Just to confuse everyone, this arrived on my driveway this morning.
Which is absolutely not the car I've bought. However the seller of the car I HAVE bought had bought it, and the seller of this lived a five minute drive away from me - so I offered to deliver it, saving both of us having to find a second driver.
I'm really not a BMW fan, but I liked that more than I expected. Actually surprisingly comfortable despite the taught suspension (and on a car like that I absolutely don't begrudge it!), and astonishingly refined at speed with the top up. Made a lovely noise too, that I can't deny. I rather doubt the exhaust was standard...not a boy racer drone either, a proper and utterly addictive old school howl. Only when on the throttle though, cruising at 60 or 70 the exhaust was totally silent so it wouldn't become wearing on a long trip. Fun or not though, it wouldn't be something I could justify on fleet at the moment as it wouldn't fill any role. Plus I just always feel whenever I'm driving a BMW that everyone else on the road automatically assumes I'm going to behave like an ass, and as such you're never going to get anyone be helpful to you.
It also had the same issue as virtually every German car I've driven in that the seatbelt spent the entire trip trying to saw its way through the side of my neck. No adjustment for that on this either as the shoulder buckle was integrated into the seat
What I have bought though is this.
I've been keeping my eyes open for a Berlingo/Partner for a year or so now. I missed this one on another forum a couple of weeks ago, however the guy who bought it got in touch with me when they'd spotted the Z4 so offered me the chance to buy it for what it owed him. Given what they were asking I said yes.
This one seems pretty well kitted out, not sure if being a special edition which seems to have at least got is fancy graphics on the sides has anything to do with that. Oh...and impact protection on all the lights for some reason...because ADVENTURE maybe?
The option I was most excited to see ticked - and working is visible here.
Yep, this one has air conditioning. Which is allegedly a vanishingly rare option for them to have been specified with. Certainly none of the others of this generation I've looked at have had it fitted.
Part of the treatment this edition seems to have been given was colour coding a lot of interior bits silver. Including the instrument panel.
Not totally sure what PSA were thinking there. Visibility varies depending on the ambient lighting from "okay" to "I can't see a thing." I pity anyone who needs to actually read the Km/h markers on the speedometer. They're basically invisible unless you're in full shadow.
A distinctly odd choice I think.
The silver treatment also extended to the interior door pulls, which haven't stood up to the test of time all that well. These will both need to be re painted.
Is my memory playing tricks on me, or do I spy Citroen ZX door handles there? Both interior and exterior.
She needs a little love here and there and a really good deep clean, but for the price paid seems to be in pretty good shape. Especially bearing in mind that these are vehicles which tend to have to work pretty hard to earn their keep.
Quite surprised to see the fold out load cover still present. They've usually long since vanished by this age.
The engine bay deeeeeefinitely has an appointment with some degreaser and elbow grease in its future.
Aside from some bodged on wiring for an aftermarket horn (currently run to a button on the steering column) at a glance it seems free of hackery though. Just needs a clean. Guessing the horn issue is likely to be a clock spring problem, so we should be able to hopefully get rid of that in due course. Especially given the quality of the routing of the wiring to the engine bay...
...and the positive feed they've run from the battery being green/yellow household earth wire. That is going to drive my OCD mad now I've noticed that.
Drives really nicely though. Clutch is a bit heavy, but I'm used enough to diesel PSA products to know that's par for the course. General refinement and ride quality are streets ahead of the Caddy, as you'd kind of expect. Aside from being a newer design, it's something that was designed from the ground up to be what it is rather than a small hatchback that someone welded a box onto the back of. It's miraculous really that the Caddy drives even half as well as it does, but it does have shortcomings, particularly in the road noise and suspension refinement departments.
I need to double check, but could we be as lucky as that adding cruise control to this is as simple as plugging the stalk in and activating it via Diagbox...
I'll need to start a shopping list.
[] This wonderfully painted front wing. I suspect finding a replacement would be cheaper than getting the paint properly sorted. Hopefully someone can make up the bit of graphics for me by copying from the other side.
[] Driver's B pillar trim has a couple of holes in I assume for some long gone hands free kit.
[] Couple of the wheel trims have definitely seen better days.
[] missing cover on front nearside seat belt.
[] Trim on inside of tailgate seems to have a few broken clips so rattles. Not sure if the broken bits are actually on the trim or clips that can be replaced. Need to investigate first.
[] Small crack in the cap on the gear knob.
[] Passenger headlight looks to have started to lose some of its silvering.
[] Guess if I'm already parts shopping it couldn't hurt to see if I could find a front bumper without a scuff on the nearside corner. Not holding my breath though.
[] If I could find the genuine dog guard at a sensible price I'd probably grab it.
Aside from wanting to get that wing sorted sharpish all pretty low priority stuff. That's quite an obvious cosmetic issue which really draws the eye though so I'd like to try to do something about it sooner than later.
Mechanically I still need to properly go over things, but it's just had a set of front brake discs and pads, and an oil service. Timing belt wasn't done massively long ago either. There IS a belt whining a bit at higher revs so I need to pin down where that's coming from and put a stop to it before it gets worse. The gear shift feels like it could do with a bit of lubrication but isn't really that bad.
It will be interesting to see how different the car looks in a couple of weeks!
Edit: I'm shocked. Not a single dash light out!
I really need to clean that instrument panel...