Cars and their confusing specifications

[Welly]

I clearly remember the days when a car's standard kit was clearly defined more or less by its badge i.e. a base model 'L' and then a GL....LX....Ghia and so on. We all knew where we stood, or sat rather.

I appreciate nothing ever stays the same but the confusing array of options and 'First Owner' choices is ridiculous these days, hear me out:

We* are currently considering what to do with the FIL's 2010 Citroen C4, I thought the best place to start would be to scan ebay and AT for a butchers at the likely pricing etc....HOLD ON! I now need to know how the car was specified; it's an 'Exclusiv' addition but seems to have been equipped with many other options from the Factory, all of which reflect on value and all of which could cause me a problem negotiating with the trade if they were more knowledgeable about which things add value and which don't.

My point being I now have to 'gen up' about C4's in detail before I can even begin to think about a trade or whatever. I realise that we all like to personalise things these days but surely cars must be a nightmare to assess for the used car dealers out there, especially BMW's who's whole ethos is around personalising the car for the first owner. And its not all about having extra buttons on the dash as many of these options are presumably accessed via the cars various menu's etc?

[Bailes1992]

When I bought my car it was a Titanium which has all the toys then you could add an appearance pack which makes it look like a Zetec S.
Or... you could buy a Zetec S and add all the options which take it up to a titanium spec.

Go figure?

[Welly]

That's what I mean, you can take the base model and turn it into the highest spec with options if you wanted, very confusing and it must be difficult to put a value on these things later on. Thinking about it it's probably only the used buyers who benefit from the first owners choices as they more or less come free of charge in later years, or at least just make the car slightly more/less desirable.

[steve_earwig]

I didn't think the options made that much difference further down the line

[Doggy]

When you exhaustively researched all of the permutations, you will discover one of the following will apply:

1. Call westealanycar.com, receive their offer*, then reduce by the humungous adjustment* they will apply for all the non-declared issues they discover after inspecting* it.

2. Conclude the C4 is a worthy Ashtray replacement.

3. Both of the above.

[Welly]

Thing is its worth* about £6K by the looks of it and we all know what happens to £6K shitruns after 2.5 weeks.....and it's an 1.6HDi which has spent 5 years doing next to bugger all mileage.

I've been tasked with finding a simple-to-use replacement with slushmatic propulsion I happened across a Vauxhall Agila? thing which looked alright but there's no mad rush really.

[steve_earwig]

Ksaragh? Get t' logbook, or better still get the VIN and I can stick it in Citroen Service. If that's the going rate stick it in AT and see if you get a nibble. Or if you want shot of it a bit quicker stick it in for 5.5

All Voxalls are..? If it's not doing many miles get a petrol. Besides, I don't think autos suit diesels, no matter how many gears they give them.

[annie]

i hate my standard auto diesel i30. tries to shake itself to death. dreadful nvh levels in it. 6sp auto . it averages 35mpg but my golf turbo petrol with dsg averages 45mpg... only done 10 k miles but going to sell it just to get rid off it. the engineering is pretty good to be fasir but road noise and wind noise is 40years out of date..

[Welly]

Ksaragh? Get t' logbook, or better still get the VIN and I can stick it in Citroen Service. If that's the going rate stick it in AT and see if you get a nibble. Or if you want shot of it a bit quicker stick it in for 5.5

All Voxalls are..? If it's not doing many miles get a petrol. Besides, I don't think autos suit diesels, no matter how many gears they give them.

I can't really deal with a private sale, the car is 3 hours away and I can't be arsed with all the sh*t that comes with dealing with the public. Orl car buyers are...... If I hauled the thing round to my gaff it'll look weird me trying to sell a car registered to someone 100 miles away? no matter how much explainering I did?

I might take you up on the VIN check when I get my mitts on the paperworm, cheers. The next thing will deffo have a Pez engine for sure.

[KozmoNaut]

i hate my standard auto diesel i30. tries to shake itself to death. dreadful nvh levels in it. 6sp auto . it averages 35mpg but my golf turbo petrol with dsg averages 45mpg... only done 10 k miles but going to sell it just to get rid off it. the engineering is pretty good to be fasir but road noise and wind noise is 40years out of date..

Try pulling apart a modern Hyundai or Kia. On the outside, they're well up there with the European brands in fit and finish and features, but once you dig underneath the skin, you start to see stuff like Philips screws and all kinds of rough edges, stuff you'd expect to see on a car that was made 10-15 years ago.

It just goes to show how quickly the Korean brands have moved up in the world. It's the same thing that happened with the Japanese brands 30-40 years ago, but the Koreans have done it in less than half the time.

[annie]

usual lack of any care from the asian manf and workers.. do it cheap, make it look good.
annoyingly i had an identical loan car for 1 day and it was a lot quieter. maybe they put on better qaulity tyres for the loan car as the tyre noise is the worst ive come across in 22yrs in driving hundreds of cars.

[steve_earwig]

I can't really deal with a private sale, the car is 3 hours away and I can't be arsed with all the sh*t that comes with dealing with the public. Orl car buyers are...... If I hauled the thing round to my gaff it'll look weird me trying to sell a car registered to someone 100 miles away? no matter how much explainering I did?

No no, my brother is in a similar position with his FiL's place just now (with the added fun* of crap legal advice resulting in a ridiculous will that requires my bro to sell everything, regardless of sentimental value). So obv. chopping it in is the most convenient way of doing it, in which case there probably isn't much point in you working out exactly what it's worth, just enough to know if you're being ripped off or not. Presumably this Atilla is at a dealers, I guess you'd have to present the kgszxarah for the dealer's valuation, is this the problem?

[Welly]

A trade-in is possible without too much fuss, I just wanted to be genned up on the thing out of respect for the FIL as I'd hate some slime ball of a car salesman to get one over on me. The other problem might be that we're not looking at spending much more that the Xssiera's worth now so the deal's probably not that attractive anyway [read: devalue the trade in].

I might get a valuation from WBAC or similar for a cash deal to take it away, we* can then go car shopping with the cash moneh's.