Are you a badge snob?

If you think about it, it is a rather shrewd thing to do. Issue someone with a parking badge that lets them get 20 feet nearer the door and a space wide enough that they don't get their doors clouted, and they will shop at your supermarket more often than not.

My supermarket has tons of these spaces, yet I often find myself parked next to a car with a baby seat in it. Obviously some people either don't bother with the scheme or are more honest when they don't have the nipper with them.

If you are wondering why I notice this, baby seats in the car parked next to me bring about horror. :eek: I have this idea/prejudice that a busy mother with baby under one arm, unfolding the pushchair with the other leg and grabbing shopping bags all at once, will believe she has more important things to do than avoid clouting my paintwork. :LOL:
 
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Yes, the loyalty thing probably works. It backfired on this occasion though. Their action proved that it is not to give any preference for those with toddlers. If it was, they would have simply informed of the scheme and let me off, just this once.

I now avoid using Tesco, out of principle. Still shop there occaisionally, but not for my main weekly shop.
 
Sorry ladies, but observation shows :-

Women place bags / child seat on front passenger seat.
Park relatively sensibly, open driver door, not touchin car parked beside.
Stand up, then lean into car reaching over to passenger side, unfortunately the old posterior starts swaying side to side in increasing wide arcs as bags or child is retrieved, posterior bumping door, door passes 1st opening detent, bobbles against neighbouring vehicle, leaves those lovely little round dents you notice looking at an angle to your car.
Come on ladies, there is a passenger door you know.

Then of course, you think you have parked far enough from the supermarket entrance that no self respecting mum would deign to walk those extra steps ... only to return to find a f'ing great 4wd or 'people carrier van' closer to your car than the empty space on it's other side !!! You then imagine the hord of kids disembarking having thrown the doors wide open ..............Thinking tyres and 4" nails .. then ho hum that's life !!

P
 
:LOL: It is good to see I am not the only obsessive compulsive car parker here!

I too have tried the theory of "if I park in the completely empty bit of car park, miles from the door, then they will leave me alone". I came back to my car to find myself still in a totally empty bit of car park save for one car... parked about 1 foot from my car. Big green scrape down my passenger door where they had flung their driver's door against my car, then the car had risen up as they retrieved their fat *ss from it. I was not happy.

Some while ago I saw a divorce waiting to happen: a brand new Zafira, a couple of days after the new reg came out, complete with two mums and 5 kids in it, being parked next to a covered trolley park. I winced as *SCRAPE* the metal bar around the trolley park gouged along the shiny paintwork. I shuddered as *CRUNCH* the door rubbing strips were ripped off. In a matter of 10 seconds she turned a brand new car worth £16K or so into a knackered old minicab. Unfortunately I didn't know she was going to do that until she was about 6 inches from the metalwork otherwise I would have tried to stop her.

My theory is, people who swing doors into you in car parks probably don't understand why you would care and wouldn't respect your concerns even if they did. To them the car is a box they climb in and go somewhere and it doesn't warrant looking after. No doubt if you went to their house and chiselled gouges into their brickwork, poured red wine on their sofa or dug up part of their garden then they would get very upset.
 
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Saw a good one, big Renault takes- a- loada- space van, darkened windows, a wife reverses to park it, smack into the lamp standard behind her ..... big barney twixt the couple, she berates him for the windows which she cannot see out of ....

I saw a methodology for parking, well away from the main body of vehicles, guy parks BMW almost diagonally across two bays ... You'll not believe it .... when I came out of the S/market, there was a vehicle each side of said BMW ... but parked correctly ... loads of clearance !! Ok until someone takes umbrage I suppose !!


P
 
I took a trip up to Birmingham with the family of an ex. We stopped off at the services and her father parked across two spaces (much to the horror and embarassment of his family, "You always do this, dad."). Despite being concerned at being clonked by other doors, he opened and shut his car doors with the key in them so the area around the lock was peppered with dints and scratches from his rather overfull keyring! :LOL:

Every now and then I see a Smart and think "Now what a good idea!"... then I go home, look up the price on the internet and think "Bo**ocks to that!". Half a car should cost half the money in my books, or certainly no more than the price of a full car divided by the square root of two (an RMS cost?).

I may get a titchy car for my next motor, but the problem is I can't bring myself to pay £14K for what is a tiny car. Even the "hot" versions often aren't as hot as they should be... I noticed that unless you get the GT Polo then you are limited to about 10 seconds 0-60 time, and the Lupo is especially slow.

Oh, I have another "woman spoils car" story. My ex's dad is a mechanic. One day he got a call from a young man about adjusting the handbrake on his Astra (no, not me!). So, the man sends his mum to drive the car over. This guy obviously loved his car as the paintwork was Autoglymed, he had aftermarket styling accessories on it, and a set of rather tasty 18" alloys. He obviously didn't love it so much that he only trusted himself to drive it though... His mum parked the car in the style she would park her own: pull close to the kerb, then slowly move forwards until you feel the wheels running against it. So, when man came to pick up the car he found his left hand side alloys and tyres ground around the entire circumference of the wheel. He was not happy!!!
 
No sympathy, cars are only bits of metal! Just buy a big lump of it, and it'll takes years to wear it down. Special alloys..... I ask ;)
 
I take the view that the car is my tool, nothing more. It is a replaceable lump of metal. However, it does annoy me when people bang their doors into mine, especially when I am sitting in it eating lunch at the time.

I wind down the window, say "Do you mind?" Invariably they say "What?"

"Banging my door..."

The responses vary from "sorry" to "didn't" (even when a matching splat of paint could be seen in an area coinciding with the leading edge of his door)

I am sure that some people genuinely are unaware.

Either that or they do it all the time, don't care less and just pretend they are unaware.
 
My neighbour's mum appears to be an apalling driver. When she parks, it really does look like a joyrider has mounted the kerb, crashed and left it there. First time I saw the car parked I thought that was what happened.

Anyway, I noticed the other day that every corner on her car has had all the paint taken off and replaced with various shades of other colours. Every corner. All the paint. Seriously. She must be the worst parker in the world. No doubt the doors match!

Seriously, I would take her licence away if I could. The few times I have encountered her on the road, she was literally following the centreline, straddled across it. And she is teaching my neighbour's son to drive :eek:

Thing is, you should assume a reasonable level of respect for other people and their property. I don't care too much about my living room carpet. Seriously, red wine; pour it on. A friend of mine dropped a full 1.5kg bottle of ketchup and it smashed all over the floor. Grabbed a camera and a couple of tampons and took some funny pictures! :LOL:

With her, I could have dropped a bottle of ketchup on her car, and she would have laughed. But if I had done it with her carpet, she would have killed me!
 
Adam

If you are serious about quitting the Astra for a smaller car, you could do worse than (you think I'm going to say a Skoda, don't you?) a Seat Ibiza.

They are What Cars fave supermini at the minute, and imagine VAG's 130 TDi under the bonnet in a car that size....plus 6 speed box.


see:

http://www.carpages.co.uk/seat/seat...award_12_05_03.asp?switched=on&echo=302963421


note the 4* NCAP award AND best ever ratings for pedestrian.

But the car definately is NOT!!!!

OR, if you're feeling brave and will drive a Skoda, here:

http://www.whatcar.co.uk/RoadTest_Summary.asp?DL=0&RT=183305
 
Funny you should mention the Ibiza, I was looking at various manufacturer's websites thinking "what would £14K buy me?", and with the Ibiza it seemed to be quite a bit. If I recall it was a 150bhp 1.8T petrol for about £13K, and about the same for the 130bhp diesel.

Renault and Peugeot seem to have gone far too far up their own bottoms and are charging silly money for their cars now. Honestly, a top of the range Megane (2.0t) is £20K base price! For a Megane. That fat-bottomed shopping car. The Megane. The Clio seems a much better deal, £14K for the 182.

I will find it hard to decide between a petrol and diesel. At the moment, the petrol would win out because of the initial outlay against performance, but the sensible side of me would point at the petrol pump price and say "but how much will you save with a diesel?!"
 
Hmmm, the new Octavia, for about £14K, comes with a 2.0l 150bhp petrol engine. Now, looking at the 1.8t old Octavia with 150bhp, that would do 0-60 in 8.5 seconds... hmmmmm....... that's a lot of car for the money... haven't seen a deal like that since Vauxhall started selling off the Mk4 Astra GSI turbos for £14K (and boy was I tempted!)

Or for about £14K you can get a Superb 1.8T that does 0-60 in 9.5s. Also tempting...
 
By no means do I wish to put you off the Octavia & Superb but they are bigger cars - thought you wanted a diddy motor?

The Ibiza comes with 160 diesel engine, too.

If you are buying brand new, it pays to look at the Co2 emissions. I only pay 115 quid for road tax as the 110 tdi is a clean emitter.

That saving's enough for at least another tank of diesel.......

I think david & julie will agree with me here that diesel is the way to go.

With the Octavia and its variable service intervals, I get: reduced road tax, mileages of between 475 - 700 per tankful of around 39 quid, AND service intervals (currently) of 18K.

My old Citroen Xantia TDi used to give about 330 per tank (bottom end) for around 48 quid, I paid full road tax, and the service interval was 6K.

So with the old car, I would have 3 services for the Octavia's one......And the service cost was 150-200 (at least) every time.

Me & my accountant are now very happy bunnys!
 
I would prefer a bigger car. I don't REALLY need a big car but the times when it comes in handy, boy does it come in handy! Plus driving small cars seems to draw abuse from other road users on motorways. I would bet even in a hot version I would have problems from base model family saloons.

The reason I was looking at smaller cars is I thought "Aha, I can get the top model then, with a big engine and naughty acceleration". Didn't realise that all mini-shopping cars now have 2 tonnes of iron in them to provide ENCAP safety! So whereas in 1989 an Astra GTE 16V would do 0-60 in 7.7s with 150bhp, a Seat Ibiza with a 150bhp engine will now do it in 8.4s. Taking into account the increasing sizes of all car classes, the Ibiza and 1989 Astra are about the same size inside and out.

OK, not really comparing like with like (I tried comparing it with the 1.8 Corsa but the Corsa matches the old GTE performance with just 125bhp ;) ). I find now that I look on a manufacturer's website and think "Ooooh, tiny car with massive engine!". Then you look at the figures and realise that it needs that massive engine just to make it driveable!
 
AdamW said:
Didn't realise that all mini-shopping cars now have 2 tonnes of iron in them to provide ENCAP safety! So whereas in 1989 an Astra GTE 16V would do 0-60 in 7.7s with 150bhp, a Seat Ibiza with a 150bhp engine will now do it in 8.4s. Taking into account the increasing sizes of all car classes, the Ibiza and 1989 Astra are about the same size inside and out.
Click to expand...

I would have thought that to increase pedestrian safety you would want to decrease the weight of the car, less kinetic energy to transfer, the increase in size is due to enlarged crumple zones, used to dissipate as much energy as possible in a collision. Removal of kinetic energy in a crash is vividly seen in F1 crashes where pretty much all of the car, wheels, engine, gearbox, bodyshell etc is designed to fall off, leaving only the monocoque. Wrt to the 1989 Astra and Ibiza, could the difference be explained by the use of Catalytic converts?

BTW I had a 1989 astra GTE 16V, it was pretty good in straight lines, but going round corners well that was a different matter :eek: . At the time the Peugeot 205 1.9 GTi was a much better all rounder, but I'll never admit that to a mate of mine who had one at the time ;)
 
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