Ekona

Do it. Absolute no-brainer, given just how much better the car is to drive with a lightweight flywheel on and the negligible cost increase.

I bet, a 5.1L engine in a 3-series must be amazing!!!

Good link, clears it all up nicely. At just 5% extra for going monthly over annually, that's a no brainer to me.

And yes, you should always fill the filter if possible. Some engines have them on the side or the top which obviously makes that impossible, but if you can pre-fill then by all means do.

Not really, no. If a filter does the job then I see no need to increase the size unless you're doing plenty of track work. If you are, then 3k miles is a good idea. If not, and it's just fast road driving with the odd trackday, then tbh 10k miles is plenty. The one that came on the Impreza was huge, so I swapped it for a smaller one then went and thraped it round Spa.

Most oil filters for Jap cars fit each other, just down to how much oil you want to run through the filter really. I've swapped Impreza, Zed, MR2 and Accord filters around with impunity. Very handy, when you realise you don't have the right one...

I would imagine 14 days, if I had to guess. Or maybe none, and you have to sort before collecting.

I don't think anyone knows what the monthly cost will be yet. I certainly wouldn't expect it to be cheaper though! I can live with paying a couple of quid more, tbh. VED is the cheapest part of car ownership, for the vast majority of people.

Plenty of berks in Essex. Cheap, too.

That's not the same thing. That's them guesstimating what you'll be using, and is down to the individual to sort. The VED system is not even comparable. It's the same as paying for your TV licence by DD. Or a magazine subscription. Or anything else, basically.

You mean, like you are with DD when you can cancel at any time without penalty, and have a bucketload of law weighed heavily in your favour in case of a ****-up?

But yeah, I guess they expect most people to just do it monthly via DD from now on. I mean, why wouldn't you?

"If you have been paying your tax annually or every 6 months, you will get a refund for any full calendar months left on the tax period when you tell DVLA you no longer require tax" Is that not it?

Most expensive part of the car is the engine, available for about a grand now. Put that £900 in the bank, after one year you're already even and after two you're quids in.

Actually makes a lot of sense. No more ambiguity, no more wondering if you've git a dodgy disc (it does happen), just a plain rule that keys everyone know where they stand. Paying monthly is a boost too, if you're rubbish at saving.

If you want it Humpy, consider it yours

It's no use on track unless you're doing massive speeds on tracks with fast corners, and you've got the datalogging to prove it's doing something other than just adding weight over the rear end. A lot of the time, you can achieve the same effect by sticking a breezeblock in the boot. Don't get me wrong, that black car above looks amazing (apart from the bonnet) and on track it'll look superb, but unless you've a wind tunnel to work out the angle or can do an awful lot of testing with data loggers to back it up, you're just guessing.

I just don't see the point in putting something on your car that makes it slower, but then I'm not into the whole big wheels and big bodykits scene either so there you go.

Anybody fancy a go at the beta for this game, PC only, this weekend? I have a spare key available if so, first to shout up gets it.

This is also true

Yeah, lower power stuff is a lot of fun on track as you can really wring its neck without worrying too much about overcoming grip at silly speeds. That said, I'd love to track a GT-R just to see what one is really capable of, but I suspect the 'Ring is not the place for that!

You'd be surprised. On my list last time around were a Clio 182, DC5, E92 M3, GT-R and the 911. Okay, so I ended up buying the most expensive one anyway, but honestly they were all considered. This time round when the 911 goes I'm torn between an RX8, a 350Z, and an M6. It's looking likely that the RX8 will win, despite being the cheapest and technically most inferior car. But yeah, I do tend to agree with you that most people go up the chain when buying cars, they rarely come back down. I'd love a Caterham as well, but like you say they're just too impractical to do the other weekend things.

You'd need to set it higher to account for uncertainty. Right now, the coffers get a guaranteed income from VED regardless of mileage, and you cannot predict how many miles someone will do in a year. I reckon I alone do 25K miles, 15K for work and 10K for pleasure, but some years I've done much less pleasure miles than others. The system might be in place, but you need to pay for all those clever people to do all those clever sums to work out the exact amount, plus you need to pay for advertising to let people know what's happening, plus you need to adjust legislation to make it legal: Big figures, right there. It wouldn't be any less than an extra 50p a litre. A box of Curly Wurlys to you if I'm ever proved wrong. All they'd do is say that fuel is being taxed extra from Jan 1st, and everyone is entitled to the standard refund on their VED up to that point once they send it back (oh look, more admin costs!). Slice of gateaux.

Same way every one else in the media does: I made it up I bet it wouldn't be too far off that, though. You'd need to make up revenue from those folks that don't use their cars very much, plus you'd need to pay for the paperwork to switch the system so a good few million quid there, plus might as well chuck a bit more on top to fill the coffers... Yeah, I'd be happy at that figure as a guesstimate.

I wasn't necessarily referring to spending more: Put it this way, you may have a budget of £10K, but I'd move down a grade in car to get the experience I'm after. Say, from maybe a 350Z to a mk1 MX5. Not on the same league performance-wise, nor comforts nor looks, but you may consider the cheaper car to be the better drive so that's what you go for.