gangzoom

Just go and get a 335i already, apart from the looks department beats the Z for everything else . When you do go to a BMW showroom make sure you don't look like a hobo, when I went to pick up my 335i (having already paid for it) i turned up in a T shirt, cheap ASDA jeans, trainers unshaven...the girls on the reception desk did their best to pretend I didn't exist and totally ignored me. I found it quite funny but was happy to walk around admiring my new ride, it wasn't until I started pulling at the door handles the salesman saw me and came over to give me the key .

Comparing a 2nd hand car to new cars is not all that helpful. Every one knows the Cayman is going to be best out of the three, but its a £40K+ car. If your going to compare 2nd hand cars why not chuck in a £15K E60 M5, a £25K E90 M3, or even a £35K GTR, all three would make a Cayman look like a 1.0 Micra (in a straight line anyways). The Toyota looks like great fun but is just far too expensive for what it is, for £27K you can easily get a whole host of hothatches which offer more performance but much more practicality (Megane 250, Golf GTI/R, Astra VXR). I know we all love good drivers cars but been a good drivers car doesn't get you sales...Lotus produce some of the best handling cars around but are about to go bust. TVR produced some of the most exciting drivers cars ever but have gone bust. I love Chris Harriss's videos but recently I think his lost touch with what "normal" people want in a car, been a good drive is important but so are other things such as comfort/looks/price/economy. I sold my DC2 Integra R for a 350Z not because the Z is a better drivers car, but because I wanted to be able to hear my radio whilst driving at more than 40mph, and have toys like aircon Interesting in the latest issue of EVO the Toyota only for 4 stars and the 370Z got 4.5 stars which i think is a much better reflection of how the cars compare in the real world

£2.5K loss in 1 month Might as well go and buy a M5 and your loss less money in the same amount of time

You can always do the "reversing" trick. Stick a £50 Canon 50mm on to any zoom lens with a £2 reversing ring....you look a twit, but much cheaper than a dedicated macro lens

Any chance of uploading the DC2 write up

RS4s are lovely I was all set to get one untill I came across the 'carbon build up' issue. The fuel injectors need cleaning every 10-15k miles to get rid of carbon build up. Without getting rid of the carbon build up BHP will be alot less than what's quoted, some have dynoed as low as 275whp!! There's always the E90 M3, no problems with turbos because its NA, no issues with carbon build up, quicker than almost anything else with 4 doors and a boot...and they are getting towards the £20k mark .

I took my 70-300mm, there were plenty of people walking around with 'L' lens so unless you got a 400mm beast it woudlnt be a problem.

Cheers Mitz, it's was a great day out....but not cheap hence lack of new discs for the 335

Some how we managed to get lucky and got some tickets to the Olympic 400m final on Monday (bought the tickets on the website on Saturday night. So the website does work, you just have to be very lucky!!). Been to a few sporting things and nice holidays over the years, but have to say this trumped them all!! Unfortunately no GB winners on the night but the atmosphere was still amazing...if your thinking about going JUST DO IT!! For those interested all the photos taken with a Canon 550D and suitable lens (Total cost of camera gear about £500 which is frankly amazing for the quality of the shots!! Put it another way, some point and shoot cameras cost >£250 and come no where near in terms of image quality)... So close... They make it look so easy... Fastest man ever.. What it feels like to be the fastest man over 400m... Everyone else....

Lovely looking Z, hope you get what you want for it . Do NOT get a car on PCP/Loan if need to sell the Z to justify a house. There's nothing worse than paying £££ a months on the mortagage and than realising you need to than find another £200-300 a months (theres no way the Z would be costing that much to run anyways) on top to pay for a car which is depreciating every day....been there done that

But even BMW have given in and trying to cash in on peoples love for the 'M' badge with the new M135i and M550d There's a 335 around where I live which is plastered in M badges, keep on hoping to run into it at the traffic lights, would like to see just how many BHP each M badge adds...am guessing at least 15

I don't think the 370Z has sold very well at all compared to the 350Z. According to wiki US 370Z sales figures are 1/3 that of the 350Z..ofcourse wiki never lies Don't know what the RRP of the 370Z is now (>£30K?), but the new BMW M135i (ok it looks like a pig) has a RRP of £29K and for once comes with a decent amount of standard kit (Leather, Bluetooth, USB, AirCon, Xenon, iDrive). Has a combined mpg rating of 37.7 , 320bhp (0-60 5.1sec), and can sit 3 extra people compared to the Z. Nissan really needs to come out with a decent engine to compete with the power/economy figures BMW powerplants can offer inorder to get some decent sales figures!!

My car has had no problems at all...but theres a few things on 335i to look out for, though BMWs have nicer interior plastics etc mechanically certainly don't have the build quality of Jap cars. 1) Fuel pump failures: This appears to be mainly limited to the US where theres more ethanol in the fuel. The car should start up first time from cold, if crank has to turn more than a few times the pump might be on its way out! 2) Injectors: BMW did a recall on a certain batch last year, if your buying through a dealer shouldn't be a problem. 3) Wastegate rattle: Some of the actuators on certain cars weren't manufactured to BMW spec, and overtime can cause the wastegate rattle at certain revs. Replacing them is a big job and essentially involves replacing the turbos . Easy to tell if the car has a wastgate rattle is to rev the engine to 4-5Krpm and than let it settle to idle and listen our for a "rattle" from the exhaust. As well as these "issues" the E90 BMWs have some common faults across the range, google "BMW steering wheel lock fault" or "BMW DSC fault" or "BMW 19inch Alloy cracks" and your see why on the BMW forums people are obsessed with extended warranties (BMW will cover your car up to 100K for a yearly fee, but you also need to get your car serviced at BMW otherwise they will decline any claims). I bought mine from a dealer for the warranty, and once I was happy my car wasn't going to start throwing error codes started looking into modding it. Incidentally the E46 Bimmers have a reputation of developing cracks in the rear subframe....no doubt the New F30 will have its own list of "issues" I really cannot be putting up with paying BMW £500+ per year for their "warranty" and than be nailed by BMW every time the oil need changing so instead have an emergency car/turbo kitty....Still my 335i is the best car I've owned to date, and have no plans to sell it for a long long time (Especially now I know Andy/Mitz have replaced turbo on 330ds before)

I waited for mine to come out of warranty before starting to push up the power. Mitz/Andy acutally ended up installing my new Downpipes because no BMW independents wanted to do it!! Amazingly my mpg seems to have gone UP since the remap, sitting on M ways at 75-80mph will now see 35+ mpg. Which for the performance on offer is just stupid . I was actually put off even thinking about the 335i because of how boxy/boring their image is, but go and test drive one and trust me your see why all the Car Journalists rave about them. Have to say I'm fully converted to BMWs, as much as loved the Z and fast Jap cars there's nothing on offer from Infinit/Lexus that comes close to the performance/economy/interior build quality/driving experience/ price fast BMWs offer

Never driven a B7 S4 but most reviews put it behind the 335i, the B8 is suppose to be match for the BMW and has some very good tuning options. If they had been cheaper 12 months ago may have bought one instead of the 335i. They also come with a trick diff/4WD system thats suppose to be quite good. The BMW eDiff is a rubbish, a proper Qauife LSD transformed my 335i. You can now pick up a good 335i with a BMW warranty and all the essential toys for for £15k. Take it Birds BMW for Quaife LSD and remap for roughly £1.7k and your have a very sorted car pushing 360-370bhp for under 18K (if you wanted to, add on some better downpipes and intercooler and 400bhp is easily achievable. The N54 engine came with forged internals stock and over the pond people have achieved 450bhp without having to undergo a rebuild!!) ...oh and it doesnt sound half bad, and trying doing this in a V8 (and no it wasn't a 51 mile long down hill run)

I bought a £20 BMW USB-OBD cable off ebay this week, been playing around with the coding software BMW uses (freely avaliable on the web), was amazed at what you can do to the car in a very short period of time. You can access and code virtually any of the onboard computers in seconds!! Its very cool been able to retrofit parts without going anywhere near a dealer(in my case adding better speakers/amp), but at the same time quite scary...I get the impression you can easily "brick" the whole car if you send the wrong code to the ECU!! I can also see how easy it is to "clone" a key if you had access to the right kit (reading the data is easy, but writing it to blank key needs additional equipment)...I cannot see how BMW can really stop this, short of a complet redesign of the OBD system.

There is already an import tax on cars from outside the EU, not sure how much but its defiantly there, hence why Jap cars are so much cheaper in Japan compared to Europe. What happens in some countries with protectionist tax policies is madness though, essentially Proton is government owned, much in the same way as British Leyland was and we all known what great cars British Leyland use to make . Competition is a good thing, it makes people innovate and work harder...Jag/Range rover are now doing well because they are making products the rest of the world wants to buy, not because every one in the UK is buying one. If import taxes were lower in other countries no doubt Jag/Range rover would do even better, be able to employ more people....but if the UK/EU puts up import taxes to "protect" local jobs than other countries would do the same and as a result the company would most likely loss world wide sales and than have to shut down factories here in the UK, hence your original plan to "protect" local jobs than backfires and everyone loses out.....

Dropped you a PM... But essentially 335i>350Z..in fact my 335i is very very close to my mates E90 M3 in regards of straight line speed Will post some photos once I've given it a wash, but mine looks like any other E90 3 series...usually theres one parked around every street some where

Big thanks again to Andy and Mitz at Cougar Store. Even though I don't have a 350Z anymore it seems like I'll be spending more £££ with them Had some HighFlow downpipes installed by Andy on Saturday....these are B*****S to install on a BMW 335i, none of the local BMW "specialists" wanted to take it on. So in the end went back to the people who did the work on my 350Z!! Couldn't be happier with the result....now just waiting for delivey of uprated antiroll bars, and M3 subframe bushes (that'll be another easy job for Andy )!!

Since Feb this year, my car has one of these fitted every night... Bought it nearly 6 years ago for my DC2 Teg which basically had no security system worth mentioning...for the last 5 years its been sitting in the garage, didn't think I'll ever need it again...but still better than waking up finding the cars disappeared!!

Had the same problem 18months or so ago...I had a budget of £25-30K (including what ever PX I got for the Z) theres was so much choice...Impreza/EVOs/M3/M5 etc.. It really easy to get carried away, but I always reminded my self that a lot of these cars were £45K+ machine with running costs to match. Ended up spending under £20K for my 335i...my logic was the money I saved can be used for sensible things other than cars....but thanks to Mitz/Andy I seem to have allocated most of it for mods If I was do it again, would probably still go for a 335i.....or S4 or M3 or a XJ...

Actually it's a very big deal...I hardly have time to clean my car once a month. If am paying £30k+ on a car I don't expect to put foam/cleaning solution into the engine every 2 weeks just to keep the thing working...in any case I'm not sure any one has actually found a way to elimante carbon build up? Even a quick search on the web shows plenty of RS4s producing much lower than expected figures on dynos which than 'recover' once the valves are cleaned (propely by scrubbing the valves not using foam/cleaning solution). As said all direct injection engine suffer from this...BMW have recently produced an official document and specific equipment for cleaning the valves (£500 a time I think, and I'll probably get my car done once it hits 50K). But for some reason the RS4s are really badly affected, I'm actually quite surprised the Americans haven't tried to sue Audi...

I had a DC2 Integra R before my Z. When really pushed the Type R was more fun than the Z, it had more feedback, better turn in (the Z is 200-300Kg more in weight), and at 9Krpm the 1.8l engine sounded like a touring car (helped by a total lack of sound proofing). Not really sure if it was any faster than the Z, but certainly more fun. But...I sold the DC2 after 10months, where as the Z lasted me nearly 4 years. Mainly because I realised even though the Teg was an amazing driving machine, as a day to day car for dealing with motorways/speedbumps/traffic (had no air-con) I simply couldn't live with it longterm (I was 22 when I bought the Teg). Similarly a Lotus Elise/VX 220 would be even more fun, but I struggled to get in one with the top down. For day to day driving (95% on the time) the Z beat the Integra hands down. Better looks, much more comfortable, and a stereo that you could actually use at speeds >50mph, and for the other 5% it was fun enough for me As long as your sensible the Z is perfectly safe, I used mine daily for 4 years through rain/snow/ice all on summer tyres..and never got stuck once or even come close to losing the back end on public roads..as some one have said, the Z is very predictable. I also looked at a S2000/DC5 as replacements to the DC2 Teg, but in all honesty they just weren't as "special" to drive as the Teg, and the way the engine delivered the power felt far too similar to the Teg and I just couldn't get away from the feeling the DC2 Teg was the peak of the Type R brand and everything else after wards was just Honda trying to recreate the magic...where as the 350Z has a complete different feel, and actually made me understand what the term "torque" actually meant So in summary, I think the Z will be more dull to drive compared to the EP3, but on the other hand the Z is actually a car non-petrol heads (girls included ) actually appreciate, and for day to day use theres no comparison, the Z wins every time!!

I initially looked into RS4s, but they seem to suffer very badly with carbon build up on the valves. I think the problem affects all the FSI engines in the VAG group, not sure if that includes the S5. I think all direct injection engines suffer from this (including the N54 engine in my 335i), but on the RS4s this seem to cause major problems with loss of power/error codes (even on cars with low miles), where as on BMWs I've yet to see anyone report carbon build up causing loss of power/error codes..even on cars thats done >100K. I was put off buying any VAG group car because of this, the NEW S4 seems to not suffer from carbon build up..when I was looking 18months ago they were still >£30K so out of my price range, but am sure by now they will be well below <£25K.

I was in middle of Leicester when the sky just turned black. All we had was rain..and now a dirty car. Wife called me up to warn me about the hail (was on my push bike) but it never came. Her car is fine (just covered in sand)...cannot believe the GTR could be a write off