bigjim wrote:Bonefishblues wrote:bigjim wrote:I thought the idea of paying a lot of money, for something you will not use to that much, is to impress others.
People have lots of different motives - trying to attribute motives to others is a work of speculation at best, and often informs us more about our own prejudices, perhaps?
No prejudice at all. More bewiderment. Struggle to get my head around the fact that somebody would pay up to £50,000+ to buy a hard to live with vehicle, just to go to the shops or school. But my experience of trying to dodge these behemoths on Sunday rides on narrow Cheshire lanes may cloud my thinking. I consider myself admonished for such uncharitable thoughts.
I wasn't admonishing anyone, I promise. One thing I do know, nobody much "pays" £50k for a vehicle that costs £50k these days. Mr and Mrs Never-Never buy it with their children the PCP twins. I think it's a real credit bubble that may have bad consequences in months/years to come.
A personal story. My wife runs an aged XC70 Volvo. 99% of the time it's she and our young daughter in the car, and they really have little or no need of something of that size. However I selected it from a local independent for a number of reasons:
It's built very very well indeed. It has high profile tyres. It's 4wd when needed. It will run out to 200K+ miles, minimising its cost of ownership.
My wife isn't the most confident or tbh competent driver. Mostly she misses things, but she has been known to visit stuff which is not exactly tarmac-related, although with great irony she was on the road when she misjudged a tree which had been felled in a storm, and hit it at c30mph on the side my daughter's child seat occupies. Both occupants were fine, and the car was repairable. I think I made a good call in my very particular circumstances. She also no longer bends wheel rims and destroys tyres as she used to do on her previous car (3 of each in total) by driving into potholes on the narrow lanes she has to use to do the school run. I also feel slightly better that with Winter tyres on, she will get to and from school without major incident on ungritted roads.
On a lighter note, this is on her route too, but someone else from the village got there first:
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourto ... two_hours/