One of the things I often say to junior:

“if you know there’s a problem, don’t be a part of it”.

I can confirm that I have offspring. I also endevour to teach him good grammar.

Ok. So although I made a car choice based on my finances and family survival, doesn’t mean I don’t teach and practise environmental principles by the bucket load to my kids.

Unfortunately I couldn’t afford the Toyota Hybrid or i8 I test drive, the latter also being too small for my requirements. But we do foresee an opportunity to replace our Kuga in two years – which is when the nursery fees end – with a petrol hybrid option at least.

You are at least prepared to consider alternatives in future, Kryton. See previous page for a poster who isn’t.

Your kids survival will mainly depend on how you and your wife drive. You might all be very unlucky and get taken out by a crashing jet, but it’s the way you drive that has the most influence on whether you are involved in a collision and survive it. Don’t forget risk compensation and that if you drive a car in which you feel safe you are more likely to answer the phone, play with the satnav, tune the radio, drive too fast, take less care at intersections… .

hora – Member

I can confirm that I have offspring. I also endevour to teach him good grammar.

I hope you don’t teach your offspring to spell. 😉

just bought new second car, spent all my time on the internet. I ve had quite a few new cars to. TBH I go already knowing what I want and just buy that. What you get told in any car show room will be bias towards what they want to move/sell. Do your homework, test drive check it out then purchase.

My purchase took an hour from start to drive away with tax and insurance transfered / paid. Included a quick test drive, check docs, car. Everything in order.

Once bought a new car. Conversation went. ‘Thats the car I want, I will buy it’ Yes sir but that will take 8 weeks for delivery. No I want that one. But thats the display car! Yes sell it me now. They did and it was ready 48 hours later.

I once accompanied a Saudi ambassador’s son (dressed as poverty stricken student) to buy a new car in a tiny dealership in West Wales. The salesman seemed confused by someone buying a new car as one would buy a pair of shoes, and writing the cheque without hesitation.

So a week on and things have developed somewhat – forget customers being wary of diesel, vw aren’t even confident they’ll have diesel models to sell in 2016 now.

Car dealers are in no position to better guess/know how the situation with diesel engines will unfold. Like all manufacturers they want to sell you whatever you want as long as it’s the same as everyone wants. Manufacturers don’t like giving us choice and will always try to influence us to sell what they want to sell us rather than what we actually want. Petrol SMAXs are not popular and they don’t want to sell them. If you really want one they’ll sell you one, but they’ll try not to.

I love my SMAx and I don’t like Diesel engines, but in an SMAX diesel engines really work better than petrol. My mate has a petrol SMAX (2.0ltr power shift) and though it drives better than the diesel (faster, quieter, smoother), it really is ridiculously thirsty – he’s lucky if he’s getting 25mpg – barely scrapes 350miles out of a tank vs. my 500+. The frequency of petrol station visits would annoy me more than anything. I’d think twice about getting a petrol SMAX.