Comments by "18rabbit" (@18_rabbit) on "High Peak Autos" channel.

  1.  @WestfieldFreshAir  similar was done here in the US during financial crisis to get new car sales going, we had our first federal incentive to scrap old cars. It ruined the low end used car mkt which had been the very basis of how the middle class on down to the lowest part of the socioeconomy had operated forever to keep the nation going /happy overall. Perhaps not coincidentally we've seen the misery index rise and never look back during this exact same time fram, i.e '08 till now.
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  2. the human being, on avg, is not too sharp. Or many of these owners are ignorant, or cars are too easy for them to afford.
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  3. bingo! most ppl r unaware of the lithum battery risks of venting and fire
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  4. i second the motion!!
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  5.  @AndrewJB yeah, on paper, that is how it's supposed to be, but in practice, quite a few of those parts are not available now and were chronically backordered even before bankruptcy! That was part of why i didn't buy a used or new left-over one in '12 in the U.S. Per rules and laws, parts only need to be available or produced for ten years after the car mfr'd date. So the gig is up, essentially. The parts prices are extraordinarily high for the 9-3, and it's security, steering and ignition computers are all pretty delicate and fail and all told, if also the main computer, u r looking at 2-5K$.
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  6.  @Afraz_9n3  yeah, no that was the myth we all believed but in fact Saab had struggled for well over 20 or 25 years.
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  7.  @Alex-ch2ud  2.8 wasn't lasting into very high miles without trouble ,and expected financially -totalling failure around upper 100K's miles. Also with that engine, fair number of them had unsolvable running issues rendering the car impractical to own, and many such units in the USofA were junked early.
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  8. understand your lamenting and frustration i shared it, but it's not GM's fault actually: Saab had struggled pretty much forever & GM was the ONLY co that had synergies and ability to work with Saab. Car making has always been a thin margin biz, and GM was quite hands off interestingly. Saab just could not compete over time as competitive advantages of different brands became steep and tight.
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  9. yeah they were and presumably still are a hell of a lot of work to do major work on, per the mechanics. But P cars thru history were as well. 911 dunno. The only true sports car i've ever driven in was when i was 12 and it was a late '70's 930, basically the most sporting car of the time. My mother's friend owned it and drove me into the mountains, got it up to serious acceleration and high speed on a side little straight away road! Epic... Later we stopped by the Ferrari store and the asshat italian american sole salesman had an attitude toward us, my friend was japanese american. Ferarri lost me at that and sure hinted at the hilarious low quality that Ferarri's were then.
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  10. if u keep it long, u will have tremendous trouble servicing it without spending a fortune, in the PNW or really anywhere in the U.S. I'm from here, Sea. Whereas in the UK, it's possible to get parts much more cheaply and used parts of course, which are increasingly necessary
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  11. yeah, intersting but only intersting really if u say which engine u have!!
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  12. the i3 Rex's have an incredibly small petrol tank, so it's considered not practical for regular use or reasonable distances use, from what i gathered
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  13. the car looks literally brand new! Glad u didn't do the wheels which look perfect in video, which is plenty accurate enough vs RL looks. And u should include the second the transport as well! This is a biz!
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  14. i'm a yank and indeed the beeping drives us to distraction (literally) and sheer near-madness. All about liability apparently and/or the idjit-ocracy we have had going on here for a long time. (i poke fun but it IS indeed a quite severely under-educated and under-informed populace, as a whole, i can attest now that i've been alive for over 50 years. ) But yes, a toyota model here beeps to death and the UK model does not, so this is a real thing.
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  15.  @beamboy07  no, just as good, and yet different.
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  16. the odd moodswing...indeed.
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  17. if ever in Dubai... not funny, but many ppl would never go to Dubai, period. Just sayin', bcuz things have become more illuminated in the past decade in the world, re who's who, who does what, to whom, etc. UAE is ok, but again, life is short, there's only so much time, and many nice places to go that make Dubai seem not well grounded.
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  18. miss saab terribly! almost bought a brand new left-over when they were going under in the final go-under in late '12 in the U.S., an estate, had two choices, the regular w/ petrol 4cyl turbo 2.0 (great engine) and the allwheel drive 'crosscountry' edition which was marked down from $42K to $22K, for real! Didn't do it! lol Bcuz here in the U.S., servicing and know-how (overall re any brand/model car repairs actually) is very very piss-poor vs the U.K. I really couldn't justify the purchase though, vs e.g. used other euro cars available at the time. If i'd had extra money, i'd absolutely have done it, bcuz it'd likely been my only new car ever (bcuz i dn't like new cars as a buy bcuz in the U.S. traditionally, it made no sense, bcuz like the U.K. today, we yanks had plentiful amounts of great used cars. Not so anymore over past entire decade actually, as the true middle class has actually become markedly less well off, & perhaps partly bcuz we export quite a few good used cars, which we didn't do previously.
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  19. brilliant! Could u please advise on the nice 2.4l/2.5l petrol engines, bcuz at some point around '10ish they changed the internal design to have looser/free'er piston rings and started burning oil and having early failures apparently. Wonder if u could ask your volvo mechanic about that so we could the years it had that issue.
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  20. the chinese also purchased the rights/blueprints/machinery-to-make the... iirc, the prior gen 9-5, and have actually made cars with that underpinning for the Chinese mkt, i think even some petrol ones.
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  21. abso-positively one of the most beautiful designs ever in cars. (lil 'btw': recently u advertised for testosterone check. But that it was needed for u is THE most laughable thing..ever. Clearly u are very healthy in that regard, though i'm not an M.D., but it seems guestimating based on appearance and mentality and personality is accurate in my experience)
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  22. do u think/know if these transmissions are the weak point they supposedly are, failing around mid to upper 100K miles?
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  23. i like it a lot! Oddly i like the autos on these bcuz i was always paranoid about the manual bcuz of the crap IPS design or whatever it was called. The autos rarely had the failure actually happen fully, ie taking out the engine. I adore you american voice/accent.. it's absolutely perfect in every way, also crazily accurate, most brits can't do it well at all! Your yank char's are abso hilarious & give this Yank serious joy! thanks!
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  24.  @themancuniancandidate2744  'massively over-engineered' is not what ANY saab ever was, save maybe the ancient ones, which i actually had in my family when i was a little boy. I love all Saabs but they were not over engineered in most senses. Some german cars were, some volvo's were.
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  25. didn't yee noticed someone had nicked your convertible bmw? lol
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  26. that difference, ie TK maxx vs TJ maxx has got to be the best example of marketing morons wasting the money of their overlords. Lordy!
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  27. no, we had the CRD in some years as well, and it was a rude loud cruddy introduction to small diesels, which helped to keep us unfamiliar and disliking of diesels.
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  28. Perfectly decent profession actually, imho. (and i studied to be part of the diplomatic etc world). There's always something timeless & fascinating about this field & about the behavioral aspect of owners & how they treated their cars. Great video and explanation, as usual! Your work is superb!
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  29. would love your opinion on the interior smell of these 9-3's whose leather, to me, has an extraordinarily strong pungent smell that i really disliked when i was briefly in a few of these? I also wonder if u know of any way to reduce that smell? I know that some dealers use ozone machines to deoodorize cars, but i've not tried such machines out yet.
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  30. yeap the Teslas look bad to me, tho perhaps the S is stomach-able though barely. Mostly the Tesla's look intentionally dorky in the wrong ways of dorky. Perhaps Tesla did this intentinoally like other makers do, to have 'room' to improve the design dramtically later when sales drop off
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  31. My gosh, it's SUCH a hard biz, what u do, re customers. I know too bcuz my friend's husband was in new dealership sales and told of the scams customers would try. Here in the U.S. car dealers have a blend of horrific to vile reputations, for most part in the past thirty years, but actually some are good.
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  32. wow, u can't wait about a v50 being imported for ya? i can't quite get that tbph. I assume manual trans w/ T5 engine but still can't imagine being excited about it or paying import pricing...
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  33. surprised u dn't know of Sumitomo, which makes mostly midline or lower end tires, but is a genuine japanese brand with a pretty good reputation overall. To me, light yrs better than anything of chinese branding. Sumitomo was also a bit famous for some sporty and high performance tires. To me, i've had negative, ie premature decay experiences with Yokohama, which surprised me (that was 15 yrs ago though. So i tend to only want high end now, ie michellin or conti, etc. But i'm wiling to try Nexen since u mentioned them as midline. I'm in the US and we also have all these trash chinese brands now, though fewer brands than u seem to have had over past decade
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  34. yeah, probably bad idea as a keeper, given the mildewy smell AND mostly due to the cost factors and miles. Given that u have the nogaro blue one, this one is just not worthwhile, i suspect
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  35. yeah a lot of cars back then had valve stem seals go bad, particularly mitsu, maybe mazda, volvo for sure in their 5 cyl. Btw there IS one cool thing about this model and only one: a phenomenal actress and her char drove it in a quite unique great american tv show called In Plain Sight, which is not an ancient show, it was a 2010 + show.
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  36. u def do not need an odo rollback!l btw u r very good with words, and here's some other incident/country combos: fracas in france, sprain in spain, rumble in romania, hit in hungary, botch-up in belgium.
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  37. brilliant! I like it, though i think i'd prefer the 6 cyl petrol
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  38. as we yanks grew heavier in body, Bmw & other mfr's really did make heavier, droopier looking cars, usually called a drooping or droopy design, some women commenters saw the final gen Saab 9-3 as droopy in front, and it's hard to disagree, though i think the 9-3 looks good in white or red. These, quite heavy looking but could be way worse. Audi's newer Q7, ugh...
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  39.  @miskatonic6210  not lovely to be so narrow u can't easily turn your head to check for cars behind/side
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  40. yep volvo's have all the water ingress classic causes. Yikes!
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  41. that seems utterly mad
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  42.  @automotivemarinegroup3181  some wives are taller than the husband. Quite a bit taller in some cases. One of my ukr lady friends is well over 6 foot!
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  43. u mean the country or the state in the U.S?
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  44.  @Well_Theres_Your_Problem  yeah that gen/s or period of v6's and v8's by Vag is just horrific and then some.
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  45. bluetooth types are b.s. for a pro and create risks
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  46. The guardian angel type thing is almost always a bad sign, imho.
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  47. yes, but for most part, most of these and most all cars that are not collectible, ie dn't have under around 30Kmiles on clock, are going to continue to depreciate over time. It's not complicated, except for the rare model which is very different in some way from all others. Almost never happens, i can think of only less than 5 EVER!
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  48. yeah that rusty screw-- lol. Honestly it's a perfect Persian Flaw,and may as well leave it since that makes car original
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  49. i've no idea how many of this gen Priuses u've dealt w/ but this gen, namely it's first few yrs has very expensive issues sometimes, namely engine. And that 4K worth of suspension that the owner had to spend, is not normal for the avg toyota or hybrid, so i'm getting pretty wary of this gen overall after seeing this vid. Granted i'm in the U.S. where servicing can be even more expensive for various things, than in the U.K.
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  50. yep that's what i always notice, how efficient (& knowledgable mechanics and non rip off types) the brits are, and parts prices are far better. It also helps that their whole system has rules/standards as to merchantability of product etc
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  51. that's cheaper petrol than where i am in the U.S. which exports oil!!
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  52. yes, seeing this puppy crunched a bit at an offroad site would be lovely to me. The diesel could help a lot in crawling up inclines
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  53.  @paldinkos915  tip: instead of warming up, drive to your destination and then around the parking lot or block/s for an extra minute, that may fully warm up the engine
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  54.  @cats5seb1  u need a good indy shop to fix that Sim or ignition-module/computer or steering lock, etc. Do NOT lose both keys, whatever u do, bcuz then, it's $/GBP 2K, 3K, whatnot.
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  55.  @phillipevans9414  yes and no. But leaving if unfixed is wise from a dealer's angle at this price point, in this economy. The fix is not cheap, and really changes the whole mkt of this car/price point
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  56. while that is the case for many ppl, by not fixing it, it gives potential buyers who are a lower price point target, a chance to have a very nice car for not big money. The biz is all about price points, and the economy is not good now.
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  57. @Malachi-d3n i 'murican and can punkutate just fine.
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  58. yeah, definitely no, on design. Ask a woman, bcuz most (and most non women as well) will explain that the second gen is droopy/frumpy. Mercedes has run into this issue in later years as well, as have a few other models of various brands. And it affects sales, trust me!
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  59. fact is that oil changes, esp for turbo petrol or diesels maybe too, should be done 3500-4500 miles really, per what many engineers have been saying increasingly over the past 15 years, if you want the engine to last into very high miles.
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  60. what was we doin in Ru?
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  61.  @johnclucas1523  exactly. The Cayman is like a dry cold slovak woman i knew. The Alpine is like a combo of a brit, irish, norsk, french, ukrainian and italian woman.
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  62. here in the US including Cali, not just a percentage but usually the full sales tax rate!!!!!!!!! ie 10 percent generally in relatively prosperous states. It's an insane system that penalizes the ppl who need cars to get to work!
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  63. lil did yee know that that dog of a car had about 200K in nonsequential legit cash in the doors.! (the ONLY explanation for a buyer to want it that badly as to clamor after it! lol)
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  64. while i generally agree re the design, there is something iconicall retro-esque about it, with allusions to the train design world of long long ago. But yeah overall it's a jelly -bean Suv in too extreme a way
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  65. Here in the U.S. at least, we also had tan roof option, perhaps with some paint colors as combo. Iirc, the tan looked nice with maybe white or red?
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  66. sorry for your loss and mostly for the violation! Disgusting and so destructively nasty! Smoking while doing it at 10pm, smacks of brazen and maybe org crime, maybe russian-adjacent, since they often need parts i suspect. No, u r not acting too depressing at all, very upbeat actually under the circ's.
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  67.  @markotango54  is it quite the paradise as i imagine?
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  68. funny u should mention the boys who stormed the Iranian Embassy (and frankly as an american youth at the time, i was grateful for those boys after Iran had held our Embassy staff in Iran hostage for i think 444 days or so, and we tried to pull a mission impossible rescue which literally went up in flames bigtime), bcuz one of the guys was a great guy who today is still a great guy and is a very seriously keen thinker and writer, named Horsfhal, Robin. I hiiiighly hiigly recommend reading anything he writes,namely his recent book is what i'm starting to read now. This man is 'quite' different on the surface, than any soldier or warrior i've ever been familiar with. To me, he is the first person who has a balance of every aspect of mind, spirit etc, that makes him a true leader and thinker.
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  69. interesting u have a Avant/wagon with just the front-wheel-drive, right? Otherwise, if quattro then it should have the regular AT, not the cvt.
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  70. friggin awesome! Might be a bit extreme to paint it, depending on price.
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  71. btw, did u grow up in Spain?
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  72.  @ahmedalsadik  precisely! same in most countries perhaps. Remember that Lady Di's death was partly due to a POS stiched together Benz that Ritz-Carlton's preferred chauffeur service was using!
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  73. Btw, what usually is the issue when oil has gotten into the coolant? If engine oil, i assume head gasket but if ATF , then the ATF cooler in the radiator is the cause. But head gasket is usually coolant/water into the engine/oil that u see on oil dipstick or under the oil cap, thus i ask.
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  74.  @paulrak  what's blue to bits?
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  75. yep, as a yank me-self, nothing more tacky or pathetic than the sorta-classic american styles or theatrics (so closely related to our politics)
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  76. this was the first gen of premium cars that i could buy, but i never did end up doing so bcuz i'm an american and just couldn't justify the hassle factor w/ the numerous repairs needed on the engines we had, namely 1.8T being our most desirable. This V8 was rare and massively costly to deal w/ here. it's a world apart wrt car repairs in UK vs here, where we can't really service euro cars longterm in many cases. We export a ton of used premium, lux and euro cars
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  77. jeezus, with barely listening to the inventory of work, i got the 1590 by what i thought was super rough guestimating!
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  78. i agree, and even the old 740 turbo now has a sort of vague cache perhaps, though mainly just bcuz it's often in some good tv drama's taking place in norsk lands or Poland in one show.
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  79. yeah i'd guestimate it's a lot of car for money at 29K GBP w/ 25Kmiles but not for 20KGBP w/ 100K miles, that's for sure!
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  80. *"such a geek... love me-self" is the correct form. You ARE the man, and there is no doubt about it! Style, intelligence, grace, charm, heart, passion, and other great attributes! I never compliment men, but you really warrant it!
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  81. very intersting about the insurance co's . Here in the US the first time i got a fake quote was from my own 'agent' who is a theoretically indy of the ins. co, and i could smell how slippery the whole shebang was. A quote for just liability ins on what'd be a second car for me was reasonable. Six months later or so, double the price iirc, and when i said wow they skyrocketed, she, the broker, claimed they had not and that the low figure i remembered must be wrong, which it was NOT. This country has become deceptive over the past twenty yrs, and many of us liberal type folks are sick and friggin tired of it!. It's absolutely cultural and sociopolitical, in fact. Not saying exlusively rightwing, but sorta kinda.
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  82. yeah many MB's of the era had wiring loom replacement needed. Very expensive
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  83. i thought the first gen was Pininfarina? second as well? First was thru '04
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  84. correction: quite a few timing belts are have oil filled tensioners. Honda's e.g. And it's that factor that is the typical failure point in honda v6 engines, ie the tensioner itself, not the belt. Luckily they tend to make noise or cause noise to be made before total failure.
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  85. agree with u about forums for most part, though i think there are some exceptions. Trouble w/ some of the exceptions is that there tend to be some very argumentative types, or just ppl who feel the need to fiddle with parts/systems that really should not be fiddled with bcuz of age of the part/system etc on not fresh cars (part of this is sometimes just the general mechanical principle that, literally, there are specific risks to each repair that is done, albeit usually very very small. I call this a problem w/ overly enthusiastic, 'fan-boy/man' type ppl, of which i was certainly one myself long ago. But yeah i have gotten very good info on forums, including basically helping me avoid cars that are too difficult own where i live, which is in the U.S. The other problem w/ some forums is that the 'enthusiast' aspect also creates an impression of decent-sized markets for particular models, that lure guys into wanting a car/model bcuz it's special in some way or rare in some way. But in reality the mkt is simply so niche or costly to own, that a forum is required to make it more rational to deal with such a car, that either is not well understood by mechanics shops, or other factors.
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  86. screw the inheritance, i say! AMG GT for moi!
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  87. i like it! Bit worried tho about parts prices, given that GLA parts and labor are incredibly massively high! (e.g. GLA's mere PCV valve job is 2K
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  88. the happy clapper rubber always scares the bejeezus out of me, bcuz....
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  89. um kay, i'm guessing an overspend of thousands and u'll keep it for posterity, given the sweet engine...lol
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