So, the good Mrs A has stacked our Golf into the rear end of something solid with a towbar attached. Sigh.
Obviously, all car related matters are to be dealt with by the man of the house, so I duly took the wheel of the Golf this morning to deliver it to the body shop for straightening out.
A courtesy car was requested with a heavy heart.
On surveying the line of available chariots, all slightly grubby with missing hubcaps, I soon surmised that the best I was going to get was a fairly new Nissan Pixo. The best, mark you.
Hoping for a Pixo, the bodyshop chap hands me the keys to a.....Chevrolet Matiz. Automatic.
Now, I'm used to driving things which aren't exactly Ferraris, but this really is the closest thing to an Indesit Wash-o-Matic with wheels which I have ever driven.
The keys will be handed over to Mrs A on arrival home this evening. Hopefully, this will be a lesson in not crashing our nice(ish) cars ever again................
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Alanovic,
Sorry to hear about the crash.
The last courtesy car I had - for a service - was a Ford Ka.
It was also very slow, but benefited hugely from an Italian tune-up.
The Matiz will never be a ball of fire, but I think courtesy cars get gummed up by being chugged around the garage premises, while never getting a decent run.
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
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You want to get her something a bit more solid AV.
4x4 or something'd be perfect
:-))
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Hope she didn't damage the other guy's towbar....they're not cheap, you know.
Ted
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She did, Ted. His repair bill is £1500. You can hardly see the damage.
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Does the Matiz have the bodyshop's name plastered over the doors and tailgate? Perhaps such semi-mobile biscuit tins should also have stickers reading
I was texting / nose picking / totty spotting in my Golf / BMW / 207CC and now look at what I have to drive.
Of course, the same secret government programme (they tap our phones, you know) should also provide nice, comfortable, unmarked courtesy cars for the blameless folk whose Versos these miscreants drive into.
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>> Does the Matiz have the bodyshop's name plastered over the doors and tailgate?
Happily, no.
I agree with your sentiments, though. I know Mrs A wasn't concentrating, otherwise it wouldn't have happened. It was a routine traffic jam rear end sunt. I was quite cross with her, but hopefully lesson learnt.
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Would you recommed a Qashqai, by any chance, Humph?
;-)
I think the Yertiz might get a booting after work today, if I adjudge that my ears can stand the racket.
Ye Gods, it's tinny. But, strangely, not as tinny or nasty as I was expecting if I'm being perfectly fair. Small, perky little cars have always appealed to me to an extent to be quite honest, but a Renault Twingo does it all with so much more vim than any other bean can I've come across.
In driving terms, the auto box is actually a bit smoother and more responsive than the TC autos in the Golf and in fact in our Galaxy. Is that an aspect of autos in small cars, or the relative newness of this car (it's a 59 reg, our Golf and Galaxy are 02 and 03 respectively). Do TC autos "age"?
I was also quite surprised at the space in the back seat for the child seats (need two full size ones at the moment), and the room for the small ones to dangle their trotters isn't too shabby either.
Might even warm to the thing after a bit, after all it's still a car (just).
But I wouldn't want to suffer a side impact in it.
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To get the engine 'on song' sooner, it might have a high stall speed - designed-in torque convertor slip.
It will feel as if the engine is racing ahead a little, but it does mean you can get off the line faster.
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That makes sense, Iffy. On take off, it feels like it's going to be quite quick. Then, once going, it revs and fails to accelerate at any kind of rate.
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A high stall speed is often used when the engine is relatively weedy.
If it were a manual, you would instinctively slip the clutch a little to get going.
I say relatively weedy, because it also applied to the Rover SD1 2600 automatics.
Boot one from standstill, and the revs nearly hit the red line.
Some owners thought it was a fault, but it was a design feature to mask the low power output of the engine.
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The Matiz oversteers beautifully with a touch of left foot braking. :-)
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Mine never felt all that great on bumpy long corners, a little scary back in the day when I drove faster :-)
Funny thing is, it was, back in 1998, quite a contemporary little car and when I had mine delivered, alot of people wanted to know all about it. I understand the auto is the 800cc engine, which aint fast in the manual, I can imagine its a little snail like with an autobox.
The key is to drive it like 99% of Matiz auto customers do - never exceed 25 mph nor do more than 5 miles :-) find your inner scared pensioner driver.
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Isn't the Matiz speed limited in reverse (12mph IIRC) because otherwise they fall over in a J-turn?
Who does J-turns in one of those??
Last edited by: Dave_TDCi on Mon 20 Jun 11 at 20:52
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Ah, Matiz, silly little tall thing with very small wheels?
I wouldn't refuse to drive one or go in one but I certainly wouldn't want one unless there were no other cars in the world.
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>> Who does J-turns in one of those??
A standard requirement for a courtesy car, surely ;-)
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I'm not making this up.
My missus has just called me to tell me that she's reversed the Galaxy in to a barrier this morning and broken the rear driver's side light cluster.
The car's got reversing sensors, I said. I switched them off she said, as they were annoying me.
60 quid at Eurocarparts this time.
I feel I'm ALMOST confident enough to tell her that I'm going to the Faroes Islands for a couple of days next week to watch Fulham. Almost, mind.
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Oh dear...buy an aftermarket kit of sensors and have the back of her skull drilled and tapped to fit them.......a 50 amp/hr battery in her handbag will slow her a little.
Mine has been chauffering me about a lot recently due to my eyes and I've been ( silently ) horrified that she doesn't seem to register what's happening ahead until the brake lights of the car in front...usually about 10 feet...come on. My right foot's sore with hitting the non-existant brake !
She thinks I drive like an oldfart, faiy nuff, but I do know what's going on around me.
Any adverse comment from me leads to virtual burning at the stake....so I keep me gob shut and tremble.
Having said that, she's not had a bump in 40 yrs !
Ted
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My sister is a nightmare in the car, "go go go! you can go!" she dosn't seem to understand that behind that car is there is another car, if I go the other car will hit me side on.
In my two and a half years of driving I have only hit something once, I won't say what it was but it is about the worse thing you could possibly hit ever (apart from a child).
Thankfully I was driving my dads Fiesta at the time, and it just discoloured the bumper a bit, and there was no damage to thing I hit.
As for Matiz at least they have a bit of charector, it could have been a Suzuki Alto, or should I say Maruti.
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We bought a 1.0 Matiz as an emergency to replace the 17 year old 106 SWMBO wrote off. Drives ok: ideal town car.. easy o park and narrow with small turning circle..
Quite like it.. as basic transport and cheap.
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>> I won't say what it was but it is about the worse thing you could
>> possibly hit ever (apart from a child).
Oh do tell....Police car is my guess.
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>> Oh do tell....Police car is my guess.
>>
>>
That gave me a smile, a colleague, having recently passed his driving test bought a V6 Capri, (it was a good few years ago). Driving in lane one of a dual carriageway he had an anticipation failure. Unable to move into lane two due to an overtaking vehicle whose driver had sussed the situation way back, he drove into the back of a fully lit up traffic car stopped in lane one.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 20 Jun 11 at 16:42
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>>My missus has just called me to tell me that she's reversed the Galaxy in to a barrier this morning and broken the rear driver's side light cluster.
Have you seen the damage for yourself?
I once had a similar call from my daughter, she omitted the mention the buckled bumper, dented boot lid and wing.
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I have asked: "Is that the only damage?" To which the answer was: "Yes". I know the barrier she's hit, it's in my boy's school car park. I've even seen another Mum reverse in to it in a Sharalhambralaxy and break the rear light. It's at that exact height and I reckon she's telling the truth.
Will report tomorrow!
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>> I once had a similar call from my daughter, she omitted the mention the buckled
>> bumper, dented boot lid and wing.
>>
Ah yes, the optimistic version.
Years ago a driver i worked with ran a 3 axle rolonoff skip lorry off the road in Lincs, failed to make a right angled bend at about 60 mph and drove straight into a field via the ditch.
The phone call went along the lines of 'it only needs a tug to get it out of the mud and it'll be fine Pete'.
Ended up with just about the biggest 6x6 recovery truck in the north of England having to drive a quarter of a mile into the field to hook this thing up.
It was still a 6 wheeler, but the steering axle was jammed tight up against the double drive rear axles.
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>> My missus has just called me to tell me that she's reversed the Galaxy in to a barrier this morning and broken the rear driver's side light cluster.
Several places now offer free eye tests ;o)
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"the closest thing to an Indesit Wash-o-Matic"
We had an Indesit washing machine many years ago and I seem to recall that it performed very well, unlike the Zanussi that we had to replace after about 18 months last year.
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No doubt, SH. I am an admirer of Indesit's products and currently run a tumble dryer and dishwasher of their manufacture.
But I bet you wouldn't want to drive one round Reading's IDR in the rush hour. 'Twas the size and thickness of metal to which I was referring, rather than casting any aspertions on the performance or reliability of either the "Chevrolet" (surely the most ludicrously badged car in the world, given that marque's reputation for making tank-like cars) and the Indesit.
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I understand what you say and agree about the badging of the Matiz. A 'Chevvy' indeed! I can't imagine many of them being driven to the 'levee' and finding it dry. Which reminds me that I am going to see the great Don McLean this coming Thursday.
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It wasn't a cop car, it was a petrol pump. The station was extremely busy and I couldn't find a pump, I got stuck, had to reverse back but went back too far and hit a pump at about 1mph. If I was going faster it might have been a different matter.
Just wasn't used to all the blind spots in the Fiesta.
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Shame you didnt get one of those Chevvy Spark things that replaced the Matiz.
I looked at one in the showroom the other day and its quite an attractive small car, seems to tick all the urban runabout boxes nicely and its nicely finished.
My wife has said I can have one in 2013. Oh yay, my wife is going to my me a car, how modern :-)
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Hmm, I think they're a bit over designed-looking and a bit 'try hard'. Not too keen on the Spark. And I'm never going to square a Chevy badge being stuck on a wee runaround.
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I once hit a Black Maria as I approached the (then) roundabout a little way over Vauxhall Bridge.
No damage to my car, but a fibreglass panel suffered on the paddy wagon.
Red faced, I was!
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Not even a Matiz (once a Daewoo, always a Daewoo) can be as awful as the semi-automatic Corsa that I had as a courtesy car last year. The so-called Easytronic transmission lurched sickeningly on every gearchange, no matter what I did with the accelerator or the manual override. Yuk.
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Those jokers at Hertz in Limoges France once gave me a 0.8 Matiz manual for my French hols.... Try running it at an indicated 80mph on the French autoroute if you think Reading rush hour is bad... Did 1000 miles in it in 10 days.
IIRC the Matiz was a ***really*** trendy city car on the streets of Rome etc about 12 years ago. I guess the Panda's taken over that mantle now?
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There just isn't enough room for my legs in it. My resting left leg rubs against the cupholders of the centre console.
It's just TOO small.
The wife seemed to like it this morning, she could do a clean u-turn in the nursery car park.
I've picked up the new light cluster for the Galaxy this morning but no time to fit yet, didn't want to drive it with one of the tail lights out, so opted to give the 360 a run out.
What an utter luxury vehicle compared to the Matiz. Seems to have developed a fault with the heater though, fan wouldn't switch on at all until I got on to a dual carriageway and hit 60. Odd. Then, it would only go up to setting 2 at first, then after a minute or so got up to full speed. Bizarre, wonder what that could be? Thought "fuse" at first, but obviously not.
Cars, eh?
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Was given a 1.2 Corsa Energy while the Vectra was in for servicing and MOT today.
I'd forgotten how gutless the 1.2 sowing machine engine was and that you have to get the revs up to get it to anything. Still it got me from A to B, and back again. I don't think it was better on MPG than my 2.2 auto Vectra is though. Fuel light was on when I picked it up, put £9's worth of petrol in it and by the time I'd been to Swindon and back the light was on again (57 mile round trip).
Vectra passed it's 3rd MOT with no advisories, btw. Maintenance costs for the past year were new front pads and discs, 2 new front tyres, and an orange indicator bulb because I didn't think the one that was in there was orange enough - the paint was starting to flake off of it. In all approx £290 spent in the last year on wear and tear parts.
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Good - oh Dave ! Let's hope this isn't "the year of the fuel pump" either then...
I'm sure it'll be fine...tick tock, tick tock...
:-)
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Was given a Corsa as courtesy car around 10 years ago while an anonymous dinner plate sized ding in Xantia's door was sorted.
Only car I've ever seen with boot too small for my bike.
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>> Let's hope this isn't "the year of the fuel pump" either then...
It was changed a month before the warranty ran out, along with the pressure regulator. A year later at the next service they fitted a revised pressure regulator for free. Doesn't mean to say that it won't fail again at some point though.
Vauxhall run a reworks check when cars come in for servicing to see if there are any outstanding recalls.
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 22 Jun 11 at 00:45
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You would think, well you would hope anyway that they'd have the gumption to retro-fit a more reliable pump. Perhaps they have done exactly that given your trouble free time since. Neighbour just dropped a bundle last month on a Signum fuel pump and ECU problem. Cost him nearly as much as he paid for the car. Nearly £3k for the repair at the local VX dealer. Sore !
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Wed 22 Jun 11 at 20:01
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If it makes you feel better, my mum actually owned a Daewoo Matiz. It was green so we called it Starbug. It is without doubt the most horrid car I have ever known.
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Humph, these fuel pumps are made by two manufacturers,
Siemens and Continental.
I believe the one made by Continental is the more reliable of the two.
Not sure which one was fitted when mine went wrong.
The internal part that wears is the rubber flap valves. Someone over on Vectra-c.com stripped one down so we could have a butchers.
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Courtesy Car time - groan - Iffy
