.. and it's had a surprisingly big impact on how I view driving.



Firstly, The X Type is surprisingly nice to hoon around. I like the V6 torques and the suspension means you can smash it around our broken roads. One can probably cover ground almost as quick as the S2000 as I'm not slowing down/trying to avoid every pothole. The AWD means you can pin it nicely around bends, it just sticks and goes even on shitty £50 a corner tyres..!


Took the Honda out on the weekend and it wasn't that fun tbh. So much traffic everywhere (North Hampshire) and shit roads make having a nicely set up car seem like a waste. Would be great if I lived in North Wales but I'm fed up of being stuck behind lines of people all the time literally everywhere I go


I think I either need to start doing some regular track days to make use of its potential or go for a change as a toy. Big fat bruisers of a car are starting to make more sense. Something fat with lots of torques = more over taking and heavy cars/suspension seem to work better on our third world roads.


Decisions, decisions...!

 

Hope the cills are good on it. Rot like frigging pears and love transfer boxes.

Mate had the 3.0 V6 sport with 230 something bhp, off the mark nowt between that and the S!

 

Seems fairly clean underneath but was a bargain so even if it only lasts a year or two I'd be happy ;-) This is a manual 2.5 and seems fairly tight. We shall see how it goes, I really got it as a winter run about and it has taken me by surprise how nice it is to drive. :-)

 

IKWYM.

You should try it with torque vectoring thrown in! But only the XE-R has that ATM.

For a toy, I'd go the other way; MGB/S660/MX-5/Scorpion. Something you can have fun in at 11/10ths, whilst holding all the slow fuckers up instead.

 

The old man has one, I'm sick of fixing it. The wiring looms are particularly shocking. Door electrics die for fun, so does the central locking, I had to repair the transfer box (A £Gulp.99 job at a garage) , they eat rear arm bushes, sills are starting to rust, fan controllers blow up for fun (75A rated controller, with an 80A fuse. More wiring fun...)

It rides okay but no better than my 406, tbh, it's gutless even with the 2.5 V6 in.

 

My mates' mum bought one of these a couple of years ago, and failed its MOT on the sills... cost nearly £2k to sort out IIRC.

 

Hell, I didn't realise they were quite that bad.

Mind you, 406 comparo's a bit harsh. They were the last proper real Peugeot made and are regarded as far superior to their subsequent crap they spat out.

 

This is a big part of the reason I sold mine

 

It's a Ford Mondeo in Drag as opposed to a proper 'Jaaaag' and looking at the plate, did it come with Halogen lamps fitted to projector lenses - my old mans did and whilst the upgrade to HID was night and day better .... the install was a 4 hour fiddly pig, even with my small hands.

 

Similar to the appeal the A8 has for me. It was bought as as a winter run about when I had my RX8 R3, but it was so much more enjoyable than the RX in everyday driving that I sold he RX!!!!!

Niggles are par for the course with older, complex machines, but thankfully the rot is not an issue with the aluminium A8.

Interestingly, my A8 has failed its recent MOT test on one thing; a broken front spring. I didn't even notice it! The car also rides on budget rubber - which was on it when I bought it almost two years ago. It has Sunitrac Focus 9000 tyres and I gave them a few months... 12000 miles later they are still on, with plenty of tread. I have driven it in the dry, in the wet, on snow and ice, on motorways and local rural roads and I can't say I have ever felt wary. On a track it might be a different story, but that is not A8 territory.