OT FOAK: Q cars

Lovely motor....until it goes wrong. *Mucho* ££££££. A guy who used to work
here had one. Paid good money for a clean, low miles standard example. spent
much, much money over 12mths until even he'd had enough grief. Getting some
bushes/bearings for the hubs took over 3 months FFS.
Runs a scooby now. Never goes wrong.

JB

 

They do sound lovely, though.

 

I'm sure they do.

Still only a Passat at the end of the day though.

 

The Scoob has that. Quite useful.

 

Simian has nailed some of the falacies in this post, but I'd like to
ask why you think the 5 series wasn't designed for 'feckoff big
engines'?

 

Twin-turbo four pot, actually.

They all did that, sir. Several of the more powerful mid-nineties
Subarus have a (somewhat deserved) reputation for eating the autoboxes.

 

I normally don't need gearboxes rebuilt...

 

That's a manual, right?

Subaru put some autoboxes in their higher-end cars in the nineties that
really should've been beefed up and should've run oil coolers, but they
didn't. Exit the gearbox...

The 3l SVX has the same problem, but the manual boxes are fine.

 

Nah, mine was the Legacy GT, which was a grey import. Subaru never sold
the twin-turbo Legacies of that generation in the UK.

 

Can you afford the running cost of something rather silly? A lot of the
options are comparatively cheap to buy but do cost a few quid extra to
run...

My choices for a family-type stealth motor would either be a de-badged
BMW E34 M5 (3.6l) or a four-door E36 M3. Your budget should buy you a
good 'un of either and might even stretch to a genuine M5 touring if you
can find one.

Somewhat outside your budget is the proof that Mercedes engineers do
have a sense of humour, otherwise known as the 500E/E500. At first and
second glance, they look like your bog-standard ex-minicab W124 with a
nice interior, but some nutters[1] shoehorned the 5l V8 from the S class
into the engine bay. Unfortunately the decent ones are still closer to
10k and IIRC, LHD only.

Another potential candidate but unfortunately in the same area
price-wise would be an E34 Alpina B10 twin-turbo. They're even faster
than an M5, but that's mainly because Alpina removed the limiter. Very
rare, though.

There are also a couple of Audis to consider (S2 and S4) and the various
T5-R Volvos if you like your front tyres bald.

[1] Porsche, actually.

 

Shame the SVX only came with auto in the UK, at least..... (not sure
about JDM versions, though) - always fancied one and they look very
cheap these days.

 

They were auto-only, but some people have figured out how to convert
them to manual. IIRC if you run a transmission oil cooler you should be
OK, otherwise the 60k service includes a new slush box.

 

Damn. Shame it's not a rag top.

 

Angle grinder.

 

Yes, thankfully.

 

Who gives a **** about diesels?

 

Well, maybe. I will allow that big *diesels* are sometimes criticised
for the forward weight bias, but I don't find an lack of balance in my
petrol 330.

 

IIRC the 3.6 is slightly more durable than the 3.8, hence my
recommendation.

 

Noted - I'll look into that one.

 

I think the best true 'Q car' around these days is the Mazda 6 MPS. A
couple of grand over your stated budget though.

--
Krusty

'03 Tiger 955i
'02 MV Senna (for sale) '96 Tiger (for sale)
'79 Fantic Hiro 250 (for sale) '81 Corvette (for sale)