The Electric Car Thread

I was a serious “petrol head” when I was younger and regularly drove everything from Caterhams to 800 bhp Audis and ridiculous supercharged cobras; the latter was terrifying, you could almost feel the chassis twisting, and the noise had other petrol heads twitching at two miles. I also did trackdays, drag racing, sprints and hill climbs frequently and went to the Nurburgring every year. I enjoyed a lot of very nice ICE cars but I have to say, despite being a fair bit slower than some of my previous cars, the silent acceleration of our Model 3 performance never fails to make me smile, I’m also a lot happier to pootle along and just chill no matter how manically others are driving. As a competent cross country car, it’s outstanding and really doesn’t want for anything on the suspension or brake front. The suspension and brakes wouldn’t be vaguely suited for hammering around a racetrack, then again, I had to swap brakes and suspension on my BMW M3 and many other performance cars.

Maybe I’m getting old, but another thing I love about our M3P is that it’s not even slightly antisocial, it wafts along, barely disturbing anyone’s peace. I loved a BMW straight six howling away, the angry growl of a turboed V8 and that supercharger whine on a large capacity engine; different times though for me and I can’t say I miss the noise. :)

I think I’ll get a Nurburgring sticker for the back of the Brabus. As befits its Teutonic design.

MST MK1 with a Millington

My first car, back in 1985, was a Mk1 Escort Mexico. In orange.

It would now be a collectors item/museum piece but it was, by all reasonable measure, shit.

I’m not going backwards

Don’t forget the red seatbelts @deadlydarcy I’m sure they’ll save you from all that power :)

I do find the dual-motor = insane acceleration approach with EVs a bit annoying to be honest. I mean I’m sure it’s fun but you don’t half pay for it in insurance premiums. A Tesla Model 3 long range is insurance group 50, which is about as high as it goes and could easily end up costing a grand more per year to insure than a more sensible premium car and that’s for someone in their 50s. OK Tesla’s are particularly expensive to insure but there is usually a decent hike that comes with adding the extra motor. A Smart # 1 Premium is group 32 and a Brabus is group 38, for example

We’ve tended to go for AWD ICE cars as they suit our dodgy Aberdeenshire roads pretty well, but it’s hard to justify a dual motor EV as I don’t think anyone (other than maybe Subaru with the rebadge Toyota, which has its own issues) seems to make an AWD EV with a focus on traction rather than straight line acceleration.

Don’t forget the red seatbelts  @deadlydarcy I’m sure they’ll save you from all that power :)

oh Cripes, yes. I totally forgot about those. There are red brake calipers as well I think. Which function way better than the unpainted ones on the other models.

@roverpig our M3P with full business use and loads of extras, inc European cover, legal etc is about £600 with Admiral, which isn’t far off our recent performance VAG cars. Maybe it’s an area thing for some reason? Although as they don’t really get stolen maybe not…