350ash

Lunch sounds good to me

I think the denim seats might have actually been a special edition, I could be wrong though.

They had one of these on Top Gear on Sunday as well, so you were lucky to get yours when you did as the prices are bound to sky-rocket now!

Someone should have told them that there's only 10 floors though...

I'm guessing I know who this is - Liam at work told me you were getting a 370 and Ray confirmed it on Wednesday!

You went for the best colour too.

Mid-morning sounds good to me.

Have you warned the garage that a few of us will be turning up? If they're just expecting you and then a handful of zeds and a noble turn up they might not be too impressed.

I was tempted by this car before I got mine, I had a viewing organised but never made it - I viewed a different car the day before and bought that one instead!

I've just looked back at the old 'for sale' thread on here and noticed there was someone there who commented:

":scare: very good price.

Once again another 350z that I'd love to buy...

...in 5 months time!

GLWTS"

that was about 5 months ago...

I know someone who lives in Leamington and was asking around recently to see if anyone wanted to go windsurfing with him, I'll send you his details.

Sorry guys, I'm also going to have to pull out from this weekend. Sounds like you three are going to have a good mini meet anyway and the 'after party' at Nurrish's sounds interesting too...

1. Nurrish - Confirmed

2. Wasso - Confirmed

3. stichy

4. Fakeindian

5. ikarus (tentative)

6. IanS16

7. GT4 Zed

8. Bladesgrant - Confirmed

9. Tarmac (tentative)

I left uni desperate to get a Caterham and once I'd been working for a while and saved up enough I started looking for one. But as it was going to be my only car I decided in the end that it just wasn't practical enough. I then spent along time considering pretty much every car there is (sporty clios, evos, M3s, old Bentleys, TVRs, etc, etc) and narrowed it down to two choices: a 350Z or a VX220. I was leaning more towards the VX220 and the more I read about it the better it sounded but equally the more I read about it the worse it sounded for a day-to-day car. In the end I decided to go down the sensible route and buy a 350Z; funnily enough when I told people I had bought a nice sensible car, a 350Z, they looked at me like I was crazy.

When I first started looking at cars I thought that maybe I'd get a 350Z in a couple of cars time (if that makes sense?) as I surely wouldn't be able to afford one yet and it would remain a car to dream of owning in the future. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that I could afford one (just!).

Since getting my car a friend at work has bought a VX220 and he took me out for a ride in it. It's a great car but I found out that I don't fit in the drivers seat properly and so I wouldn't have been able to get one anyway. But even before finding out I don't fit in a VX220 I decided that I had definitely made the right decision.

Something that I took a week or so to notice was the Z badge in the vent leading into the door. You can only see it when the door's open, it's not a gadget but I thought it was a nice little design feature.

JLR, just like everyone else, know that Range Rovers dont go anywhere near off road. Though I think the off road prowess is one of the reasons they get bought, even though the customers will never use that of road prowess.

 

They are also bought for their size in conjunction with the badge.

 

By dropping its size considerably, one of the main "pose" factors in its size is lost, so I assume a section of the market will stick with the RR Sport.

 

As I say, the fact that RR's rarely even make it off road now and are seen as nothing more than fashion accessories is backed up by the involvement of Victoria Beckham. Its the VB wanabees around the world that they want to buy this car afterall. There really is no other reason to involve such a marmite personality in their organisation unless it is specifically aimed at the permatan luis vitton weilding wag types on my opinion.

 

It will be interesting to see its off road capabilities tested, and see how well it sells. Its certainly a bit of a gamble for JLR I think.

I pretty much agree with everything you've said there. I think they'll be aiming for new sectors of the market though so it won't matter if other people stick with their RR Sports. I personally believe it will be a big sales success but maybe that's partly due to some corporate brainwashing, lets wait and see!

The current Range Rovers are all capable off road even if not many people use them there.

The reason this new one is a Range Rover and not a Land Rover is because it will have a very luxurious interior and will be fully kitted up. It's likely to be just as good off road as a Freelander and that has a Land Rover badge!

 

I'll take a 4WD one then please!

 

I'll let the Sales department know!

 

 

Just let me know where to send the £100 cheque and the delivery date!

I'll try and find out for you but unfortunately I'm not sure you'll get too much for your £100, it is a Range Rover after all, sorry.

 

I'll take a 4WD one then please!

I'll let the Sales department know!

I also wasn't too impressed to hear about a 2WD version but I guess for the type of car it is not many owners would ever take theirs offroad anyway. It also helps bring down the CO2 emissions which seems to be getting ever more important these days. I know it's a bit like comparing apples with oranges but I think bringing out a FWD Evoque to reduce the fleet CO2 emissions is less harmful to the Range Rover brand than bringing out a Cygnet could be to the Aston Martin brand.

I really like the styling.

 

Is this the FWD one though? That (to me) is a major mistake.....

 

I'm a JLR fan and I can see my other half wanting one. Roll on JLR residuals!

There's going to be both a 4WD version and a FWD version. The 4WD one should be very competent indeed offroad (the FWD one probably less so!).

This is the same guy that played 'full size' mario kart in a French city:

He's a bit of a nutter.

Like Husky I'm a bit biased but I really like it. I think a lot of people are overestimating the size of it, in real life it's quite small, a lot smaller than a Range Rover Sport.

I had some fun driving one all round the country last week in full psychedelic camo, spotted quite a few zeds whilst on my travels too.

Aahh that was I was missing! Unfortunalty I can park on the road in front of the house, no hosepipe for me

I don't have access to a hosepipe either but I find that a watering can works well instead. My neighbours must think I'm crazy when they see me watering my car every week!

All this shows is how much you need spacers

 

And that they both need lowering

I actually like the look of the standard set-up, plus I need to keep my car standard so that it can be used for comparison purposes

Looking at the cars in the carpark Husky and I both agreed that his car looks like it needs lowering more than my car does because of how far his wheels stick out into the arches. On the rear the arch hangs over my wheels quite a lot so you don't notice the gap above the wheel anywhere near as much as you do on his.

I spotted Husky's car today, complete with shiny new wheels. They look even better in real life than in the photos!

I tried to take some photos on my phone but it turns out that the camera on it isn't too good.

You can't actually see the wheels properly in this one:

No wheels in this one either:

I tried to get a picture showing the difference in tyre width between standard wheels and tyres (mine, on the right) and Husky's new massive ones (on the left). Unfortunately the photo came out a bit dark.

At least they show off how clean my car is!

I live in Leamington Spa but I'm in Milton Keynes quite often. Gizmo-R are you based in Shenley Lodge? You mentioned before that your local is the Old Beams and that's not far from my parents house.

Looking really good!

I reckon the brakes look alright in the end as well, although they'd look a lot better with different colour Brembo's, black could work nicely?

Also, I'd be very grateful if you did 'modify' the speedbumps at work.

Awesome photos, how did you get so close to the track? I missed out this year but I'll be back in '11 for sure.

 

Thanks for sharing,

Matt

There were some metal barriers blocking off the entrance to a carpark but they had a pedestrian sized gap in them. I then just walked from that carpark to the edge of the track. Whilst I was standing there a couple of other people tried to join me but they we told they weren't allowed, they then pointed at me, I guess they were asking why I was allowed there and they weren't. For some reason I was just left alone to watch the race, which was nice!

As most people on here seem to like photos I thought I'd put up a few from my trip to Le Mans at the weekend. If other people that went could put some of their photos on here as well that'd be good.

Stopped off just after getting off the ferry to sticker up our cars:

Sticking a black sticker on the black part of the rear window wasn't the cleverest idea!

The other two cars I went down with (a 318i and a 1972 VW-Porsche 914)

A few at our 'campsite':

The pit-lane was sponsored by the Nissan 370Z so on radio Le Mans they kept saying "and now in the Nissan 370Z pitlane...", it seemed a bit ridiculous. A nice young lady asked me if I wanted to sit in the 370, it felt quite familiar inside but with higher quality materials.

The classics race in the morning was for Group C cars so there were a few Nissans running at Le Mans this year

My view of the England v. USA game

A Dacia Sandero!

Lots of nice TVRs in this carpark but I took a photo of my car instead

There's a chance that I wasn't supposed to be standing here...

I saw a photo of this sticker on Ekona's car, it seems more suited to a 350 roadster than a GT2 though!

They have (or had...) some massive insects in France!

I don't have too many photos of the race itself, but most looked like this anyway

Id like to do this one year too - maybe get a zed over with our forum stickers on too

Get a meet list started for 2011 so, I'd be there!

le mans meet id be there

Husky earlier at work: "I don't know what the whole Le Mans thing is about"

Husky now: "See you next year at Le Mans!"

All it needed was a few zeds to tempt him there.

I really should be leaving now, hope my passenger arrives soon...