL would be mine...
The Noble performed flawlessly. The next day I began texting the seller, we discussed some intricacies and a day later the payment was made. I collected the car this Saturday just gone and I'm on my second tank of fuel today
The more I drive it the more I love it. It's an incredible thing and is even better than I could have imagined. It's so well set up, so easy to handle and my god, that noise. THAT NOISE. They say don't meet your heroes but I've now bought two of them and both are better than I could have imagined. I shall have a think about whether I need them both over the next few months / year. I still have a couple of things I want to do with the Noble such as a lap or two of the 'ring.
For now then the CSL is my daily driver. I will post about how I'm getting on with it but it's actually quite a bit nicer than the Noble so I'm already having issues finding correct parking spaces and find myself constantly looking out the window at night to check if it's still there, was ever there or if I'm imagining the whole crazy situation! It is a lot better riding and a lot more refined than I expected. A long drive on the motorway was very easy on Sunday. About 130 miles is the limit in the Noble before all sorts of aches and cramps start happening but I arrived home feeling fresh as a daisy!
Electric windows, air con, aux jack. 6 cylinders, 355bhp, what more do you need from a commuter hack?
So here's a garage 11 years in the making. Good things come to those who wait, eh?
I haven't posted in here for a while but I couldn't really hold in the excitement.
Until recently my daily runaround was an E36 328i I never really took to. My second car, which I still have, is a Noble M12 GTO 2.5
I've wanted a this new car ever since I saw it on Top Gear in November 2003 but unfortunately was only 17 at the time and had been driving a mere 5 months when the episode aired. I've thought about them ever since and looked at getting one a couple of years but after a very brief test drive I came away cold after I complained there was something odd going on with the gearchanges and cut my drive somewhat short, not to mention it would have meant selling my other car first. Things have changed a bit this year; I paid off my student loan in february and have done a rather large amount of overtime. I'd been almost absent mindedly scooping the excess off the top of my bank account into a savings account and before I knew it I had a nice little nest egg ripe and ready to put a deposit down on a house... But that's not me, not yet anyway...
So I started looking for a replacement for the 328 as my daily. First on the list was a Megane 250. I never actually drove one before I realised I was only a few thousand off a V8 M3. Drove both a DCT and a Manual and whilst they're very nice cars I didn't think they were special enough, not to mention being "just a few more thousand off CSL territory". So I started look around, saw that the prices had once again risen since I last looked but noticed a certain higher mileage car. Initially I dismissed it and thought I'd missed the boat but I just happened to be travelling back to my parents house and gave the seller a call as it wasn't far out of the way. The car was still for sale. On the way down I'd convinced myself it was a terrible idea. High mileage, no transferable warranty, no safety net, what was I thinking?
...And then he opened the garage door, and one of the cleanest CSL's I'd seen was sitting there looking at me. Sir, you had my curiosity but now you have my attention. Unfortunately it was raining so we chatted for a while about the car, about ownership etc. and rescheduled for a drive, weather permitting, on the 11th May. I had a trackday booked the day following the drive with the Noble and so if nothing went wrong then that would be the decision point. A CSL would be mine...
The Noble performed flawlessly. The next day I began texting the seller, we discussed some intricacies and a day later the payment was made. I collected the car this Saturday just gone and I'm on my second tank of fuel today
The more I drive it the more I love it. It's an incredible thing and is even better than I could have imagined. It's so well set up, so easy to handle and my god, that noise. THAT NOISE. They say don't meet your heroes but I've now bought two of them and both are better than I could have imagined. I shall have a think about whether I need them both over the next few months / year. I still have a couple of things I want to do with the Noble such as a lap or two of the 'ring.
For now then the CSL is my daily driver. I will post about how I'm getting on with it but it's actually quite a bit nicer than the Noble so I'm already having issues finding correct parking spaces and find myself constantly looking out the window at night to check if it's still there, was ever there or if I'm imagining the whole crazy situation! It is a lot better riding and a lot more refined than I expected. A long drive on the motorway was very easy on Sunday. About 130 miles is the limit in the Noble before all sorts of aches and cramps start happening but I arrived home feeling fresh as a daisy!
Electric windows, air con, aux jack. 6 cylinders, 355bhp, what more do you need from a commuter hack?
So here's a garage 11 years in the making. Good things come to those who wait, eh?
This will be one you can actually enjoy and not worry too much about - excellent!It was just at the tail end of 113k but yeah I imagine it's the same car you've seen for sale recently. Those were exactly my thoughts, I'm not going to worry about going anywhere in it and looking through recent bills it seemed that Murketts chucked a load of things through on the warranty for the sake of it just as it ran out
I've got a decent support network of friends and ex-BMW mechanics so hopefully if anything goes wrong I can sort it without having to resort to a dealer. I suppose the risk is losing the originality now without a warranty as a safety net but with the mileage this high that shouldn't be too much of an issue.
I suppose there's also the last resort that the car is probably worth more in bits than I paid for it, but that's a very very last resort if something super expensive breaks. I hope it never comes to that because I love it too much already!
I've got a decent support network of friends and ex-BMW mechanics so hopefully if anything goes wrong I can sort it without having to resort to a dealer. I suppose the risk is losing the originality now without a warranty as a safety net but with the mileage this high that shouldn't be too much of an issue.
I suppose there's also the last resort that the car is probably worth more in bits than I paid for it, but that's a very very last resort if something super expensive breaks. I hope it never comes to that because I love it too much already!
B3MX5 said:
Great pair!
It's possible the increasing value of CSL's will offset the commuting mileage, either way it's a damn sight more fun the default oil-burner option.
Yeah hopefully, I'm not too worried. You can't hold on to every penny when you have an expensive hobby like this. It's something I've wanted for 11 years and if I'd not done it now there's a chance they'd have slipped out of my price range. If I lose a bit, so be it but because of how much I travel I've only commuted 600 miles this year anyway!It's possible the increasing value of CSL's will offset the commuting mileage, either way it's a damn sight more fun the default oil-burner option.
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