paulrnx

Ouch. Sorry to hear this. I paid for Smart Cover on mine and I've had two repairs done now. Best £399 I ever spent I think given it's covered for three years from purchase date. Guess you could get your scratches repaired for less than £450 and also my £399 though?

Take a look at whatcar.com. They have some good buying tips on there. Key advice is to know how much your own car is worth as a trade-in and how much the 'new' car is worth. I always look at the difference between my car and a new car based on dealership pricing (for both) and this is always my target cost to change. I don't always get there for obvious reasons but I get as close as I possibly can.

Interesting that people are going for Michelin Cross Climates. I'll be interested to see how they are in the summer on long hot days. If ok, they might be my next choice.

Have run all my previous Jaguar XFs on winter tyres between November and early March. Made a huge difference on cold wet days, the cars felt planted and not skittish like they were on normal tyres as the temperature dropped, mind you they all wore 20" rubber bands. My NX doesn't feel anywhere near as bad though and always feels planted. Been ok in the snow too this winter. I reckon once I change the rears to sames the fronts (Goodyear EfficientGrip) the car will be fine in cold weather and snow. Not as good as winter tyres for sure but probably good enough for what I need. I fully support anyone who swaps to winter tyres, the difference in grip is amazing.

150 miles down to Weymouth area (M5 to Taunton, A358, A303 and A37) @ 34.8 mpg. Return journey 34.6 mpg. About 30 miles of running around down there @ 48-52 mpg. I'm sure I could have improved this by some 3-4 mpg if I'd kept religiously to an indicated 70 whereas I tended to cruise slightly higher at the same speed as the majority of the traffic. I can think of a great many cars I've had that would have smashed these figures. Not SUVs mind.

Yes, this is what I find too

Looks like I did. You lazy so and so!!

The only thing stopping me from moving to an NX200t is that it has to be an F-Sport and I find that they are noisier and too firm for me. Or at least that's what my ears and backside tell me. So, Luxury or Sport for me but not an F-Sport. Yet to try an F-Sport with AVS though which could change my opinion.

Your front tyres look a bit like slicks Andy? Or is it just the photo making them look like that?

Your GS should give you this I think. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the new purchase after a while

Agreed. Depends how my 300 mile road-trip tomorrow goes. Mostly motorway and dual carriageway which is not the ideal habitat for this car but one that mine has to do. I will check up on the available plans this week though.

Welcome. Nice looking car too!

Hmmmnnn. I might need to get into this Lexus Portal thing and see what I can find for mine. Interesting stuff above.

I have a sneaky feeling that Sport mode gives me the best mpg figure or at least no worse than Normal mode. I find in Sport mode that there is quite a bit more linearity between throttle pedal and performance and I find that I don't have to keep mashing the accelerator to the floor to produce a reasonable level of response from the drivetrain. If nothing else, I find it makes the car nicer to drive with a more predictable level of performance. Now that my driving pattern has changed to more local commuting and less motorways I'm also seeing high 30's averages over a tankful too, up from the mid 30's I was seeing. Got a 300 mile round-trip to do tomorrow with plenty of motorway and I'm going to do the whole day in Sport mode, will be interesting to see what I get.

Interesting. Might give this a whirl. Have to make sure I'm keeping the car first mind. RRG? Is that the dealership group?

I've just got into the habit of doing it. Disable it when walking from the driveway to the front door and then pressing the unlock button as I walk towards the car in the morning. No more or less hassle than putting the key into a metal box or pouch, probably less so really. Would be nice to not have to do this. I imagine it's only a matter of time before manufacturers stop offering comfort access because it's clear to me that no-one should be able to steal a car by standing outside a house scanning the key signal and then replicating it to gain access and drive away. I know that manufacturers think they need an ever increasing amount of tech in their cars but this one is a security risk too far and perhaps a questionable feature. Comfort access? I mean, all it takes is a press of the unlock button to open a car anyway. Have we become so lazy that we have to introduce a clearly security-flawed system just to avoid us having to make one press of the key to unlock a car. I get the arms full of shopping argument but seriously, is this a regular event for everyone? Possibly an answer to a problem that only exists in the minds of techies and marketeers in the car industry who want to flood the cars we drive with tech. I can see insurance companies mandating that this feature is disabled on cars before offering cover if thefts get to a level that bothers the industry. Or mandating that keys must always be stored in an industry approved pouch/tin/box/etc. Food for thought. Then again, having thieves clone your key signal and just driving away is probably preferable to them breaking their way through the front door and violently demanding the keys. Unless of course you keep a big baseball bat or firearm in the hall to use in the ensuing 'discussion'!!

Are MOTs free with a service plan then?

Hope you get this sorted Jack. Doesn't look like a great repair to me. I had a deer/muntjac strike in my previous IS200t and it went to the insurer's authorised repair agent. It came back perfect, no unsightly panel gaps and all gaps were equal everywhere. Yours doesn't look like mine did. There is a code of conduct covering repairs, try to get hold of a copy. This will tell you the standard you can expect to get for a repair. If you can prove your car doesn't meet this code of conduct I'd say you'll be in a stronger position. Always better to be able to quote standards and prove the repair doesn't meet them. I'm assuming that the place you had it repaired at have signed up to this code of conduct mind.

Yes, I've negotiated free services too. Usually only the first/next mind, Two free services is pretty good going. Good that you got the credit transferred to a new plan.

Yes Sean, I understand the fixing the costs argument. Motoring gets ever more expensive year on year, no doubt about that.

I can't understand why people would want to hand over money to a dealership or manufacturer for future servicing. Just put the same money away in the building society every month so you have it come servicing time. I get people buying servicing packages up front when buying a new car because these are often good value deals but I don't really understand buying a service plan and paying for it on a monthly basis when there is no financial benefit other than spreading the cost. They just have your money ahead of time and you have the head-ache of settling if you sell or trade-in. If done through a dealership, what happens if they go bust or get taken over by another chain? Much better to save some money on a monthly basis but hold onto the money in another account.

Is it easy to remove the charging tray? Anyone done this?

Made me chuckle this

I agree with some of the posts on here. I would never have different tyres on the same axle. I'd also want each tyre to have similar tread depth so I'd be buying two not one. I'd also only have premium tyres. I know they're more expensive but worth every single penny in my opinion. Trouble is motoring is really expensive nowadays and I can understand why people go for cheaper tyres, cheaper servicing, cheaper fuel, etc. If I was in charge however there would be no such thing as budget tyres. I'll never forget reading a tyre test in Autocar where various sets of budget tyres at the time were subjected to a set of standard OEM Continental tyre tests. I wouldn't go near them myself. I don't have the data to back this up but I suspect that a fairly large number of collisions would be avoided if there was no such thing as budget tyres on our roads.

Creaking dashboard is the one I most remember from my ownership. Fixed by wedging some black rubber/foam of the right stiffness into various points along the nearside area between dashboard and windscreen. Think it was this forum where I found out about the problem. Such a shame because in all other respects the car was super refined.