SimianWonder
Guest
Hi there!
Due to financial constraints, I've recently been forced to sell my pride and joy, a 2006 Ford Focus ST. Said beastie was running around 300bhp and 350lb ft, but I was barely using her and tax and insurance costs were hard to justify for 3000 miles per year.
I didn't want to do it, but I knew I had to - I sold her last month, after several months of entertaining time wasters (one of whom even coughed up a deposit, only to crawl into the ether and not resurface!) and tyre kickers, so the hunt began for some new wheels.
I initially fancied something quite a little different, looking at a BMW 330ci and Audi S3, but couldn't get a 330 in the spec I wanted, and the S3s in my budget were all a bit tatty. To make matters worse, the few I tried had some of the most unforgiving suspension i've encountered in any car - to use as an every day car would soon have shaken the fillings loose! Moving on, I tried looking at smaller hot hatches, the likes of the Fiesta St and Clio 182. The fiesta ST didn't impress; maybe the one I tried was a lemon, but the engine felt coarse and gutless and while the Clio had a noticably stronger engine, the interior looked and felt every bit of it's ten-years-plus age.
At this point, one of the guys at work mentioned as an aside that he was thinking of selling his car - a well looked after 2004 silver Cupra R. A few negotiations and a test drive later, the deal was done and the car is mine.
She's pretty much standard but drives and goes quite well, even allowing for the 75bhp and 140lb ft difference from the Focus, though I've not yet had the chance to put her through her paces in any meaningful way - the Focus was quite happy to stick it's back out mid-corner if you lifted off the throttle, which was great fun if you were expecting it, much less so the first bfew times when you weren't! - but that'll come in the next few weeks.
So that's me. I like to try and be fairly active on most forums I join, so hopefully this'll be the first post of many.
Due to financial constraints, I've recently been forced to sell my pride and joy, a 2006 Ford Focus ST. Said beastie was running around 300bhp and 350lb ft, but I was barely using her and tax and insurance costs were hard to justify for 3000 miles per year.
I didn't want to do it, but I knew I had to - I sold her last month, after several months of entertaining time wasters (one of whom even coughed up a deposit, only to crawl into the ether and not resurface!) and tyre kickers, so the hunt began for some new wheels.
I initially fancied something quite a little different, looking at a BMW 330ci and Audi S3, but couldn't get a 330 in the spec I wanted, and the S3s in my budget were all a bit tatty. To make matters worse, the few I tried had some of the most unforgiving suspension i've encountered in any car - to use as an every day car would soon have shaken the fillings loose! Moving on, I tried looking at smaller hot hatches, the likes of the Fiesta St and Clio 182. The fiesta ST didn't impress; maybe the one I tried was a lemon, but the engine felt coarse and gutless and while the Clio had a noticably stronger engine, the interior looked and felt every bit of it's ten-years-plus age.
At this point, one of the guys at work mentioned as an aside that he was thinking of selling his car - a well looked after 2004 silver Cupra R. A few negotiations and a test drive later, the deal was done and the car is mine.
She's pretty much standard but drives and goes quite well, even allowing for the 75bhp and 140lb ft difference from the Focus, though I've not yet had the chance to put her through her paces in any meaningful way - the Focus was quite happy to stick it's back out mid-corner if you lifted off the throttle, which was great fun if you were expecting it, much less so the first bfew times when you weren't! - but that'll come in the next few weeks.
So that's me. I like to try and be fairly active on most forums I join, so hopefully this'll be the first post of many.
