After a year and a half of collecting scrapes and scratches on its rear end because of walls, posts and, finally, another car (evidently a red one) none of which had any business being in the space Mrs Beest needed for the back bumper, the LEC has gone off to a bodyshop in Slough to be tidied up. In its place on the drive stands a silver Nissan Micra.
Automatic.
I already hate it.
I have driven this car as far as was necessary to move it from the kerbside on to the drive. This involved reversing it up the slight incline where the dropped kerb rises over the pavement to our driveway. The LEC creeps smoothly over this at the perfect, controllable speed; the Micra got stuck. The tiniest nudge on the pedal made it leap towards the front door like me after guessing wrong that I didn't need to pee before leaving the pub. I already have some sympathy with the oldies who put these things through shop windows.
Still, silver lining: Beestling Minor needs celery and lasagne sheets for school cooking tomorrow. We can take the Micra to Tesco this evening and park it diagonally across three spaces, knowing no-one will dare to challenge us - or to park anywhere near.
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What is a LEC in motoring terms? Google is not my friend in this respect.
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It's a Large Estate Car, so termed because I think WdB got some stick from certain elements on here when he mentioned the name of the manufacturer of German taxis.
I sympathise with anyone getting a Micra as a courtesy car - I am no follower of fashion but there is something desperately un-cool about a Micra. Not just the image but the shape of the thing. And I believe they're not even good to drive.
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I've only driven the original, that was automatic, and it was fine. I like classless, invisible cars like that. Nearly as much as I like large comfortable ones.
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>> It's a Large Estate Car, so termed because I think WdB got some stick from certain elements on here when he mentioned the name of the manufacturer of German taxis.
>>
Thanks, Avant. So it's a MERCEDES!!! I've been taxied in one of those and loved it.
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I do have to confess, that shortly after I got my LEC I dropped a colleague at Heathrow T5 and as I bade him a good flight I was asked by a nearby American gentleman how much I would charge him to take him into central London.
My colleague reminds me of this no more than every 3 weeks or so...
:-(
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>> I do have to confess, that shortly after I got my LEC I dropped a
>> colleague at Heathrow T5 and as I bade him a good flight I was asked
>> by a nearby American gentleman how much I would charge him to take him into
>> central London.
So did you make a killing on that one then? ;-)
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Momentarily tempted but refrained.
:-)
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I've been taxied in one of those and loved it.
Funnily enough, so have I, and that was a big factor in choosing to buy one. My family-car priorities are space, durability and long-distance comfort, so who knows more about those than the people who spend entire days doing nothing but drive? Even a ten-year-old one (ours is coming up to seven) is a better back seat ride than a two-year-old Passat (that did happen once) or a Vectra of any age (that won't be happening again.) When asked, I describe it as the Airport Taxi Edition - which, being a humble E220 CDI, it is.
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My wife was given a loan of a Micra last time her Qashqai was in for a service. She declared that it was "quite nice" to drive and that she didn't mind it's appearance.
However, when I suggested that she could most probably get quite a good deal on one by trading in her Qq her view of the Micra's "niceness" waned rather quickly...
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Door mirrors might be a bit cheaper on them...plus point !
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Narrower car too! Double win.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 23 Nov 15 at 18:48
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>> We
>> can take the Micra to Tesco this evening and park it diagonally across three spaces,
>> knowing no-one will dare to challenge us - or to park anywhere near.
Tesco? Tesco? You, in Tesco? I'm sorry to hear of the sudden reduction in your circumstances. I often wondered why they bothered putting one in the WDH, but it is hidden away and not very big.
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>>The tiniest nudge on the pedal made it leap towards the front door like me after guessing
>>wrong that I didn't need to pee before leaving the pub. I already have some sympathy with
>>the oldies who put these things through shop windows.
An advertisement for left foot braking.
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Yeah, like holding your trousers up with one hand rather than buying a proper pair that stay up by themselves. In 40,000 miles in the LEC I've yet to need my left foot for anything but the parking brake.
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S'funny really, I sometimes left foot brake and sometimes I don't. Never really give it much thought, just do whatever feels comfortable at the given moment. I guess if I stopped to analyse it I probably use two feet more so when pressing on a bit a lot more than I would when tight maneovering. Which is almost certainly the wrong way round on reflection. Like I said, I don't give it much thought in truth.
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>>Yeah, like holding your trousers up with one hand rather than buying a proper pair that stay
>>up by themselves.
Like the difference between an LEC and a baby Nissan then... With smaller wheels, a smaller engine that you'll have to rev harder, the Nissan is bound to struggle to match up to the LEC!
>>In 40,000 miles in the LEC I've yet to need my left foot for anything but the parking brake.
I'll warrant there have been plenty of occasions when it would have been safer if you had.
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...and prithee fool, I'll plight thee my troth that if such there be, they be drown'd in the merciful torrents of Lethe.
};---)
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>> drown'd in the merciful torrents of Lethe.
Happened to me a few times. It's nice, that Belgian beer.
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>> on the drive stands a silver Nissan Micra.
I know you didn't like it, but abandoning it in Middlesbrough is a bit extreme.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-34919856
ps, what have you done with the original front seats?
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Don't know, but first I'd have to drive it to Middlesbrough. I found out today that it's going to be with us till Thursday week, which might just be long enough to get there but I really wouldn't fancy it.
Call me ungallant, but the LEC is away because Mrs Beest scraped it. Three times. So she can drive the punishment car till it comes back.
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Thursday week? Blimey.
Properly scraped it then?
;-)
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Well, no - really just the bumper. But on all three faces, and a touch to the metal rear wing behind each wheel. All against large, visible stationary objects. Sigh.
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What sort of timescale/lifespan do you forecast for the new paint? My own experience of a replacement door mirror comes to mind in so far as I had to book the fitting of the second new one before I had received the CC bill for the first one...
No issues since I'm pleased to report.
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Incidentally, I had a boss, well most of us have had one of those I suppose, but this one had a large Volvo estate as his company car. He chose though to donate it's use to his wife, choosing instead to use his old MG roadster to commute to work.
Now his wife lacked nothing intellectually ( questionable whether she applied that in the correct political direction of course ) being an MP and one of "Blair's babes". ;-)
However, she and my boss shared ownership of a pair of substantial stone gate posts which she managed to wipe the side of the Volvo down no less than 6 times in one year.
His P.A. formed a close working relationship with the local bodyshop.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Wed 25 Nov 15 at 20:17
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Well, the LEC was finished and the bodyshop is on my way to work, so rather than make them drive two cars 17 miles each way, I braved up and drove the Micra back there myself. Perhaps I'd misjudged it in my six-car lengths first drive.
No. My route consisted of a bit of town, a bit of A-road and two junctions of M4. To take the motorway first - which I didn't - I wasn't expecting the Micra to like going fast, and it didn't. It just about wound up to an indicated 70, but it was mostly in lane 1 at 55 because I had no confidence it would pick up speed fast enough to slot into a busy lane 2. When asked, it does the CVT thing of increasing the (petrol) engine revs to 4,000 and waiting for the rest of the machinery to catch up. It eventually does but I can't imagine it's even the sort of thing you'd get used to.
So it doesn't like going fast, but it's a small 'town' car, so going slowly will be fine, right? No again. The transmission actually does tolerably well at crawling speeds - and eventually parallel parking it on a level surface was surprisingly easy - but the rest of the time it constantly feels like it's trying to run away. For the first time in five years I had to brake for the speed camera on the hill into town, because the car wouldn't let me set it up for a controlled descent. (There's an L setting on the selector, but that's for serious first-gear descents of icy slopes; would have made the engine scream at 28.) Won't go fast, won't go slow; I'm beginning to see why these things go everywhere at 40.
Which leaves the A-road bit. Didn't really get to do this properly because two vehicles ahead was a concrete lorry that occasionally touched 35 but generally struggled to go much above 20, and whose driver hadn't read the bit about slow vehicles allowing faster traffic to pass. The TDS, or even the heavier LEC, would have made short work of the two-vehicle overtake on the one good straight, but I didn't dare try it in this. So I had to follow, and to control the speed with the brakes because, again, the transmission wouldn't allow anything else. When the truck got really slow, the engine would drop to barely idle revs and the car would chug like a manual about to stall; it didn't stall, of course, but again it hardly inspired confidence.
So it's crap to drive but how was it otherwise? Some good points: plenty of room, even if the seats are too small and it feels more like perching than sitting. Good view out - especially rearwards - and easy to position and park. And the steering wheel is in nicely stitched leather. This was a 'top' model, with some sort of navitainment system; I managed to set it to Radio 3 but not to cancel the traffic announcements. The interior styling is all a bit Argos Premium Toaster for my taste but things seemed to work OK.
OK, conclusion time. This could actually be a tolerably nice little car, but you'd have to be seriously desperate not to use your left foot to buy one with that awful transmission. Suitably cheap - ie manual and without the cheesy toys - I can see it being reliable and even likeable, but it's very hard to see past that dreadful automatic.
One final surprise: it's very tall for a 'small' car. I was at a level to make eye contact with Zafira drivers; any tips on how to keep that emptiness and despair from haunting my dreams?
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Fwiw my mother loves her Micra, but hers is a manual. Probably just about to replace it with a brand new one, given it is nearly 3 years old and that is what mum usually does.
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No tips, WDB, but I simply love your last sentence.
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I'd have voted for "The interior styling is all a bit Argos Premium Toaster " ;-)
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Aww, shucks, stoppitt, you're making me blush.
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>> any tips on how to keep that emptiness and despair from haunting my dreams?
Yeah, well, one might be to limit Mrs W's use of the LEC to essential journeys only...
;-)
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You should think about getting Mrs W a 10-to-15-year-old Micra for local trips. Very low road tax and TPFT insurance would be offset by less wear and tear on the LEC if it's used only for long journeys, and you're less likely to need to pay the excess on its insurance.
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In truth, Avant, we should probably have replaced the Volvo with something more like the Golf that was the first thing on my pencilled list. But I also wanted something lighter than the LEC that I could still use comfortably for my motorway drive to work, relinquishing it to Mrs Beest on the infrequent occasions when she needs a car for the day. And that turned into the BMW for all sorts of boyish, impractical reasons.
The 325 is the same size as the S60, similarly shaped and manual. Only two doors but that ought to be a detail. But she won't drive it; in six months she's driven it once because I'd gone off with a load in the LEC, and once more when we went out for lunch and I urged her to try again. (I drove us home.) She now complains we have two cars she doesn't like and didn't choose (forgetting that we bought the LEC because she preferred it to - and indeed vetoed - the V70.)
The truth is that she's just not one of nature's drivers. She takes no interest or pleasure in the machinery or the journey, but views it merely as a means to an end. In that sense an old, expendable Micra would be ideal - except that it wouldn't do for the longish trips (Bristol, Southampton, Chippenham) she occasionally makes in her consultative capacity. On the other hand it would be fine for her work in Reading, for which she feels a big Mercedes is unduly ostentatious.
Long-term solution may be to replace the LEC with something a little less capacious but much lighter on its feet - a BMW 3GT appeals, and is actually bigger in the back seat than the LEC - which would combine family car and fun(nish) car in one. Then the TDS could make way for something cheap and scruffy - or maybe even a Golf. We'll see.
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>>Long-term solution may be to replace the LEC with something a little less capacious...
Hmm, maybe.
About, let's see, 22 years ago maybe, I got my first L-IEC ( Large-Ish Estate Car ) and more or less since then at least one of our cars has been in that category. There was a brief interlude of about a year when we had two medium sized hatchbacks and whether it was selective perception or not, I've never had a year when I more missed and needed a larger car on a regular basis.
Quite apart from my strange work needs, on a purely private level there are countless occasions when I just need or perhaps more honestly, just want the versatility of a posh van but definitely do want a car that I enjoy using too.
I would feel nigh on bereft without a proper load lugger that was also a good drive.
I think you've torn it now you've had one and it would feel like a missing front tooth if you didn't.
Just keep a tin of touch up paint handy for well, y'know, future reference...
;-)
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As ye sow, so shall ye reap - John Boy
