More car thoughts

I'm getting closer to actually 100% owning my car now.

I got it 3 years ago in a bit of an emergency buy. My previous car (a Ford Puma) had given me quite a few years of excellent service but it hit its wall at about 70,000 miles. Before that, hardly anything needing attention at the annual service. After that, all sorts of mechanical mayhem started happening. Power steering pump was the start but by the end, the braking system was totally shot with something weird happening with the anti-lock system and a complete failure of the handbrake. Not good if you park on a hill at work (other car park to the one I use now).

So, a couple of years after it started to collect faults, I switched to what I have now. My Focus isn't a bad car, it's actually been pretty good. However. It's bigger than I like a car to be, so the 2 litre 170bhp engine doesn't actually turn into much Go. At the same time, those 2 litres gobble petrol. The little things are starting to go too, like a rear wheel that leaks air. That's not so bad, I have a compressor to pump the tyre up when it goes flat. I may also be allergic to the car. Weird as that sounds, weird is a total fit for me.

The big thing that shattered my confidence in my Focus was the inlet manifold failure last year. You don't expect car stopping failures in modern cars, although you probably should because of the increase in built in complication. What was the response from the garage ? I bought a supposedly all in warranty with the Focus and still had to pay the £550 for the fix. I'll put this in Big Letters :

Buy a CARCRAFT extended warranty and it will mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Everything that breaks will be classified under "fair use", which translates to "You Pay".

Very disappointed, I will not be returning to Carcraft after the last paid for service.

So - what's next ? I'm keeping an eye on the Green Car Site. The people who run that collect as much information as they can about electric cars, biofuel cars, green cars and most interesting for me, hybrid cars. It's a decent mine of information, with just enough in there to let you know what's around. I've pretty much decided that my next car will be a hybrid. I'm very much interested in being as efficient as possible and the energy storage thing that comes with hybrid cars.

There's just one problem. Hybrids are currently coming in 2 categories. Slow and highly efficient is the first, that's where Toyota's hybrid flag bearer (Prius) fits in. The other category is Hot Muscle Roadburner. That's cars like the upcoming Infiniti M35h, looking on Greencarsite they're claiming 0 to 60 in 5.5secs while still doing more miles to the gallon than my Focus and also kicking out less nasty CO2.

I'd love a car like that ! Or the Lexus G450h (link to Lexus site) which is on the market now. Just one problem, I'm not going to spend £46,000 on a car. I'm very wary about spending up to £20,000 on a Honda CR-Z.

That's what I will probably end up with - Honda's CR-Z (Honda site). The raw numbers suggest it's not as fast as I would like, plus the reviews are mixed. Some are stellar, some are poor. I'll treat them with the respect I usually give to reviews, I'll make my own mind up judged on what I think of the reviewer. I miss my Puma, it was an excellent little grownup go-kart. The CR-Z promises to be something similar.

We shall see ! I have 2 more months now until the loan finishes and then I'm free to move from Speculation to being more free about checking stuff out.