Decisions

So what do I do about my car? It really is a curse liking motors as I do because it makes me so miserable and disatisfied a lot of the time. I went to a very local dealers to look at the above WRX at the weekend; its five years old, done only 45k and had two (older geezer) owners. No mods, and it didn't feel as if it had been spanked when I took it for a ten minute test drive. What I did notice was a shocking amount of shake through the wheel which when combined with the offside-front alloying kerbing - meant the tracking and balancing was probably guffed. Not a major issue, but a black mark. Next thing that I didn't like was the tiny little flat spots I sensed as I booted it past some trucks on the dual carriageway. What I mean was that the power did not come across like a massive tidal wave of oomph, it came in but I could feel there was little miniscule spots of *no power* in among the rev band. I'm not explaining this too well, and it wasn't like catastrophic and I'm maybe being a little unfair to compare a five year old with the one year old I sold in Jan. There could be a stack of reasonable explanations for that, coked-up tubes, it was 9am and the engine hadn't really warmed up, and the garage hadn't serviced it since receiving it on Monday as part of a trade-in (I noticed it on Auto-Trader on Tuesday). With a very thorough service and properly warmed through I'm sure it would have felt like more of the 215bhp were on tap. When I was out it felt like only 75% of that, which was disappointing. The brakes felt as wooden and unresponsive as I remembered but that's maybe nit-picking. Back in the showroom we talked money, and his trade-in offer for the Micra was reasonable, so far so good. He wasn't prepared to budge on the £8k asking price (I wasn't expecting a massive saving, maybe £500, but nothing doing) however he would do the full service including a costly, but extremely important, cambelt change. There were a few WR Sport back boxes on Ebay too, which kind of got me all excited (I had one on my previous and it sounded lovely) but when he mentioned a three month parts and labour warranty I stood up and walked. Main dealers offer 12 months, so the least I was expecting was six months. If he was as confident of the car as he professed then six months should have not have been a deal breaker. So as things stand I've left it with them. I dealt with the owner on Friday, but he wasn't available over the weekend. Maybe he'll call once he's back in the garage and been made aware of the situation from Bob the Salesman... Maybe.