Post up your favorite cars and car stories!

[bastonjock]

6 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

What is that... a V-8? Holy shit!!!!

No lol ,its fast enough ,it eats most sports bikes up to 60 mph

Its got the same engine as a goldwing ,its a 6 cylinder 1600 cc  ,called a flat 6 

You can balance a coin on the engine when its idling and the coin does not fall off 

[bastonjock]

4 hours ago, LUFCinMakati said:

Spent most of my life in the Motor Trade, so as you can imagine I have had a few cars, I think the best all round car was C215 Mercedes CL500. Was as comfortable as an S Class, handled like a sports car and would return 25mpg even when driven hard, I couldn't tell you how many I have had but you couldn't count them on 1 hand. 

Other notable cars, where the MK1 Golf GTI I had at Uni, SL55AMG, Porsche 911 964.

Having worked with many Brands the most reliable was Mazda, the worst was GM (Vauxhall), the 2 worst models i have encountered were the Vauxhall Frontera and the first generation Merc M Class. M Class was built in Alabama and was absolute crap, 15% of our sales and 75% of our customer complaints. 

Ive got a gm vauxhall van ,from new , it has had the blowers replaced , the turbo twice and the head off to be skimmed 

Its clocked 60k miles

I have an old merc 1.8 estate, that never has let me down ,it just goes and goes  ,140k on the clock 

I used to have a business delivering high value cars , i.e ferraris ,Lamborghini  ,merc  astons etc 

My favourite car to drive is the Audi V10 

 

[Jack Peterson]

5 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

They would be worth a fortune now!

Unfortunately or Fortunately as the case may be, Ir was Part exchanged as a Deposit on a family car.;

 Proved to be A good buy in the end..

 

[LUFCinMakati]

3 hours ago, bastonjock said:

Ive got a gm vauxhall van ,from new , it has had the blowers replaced , the turbo twice and the head off to be skimmed 

Its clocked 60k miles

I have an old merc 1.8 estate, that never has let me down ,it just goes and goes  ,140k on the clock 

I used to have a business delivering high value cars , i.e ferraris ,Lamborghini  ,merc  astons etc 

My favourite car to drive is the Audi V10 

 

Your Mercedes estate was built in Germany and not Alabama Mate. 

The old W124 which were the stable of the taxis in Europe would do 1M Km, unfortunately the W210 was not quite as good and the W211 a disaster in its early years. All despite being made in Germany, however the early M Class was a pile of crap and I only had one for a weekend, a new ML500 which broke down on day 2. 

[bastonjock]

7 hours ago, LUFCinMakati said:

Your Mercedes estate was built in Germany and not Alabama Mate. 

The old W124 which were the stable of the taxis in Europe would do 1M Km, unfortunately the W210 was not quite as good and the W211 a disaster in its early years. All despite being made in Germany, however the early M Class was a pile of crap and I only had one for a weekend, a new ML500 which broke down on day 2. 

I know where mercs are  made , I have owned 4 of them 

[graham59]

My wife is called Mercedes.

Just saying. 

[Dave Hounddriver]

11 hours ago, LUFCinMakati said:

Your Mercedes estate was built in Germany and not Alabama Mate. 

Funny how Mercedes says different.  Here is there site:

https://www.daimler.com/company/locations/tuscaloosa/

 

[LUFCinMakati]

4 hours ago, bastonjock said:

I know where mercs are  made , I have owned 4 of them 

 

28 minutes ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

Funny how Mercedes says different.  Here is there site:

https://www.daimler.com/company/locations/tuscaloosa/

 

I was maybe wrongly assuming that @bastonjock had an C or E Class in the UK, whereby it would have been made in Germany, although depending on the year if a C it could have been made in South Africa. I can assure you the M Class was made in small numbers in Austria and largely in Alabama as the article posted by @Dave Hounddriver confirms, the M Class is not longer made, replaced by the GLE. Merc have production and assembly plants all over the world, to gain tax advantages:

https://media.daimler.com/marsMediaSite/en/instance/ko/The-production-network-The-worldwide-plants.xhtml?oid=9272049

Most other manufacturers do the same, you will note the VW's for sale here are largely made in China, Toyota's from Thailand etc etc. 

[Jack Peterson]

5 minutes ago, LUFCinMakati said:

Most other manufacturers do the same,

 Could we be Confusing  Production with Assembly? my Suzuki was produced in Japan but assembled in Thailand, Honda produced in Japan but the UK market is Assembled in Swindon UK Toyota also have an assembly plant in the Uk, Seems that the Import Duties are less for Parts than the full assembled Unit. + maybe a better rate of labour Costs. just a thought here 

[LUFCinMakati]

1 minute ago, Jack Peterson said:

 Could we be Confusing  Production with Assembly? my Suzuki was produced in Japan but assembled in Thailand, Honda produced in Japan but the UK market is Assembled in Swindon UK Toyota also have an assembly plant in the Uk, Seems that the Import Duties are less for Parts than the full assembled Unit. + maybe a better rate of labour Costs. just a thought here 

My post stated production and assembly, the latter is usally CKD (complete knock down) or can be SKD (semi knock down) with some manufacturers.

Has nothing to do with labour costs, in the main, its duties where CBU (complete built) units, here for example, have very high duties applied to them, units produced / assembled in ASEAN have much lower duties. I remember going around the Kia plant in China, they were building 800K a year with 300 employees, this included management etc, i only saw 3 people in the actual factory.