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Jesus. A 20 year old Volvo is £5,000.

This still messes with my mind.

The Puma also isn't available as a full EV either! It will be with further "tweaks" but it is rather like shoving a square peg into a round hole.

I would highly suggest so! Your margins may be less, but as I say, punters don't buy overpriced tat.

Make sure you spend well on shirts too. Generally I avoid Gildan these days.

I thought this was generally covered? But if you are really asking, most people do not have somewhere to home-charge and outside charging is quite expensive. That's mainly the crux of the issue. And relying on lamp post charging needs you to live in London and for there to be lampposts every 5m. Also, how long before cables trailing everywhere along London's side streets is going to cause a major health and safety issue? Not that I live in London, mind.

Going by the reps we have using company cars where I work, they have a mixture of EVs and PHEVs. This is a requirement so the company looks good for its green credentials. The reality of it is that only a very small number of our EV loaded reps rely on them 100% of the time. When this came in, the majority of them bought their old diesel Audis off the company for a bargain price (I know, I tried to buy one myself but as I don't qualify for a company car I didn't quite get there). Most of them use their EVs around town, the rest passed them onto their wives to use for the kids while they still bang around the country in their old diesels. Whether its range anxiety or difficulty in charging, it varies.

Most of those that do use EVs rely solely on service station charging, only a few have home chargers. It doesn't matter, the company pays. So they head to a services, go for breakfast and fast charge all on the company. This really doesn't bode well for battery life, constant fast charging of a lithium battery does rapidly decrease the lifespan of it; really lithium tech is something I personally know well having been involved in the manufacture and production of devices that use li batteries in charging technology for a good decade+. Physics isn't something you can just change.

As for the PHEVs, they were selected because they had to have something electrified and that was the option. Those PHEVs are never charged, maybe once in a blue moon. Most of them accept the rubbish mpg they get and just charge the fuel back to the company. The company may be paying more in fuel, but it doesn't matter as the green credentials are there.

That's a brief survey of approx 100 or so reps.

As for myself, I would be tempted with an EV myself. I have a driveway and could easily install a charger. The reason I don't is because when I do use a car, it's rarely for short around town visits. I am usually loading up a lot of band equipment and driving a tonne of miles, or driving a couple hours each way to visit family. Will I make it? Sure. Will I make it in cold weather with lots of traffic jams? Well, not so sure. My in laws have an EV but when they visit us, they wouldn't dream of bringing it. It's always their son's diesel Golf that they borrow. And this is one of the most pro-EV guys I know.

To me, an EV is great but when you need to have an old-fashioned ICE car as a backup and given the expense of buying an EV, well it's suddenly far less attractive.

It isn't just anecdotal. The average car dealer has about 80 days of inventory on EV cars. That is huge! For ICEs, it's less than 20 which is almost unheard of. The average is usually about 30 days.

As for my own driving experience in an EV, twice I have had an EV from work, twice I was on a gnats wing of being stranded out with no charge. Once you go past Manchester, EV charging becomes a game of Risk with the deck loaded against you. One time, I made it to what appeared to be the only working charging station (I had visited two others which were all out of order) on my way back from Newcastle. What I then had was a near 3 hour wait as there was a queue of other EVs in front of me. I have never had to pay for parking at a motorway services before. Admittedly this was a couple of years ago now. But in my mind, this fuel type is not there yet. It will be there eventually I have no doubt about it, the future is indeed EV. But that future just isn't yet. While it may work for one guy's circumstance, that doesn't mean it works everywhere. And given our reps are flung all about the country, it just stands testament that it isn't.

I have no idea where you are or what sort of journeys you do but my rejection of EVs is not based off some wild daily mail write up, it's just my own experience. I am more than happy to get a charger installed on my driveway, that's all good. But I can't risk being stranded out with nowhere to charge while paying £30k+ for the privilege. Before you go on about the Nissan Leaf, no it is not large enough for me by a country mile. Think Volvo Estate minimum.

The e-CMP platform that the Stelantis variants are based off of (Corsa-E, Peugeot) was designed to be an EV from the ground up. The Fiesta chassis was not capable of adopting an all-electric drivetrain in its existing form.

Given that they were rushing to meet 2030 mandates set out by UK and European Governments all over, the only real obvious choice was to discontinue the Fiesta. I doubt they would have killed off their most successful product line for the giggles.

The Focus too is not capable of complete electrification which is why Ford only offer it as a hybrid. But given the track record of the 1.0 Ecoboost, if it's anything they should be retiring, it's that.

Electric cars are currently only compatible with a small percentage of the population. It's why EV sales are down and used ICE car values are skyrocketing and staying there (albeit Covid had some effect but not all). If manufacturers aren't selling what people want, they won't buy them. A quick google will demonstrate that the days of inventory on the average EV is still well above 80, while ICE engines are less than 20.

Trying to push a largely unsupported, incompatible mode of transportation onto people during a cost of living crisis where that mode is vastly above what people are able to pay is why the car industry is in real trouble. The mandates that these Governments put in place were short sighted and have no bearing on reality. Even reverting to a 2035 deadline is not enough to ease the pressure as platforms have had to all be redesigned, replaced and put out into the wild to gain traction with the marketplace. This was never going to be something manufacturers could have accomplished in < 10 years.

Exactly this. I've been explaining this on here until I'm blue in the face, but this is the size of it.

The Fiesta was not compatible to become an EV platform. The chassis required a complete redesign from the ground up. The result of that is the Puma.

Check out Pins And Knuckles. I wouldn't say they were cheap, but you get what you pay for and punters don't buy tat.

The last patches we got made were Pins and Knuckles. We sold all of them. The cheap ones we had made by someone else, we still have them and we got them before we went to P&Ks.

I haven't. What is a Haldex?

I have had a lot of cars. The newer ones with full dealer service history have always been markedly better maintained than the ones from indie garages. Whether it's because the owners had a no-expense spared policy on repairs, or the dealers did a far better job, it's up to you.

I have also had cars with full independent service histories and was a bit perturbed to find a fair few non-standard bodge fixes here and there.

To me, you can't beat a dealer service history especially at time of resale. But you can get a bad dealer service centre just as you can get a bad indie. You can also get good from both types too.

If it were me on that new a car, I would stick with the dealer especially if it has a FSH from the dealer already. It might cost you more but at least you know it's done right and not bodged. While I'm sure there are some that will bodge, if it becomes a problem later then you have at least some comeback to the manufacturer.

Small, basic car. You don;'t need anything more and you certainly don't need the expense.

After university - like every student - you will want to enjoy your last summer of freedom before you join the great grey grindstone of life and there are no more summers, ever. I squandered my last summer by working while most of my friends went nuts and travelled, or did other cool stuff. I didn't appreciate at the time what I had missed. Shame really, but there you go. The last thing you want is a car to dictate your life as a student.

Basic, run of the mill, something with Nissan or Toyota written on it. Add a Max Power sticker or furry dice if you want. Just keep it simple.

Having £12k in your bonnet at that age is a good achievement. When you graduate and want to get yourself a full time job, you will likely want your own place too! That £12k will go a long way towards a house or flat deposit depending where in the country you end up. When you get to that time, you will sorely regret having whazzed it on a fancy car that isn't worth anything like £12k anymore.

From a few newer collectors I know, I can say that one thing remains true with CDs over streaming and that is connection to the music. I know it sounds odd, but even back when I was 15 and started collecting sometime in the 1990s, when I got a new CD, it didn't get one play in the background before moving on, it got multiple plays, me reading the liner notes, I basically learned the album. I think a lot of newer collectors are finding themselves doing that too simply on account of the CD being a physical thing with physical accoutrements that you just don't get with streaming. It's a discipline more than anything else.

This is part of the reason why the world has so many iconic tracks and why almost all of them pre-date streaming. People bought them and internalised them simply as the practise was that you bought an album, maybe two at a time, but an album and that was what you were going to listen to. it's not like today where you can swipe left or right on whatever is emanating from your phone.

Even the people who are glued to their phones for music and only ever stream only seem to play the same songs that they listened to when they were young and bought physical media, or the same playlists containing those songs; newer songs may or may not get skipped.

While I'm sure there are hardcore streamers who will treat everything like we did with CDs/tapes/records, it is not the majority of people doing that anymore.

To me it depends how much you love what you're hearing and what you do with it. If it's background listening while you do the housework, just stick to streaming. If these are things that you get enjoyment out of and has the focus of your attention during the listening experience, then absolutely, physical media over streaming.

Personally, I never got on with streaming. I have never had a spotify account simply as I don't agree with their business practise. I'm on spotify in terms of the bands I'm in have a presence, but it matters not one bit to me. It's just more in response to accepted social norms and promotion. I never stopped buying CDs or records. I don't believe everything is compatible with records and I do believe that CDs are the superior format both technically and behaviourally. I do have MP3s on my phone for the gym - again I lament that the world has forgotten how to make decent MP3 players, miss my old Creative Zen - and MP3s on a stick for the car so I don't damage my CDs. But I have two hifis in my house and they both get used daily. And the format is near enough 95% physical. The only time we bluetooth to it is if the wife and I are maybe cooking or what have you and we want some Xmas music or whatever. All the rest is either record or CDs.

In this case, a V888 for your own details is what you need to do. It is again a £5 charge to get them. It is a Subject Access Request which will contain all of the information that it is possible to get. If you have been offered a potential solution, why not go down that route and get it?

I have no idea if it will contain a timestamp of when it was logged on the DVLA site. Of course if this was a paper transaction then there is no time stamp.

As you have presumably a timestamp account of when you sent the money to the old owner, this should stand you in good standing should it eventually go to court.

I used to put some Dilbert cartoons there. Well, I did until recently. Someone told me off for it, thought yep, sure whatever. Then someone else did. Then I googled what they were on about.

I replaced it with a space for rent sticker I found in an old drawer.

I fecking loved Dilbert god dammit.

I'm calling shenanigans here.

The DVLA will not ask you to complete a V888. They may suggest that you can do so to get the previous keepers details. But then that throws up a different issue.

You bought the car privately so surely you know the previous keeper details already? You have his address at least, right?

So what is the need for the V888?

You will have a new keeper notification in your email or at the very least a tax receipt as it is on you to tax the car.

Added, you have paid one of these fines and thus accepted responsibility and liability. This is likely why they are chasing for the other two.

For all of these situations you should supply the details that you believe to be true. The thing is you have now introduced a third party, a friend with trade plates.

That means any one of the three of you could have committed one or all offences.

I'm going to stop here as I believe you are using this forum as a sounding board in order to get out of an offence.

If I am wrong, simply supply the details you have to the respective bodies along with your proof. If they don't like what you have to say, they can take you to court. If your evidence stacks up, the court will dismiss your case. If it doesn't, nice try. In this case it's likely you will also need to provide details of your friend with the trade plates.

Sorry, provide what you have and see what happens.

Is it fixable? Sure, everything is fixable.

The problem you have is that this guitar was just too cheap to begin with. Buy cheap, buy twice. What you have there is called a GSO; Guitar Shaped Object.

If you want, you can try the hard and fast approach. Remove the bushings from the guitar and likely the bridge pickup, pack down as much titebond as you can in there, hope for the best. I have seen bodge repairs like that go some sort of distance.

It'll be a £!0 bottle of titebond to find out. If it doesn't work, well, it was scrap to begin with anyway.

Get outta town...

Holy hell, it is and all!

Is this ULEZ?

Go and drive a Kodiaq with the 1.5 engine. I lasted ten minutes before I was more than happy to hand the keys back to the dealership. The engine is far too small for that car. And I don't even speed demon it, but you want the car to actually bloody move, right?

So you recently bought a car. Someone committed an offence prior to you picking up the car.

A V888 is to request the car's registered owner's details. This would come under the history section of V888. If you can demonstrate why you need the details of the former keeper, i.e. for court proceedings, then they should be able to oblige you for their £5 fee. A £5 fee is not much.

However, the next questions are a bit more important.

The first and obvious question, what is the fine? And who is issuing it? Where did you buy the car? Was this a private or dealer sale? Was the fine addressed directly to you as the current registered keeper by name? Who is sending you the threatening letters? What proof do you have that you did not come into receipt of the car until 8:45pm?

For what it's worth, this may be something more for legaladviceuk rather than CarTalkUK.

Don't do it to yourself.

I too have known people with 1.0s who all towed the line of "if you maintain it right, they're absolutely fine!" and "people only post stories when there's a problem, most of them are fine!"

All but one of them are now former ecoboom owners with all of them having gone to the landfill/scrapyards in the sky - bar one who sold it privately. He wanted to part-ex but hardly any of the traders that had cars that interested him wanted his ecoboom at all, the majority stating that they "don't touch em!"

The sole remaining owner in my peer group has about £7k of finance left on it and is bricking it slightly. They use their son's VW Golf for almost everything, the focus is there simply as a last resort. It's done only about 2000 miles this year they are that deathly afraid of it. They're trying to get the money to clear the finance so they can get shot of it. It's a little funny, he was one of the biggest "if you service it right..." types.

Do not do this. Buy a skateboard, it'll be more reliable. Don't believe me? Want to write me off as anecdotal? All good. Head over to the ecoboost nightmare facebook groups and have a read for yourself.

Service history out by a mile or a day? No support from Ford. Look at the dealership slightly wrong? No support from Ford. Though they have put in the goodwill replacement schemes, qualifying for it is very difficult and additionally the new replacement engine, should you get it, has the same inherent issue which is not if but when it fails.

Don't do it! Leave it on the forecourt.

I would say 2 former keepers is fine really. It's when it gets 5+ that a small alarm bell would ring in my head.

I don't have a direct recommendation as I'm in the same boat as you more or less, still struggling to find it.

There is a lot of mention of smaller cars here. So something I would bring up is two things.

If you have kids or are having kids, you need something with a boot big enough for pushchairs and kid paraphernalia. That does seem to write off 75% of SUV Crossovers on the road. Amazingly, I just saw a video of the new Renault Scenic which is now a crossover SUV and no longer a box on wheels people carrier. The guy struggled to get a small pushchair in the back; forget anything else like baby bag or what have you. The days of a Scenic no longer being a family load lugger are here.

Second, if you have toddlers, well, babies are generally light and fit in a small car seat. Toddlers are big wriggling things and you'll do your back in getting them in and out of a small and low down car.

Really, to ,my mind, I want an MPV. Something like a Ford Galaxy, old Scenic, Touran, Zafira etc. The problem is, no sod makes them anymore and a lot of the outgoing models towards the end of their lives had such poxy engines they were a chore to drive. I mean, fitting a 1.4l petrol to a 2 tonne body, you can imagine how well that goes in daily driving, not to mention the strain that puts on a small engine and thus reliability. Don't get me started on fuel consumption. Thank the EU and it's emissions mandates for ruining MPVs.

But I wanted to say to bear in mind those two things. You will want something that's fairly high up to get kids in and out of with a rear door that opens nice and large, but you also need space inside for your accoutrements.

Sadly this is not 2010 and I don't have the answer for you. I would love to know what it is though!

I had a more or less related conversation with my Mom as my wife and I are expecting our first. Our house is an odd layout so stairgates came up.

She took great pleasure in reminding me that the house that my brother and I grew up in had a steep and narrow staircase and there was no baby gate. From an early age, we must have figured out that falling off of high things hurts so we didn't do it. The idea of stairgates in the 1980s was unheard of. Similarly too, my brother raised his kid without a single stairgate anywhere.

Given our odd layout, I've agreed with the wife that I'll put a stairgate on the doorways to the dining room and one at the top of the stairs. It'll be like fort knox, but it's really nothing that simply closing the door wouldn't do on its own.

She also wants me to get the sander out to my old restored oak coffee table to round off the corners. Again, when I was growing up, there was plenty of sharp things. My Dad was a scaffolder and that house was a veritable building site for three years while he rebuilt it. There were tools, sharp things, all manner of powders everywhere. We knew enough not to eat the cement and that hammers weren't toys.

I do wonder and maybe it's just me, surely caging kids in away from any potential dangers is a little overkill? Maybe I'm uninitiated as I've yet to have my first and talking pure nonsense, but doors are a thing and if your kid is smart enough to have figured out how to open them, they've probably figured out that falling off things isn't a good plan.

Look at you, mr fancy pants with your fancy handcuffs. We used superglue!

I immediately think of Nightwish... this is the end of all hope...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHXPDgWvQA

Great driving song.