MPx

A GSHP works well enough if it suits your house and lifestyle. As an early adoptor I have acquired a bit of a jaundiced view - but it really can work. As said it needs properly insulated floors and it realy only works well at low flow temps (~45 degrees) Those low temps mean that its not very "controlable". House heat up and cool down times are measured in 10s of hours not 10s of minutes - it wont suit those who like to turn the heating off for parts of the day . Also while its wonderful with underfloor heating its not really hot enough to heat via Rads. Even the oversize aluminium ones we have upstairs struggle when it gets properly cold. But if you're in and wanting heat most/all of the time and you have low temp underfloor heating it really is a lovely form of heating. Costs are bonkers. We installed ours in 2012 and the whole thing (heatpump, ground collection, hot water, underfloor, rads, etc) cost about £60k when an LPG system with ordinary rads would have been ~ £10-12k. And that with me doing all of the labour in the house - professionals did the groundworks and heatpump in an outbuilding. In the first 7 years we got just over £23k back in the Govt RHI scheme and its probably a fraction cheaper than LPG to run (not as much as claimed however) but the whole thing has still cost at least double possibly triple so makes no financial sense at all - you have to want to do it for other reasons.

Haha! For sales I get it, especially if largely moving online, but for service/repair - they must be deluded. Unless they make a step change in reliability they need all the repair bays they can get. Warranty claims are always sky high and in the current climate many cars are stacked waiting on backorder parts. Mind you I wouldn't use a MD anyway as they are stupid expensive and have a habit of lying - good times ahead for the indies then.

My observed rule of thumb for the vast majority of cars is that they will halve their value every 3 years. Yes I know there are exceptions but nearly all of us buy cars that fit that profile. Your conclusion ... its bonkers to buy a car. In practice its just as mad to loose £15k on a £30k car as it is £75k on a £150k car - just says something about your attitude to spending and available means - but very little about the car. Personally I prefer to spend my time in somewhere thats a nice place to be. Which is why I have the Rangie and use it a lot. A mate of mine has some lovely cars in his fleet, but actually spends most of his time in a horrible scroat of a car which does mega MPG "and costs him nothing". Sort of understandable except he's also paid out to own (and not use) the lovely cars - now that's madness!

My SVA would have been north of £150 when new (I bought at 4 years old). Why - because its a lovely place to be and awesomely capable of doing anything I want (and much more). IMO its the best car in the world and cheap enough given that label...

There's a typically bizarre RR sequence that you can go through - they have them for all sorts of semi permanent changes to the set up that you might like to make - (the man with the clockwork orange puts his left thigh on the rotating table, etc) - not sure why they dont use the menu system like a normal person would. Thus you can switch off keyless entry which most of the people who use RR fora have done. No great loss as far as I can see - especially as it also disables the jesture tailgate function so you know not to bother curiously waggling your leg around the back of the car like you're scent marking. That was always more successful at getting pointed and laughed at than actually opening the boot. But I take the point that I've thus increased the risk of a break in at home. Premium almost doubled for me this year ... but still only £680.

I'd suggest having a chat with James Walker at Ti22 in Chepstow, just over the old Severn Bridge. You may have seen James on some of Chris Harris' (non-Top Gear) car test/reporting. I've not had them do PPF though that is more of their business these days, but they have detailed and ceramic coated my old Lotus Carlton and two of my Range Rovers in the last 15 years and each has been an excellent job. Its a bit of a PITA to find, so if you do go for it, get directions for the last 300meters.

We used Kloeber - one of their hardwood and glass funkyfront doors finished in RAL 7016. Its been in for more than a decade and we're very pleased with it - still looks and works fine. Not the cheapest...

In my view its up there. The pre-production one I sat in had some pre production gremlins - eg boot close not working properly - which is always disappointing if entirely understandable, but the general quality of materials and finish seemed very nice for the most part, just some thin plasticy bits in places - on the doors for instance. My daily is a (2017) SVAD Rangie and fully spec'd an R would come in at similar money new. On just a 15 minute acquaintance I still prefer the quality/weight/feel of the Rangie, but I don't think they are really directly comparable. As quick as the SVAD is with 545bhp its not going to be dynamically comparable to the 900bhp Eletre (just guessing as it was a static display car!) ....but the Eletre is unlikely to match it on capability in any situation and definitely not for towing. I've not been in the latest Sport, but the Eletre is (I'd say) at least as well finished as the Velar that I've spent some time in. Haven't been in a modern Cayenne or X5 - older generations were chalk and cheese with RangeRover and when I tried back to back found I was a RangeRover type and have stuck on that course over the last 15 years. I think the Eletre is more in their mould (Cayenne Turbo, X5M) - and really very good at it.

I'm with Ian...compared to Ovo and SSE before them, Octopus have been great. I do a meter reading every month and my bill is exactly calculated on that. Any questions I've had have been answered quickly. They do still "recommend" that I up my monthly DD to a level not required, but it is in my gift and I make it the right amount to balance the account each year - despite the nonsense they predict from time to time. By contrast Ovo forced DD changes of over 100% month to month as their system couldn't deal with my higher than avg winter usage and lower than avg summer usage. I'm still finding the jump in costs a bit shocking and I'm on a fix until next Oct. After that my bills are likely to increase another 50% unless costs come down a bit. This was the latest:

Well you peops are either very brave or lonely. 19th March is Mothers Day and I'll be on a three line whip to be chauffeuring and paying for a slap up lunch somewhere....

None of that sounds like good news...sorry you're having to go though it. IMO there's no doubt that you'll do better getting the car sorted, working and MOT'd before selling in the late spring/summer...but obviously at a cost and more importantly with some ag that you could probably do without. Auctioning it out or otherwise selling as is pushes the risk and ag to others, but also the reward. But if you don't particularly need the money then I'd suggest just take the easy way - but we all value our time and effort differently. Try some of the classic dealers (like Esprit Engineering, SWLC, Stocks, etc) one of them may be prepared to buy for cash suitably discounted. Or try selling on here as a project.... Best of luck.

Always good to hear one of these cars is to be saved - they do tend to rot out pretty quickly, but are otherwise wonderful cars. My guess is you will need the quarter panels! Its quite likely that Graeme will know your car/history especially if any of the owners were SLOC members. What reg? Mine was AFN 888V which the DVLA have down as on SORN for the last few years.

My advice would be to join the Sunbeam Lotus Owners Club (SLOC). They were invaluable to me when I had mine and are good blokes so I even stayed a member for a decade after I sold the car attending several of their meets in other Lotus cars. They have a huge wealth of knowledge on these cars and will be aware of anywhere selling the type of parts you need. Their mag also carries ads for places doing stuff like replacement body panels and the like. The club have an active committee chaired by Perry and he and others are happy to take calls etc from members to offer help. I dont think anyone knows more about the LC than their archivist Graeme. http://www.sunbeamlotus.com/contact/

Two points here. I've found that anyone I'd trust to do the job (engine out variety) "know how to charge" if they don't want or need the work - which is basically everyone that I'd trust to do the job. That's basic supply and demand economics. Some will charge just as much who dont know what they're doing, and some will be cheaper as they practice and gain crucial experience on your car. When you hit the jackpot you find a guru who works off his driveway and does it for beer money....but the lottery isn't that easy to win... Most places I've been - and that's most of the classic Lotus shops over the last 33 years - have a wealth of mixed reviews. Each has needed to be dealt with slightly differently - these people have personalities like everyone else. Each react differently when things don't go entirely to plan. Most of us accept that some things don't work out and its the way any unexpected issue is dealt with that sets apart those you trust from those you don't. Within that, a great deal is down to us the punter on how we react to the issue. Loosing it is rarely the best way to reach the best outcome available. I've been stung of course - once by a Lotus Dealer and several times by different JLR dealers(no one gets a second chance if they lie to me) ...but mostly good or at least acceptable outcomes can be achieved with a positive approach.

I think its a real problem with classic Lotus models. There are some very knowledgeable and trusted people out there, but relatively few of them and they are all close to retiring or stopping or looking for ways to cut down. As they are trusted, they are frequently recommended by those of us with experience and they have more work than they can handle or want. If you're not a regular customer it can be hard to get them to take anything on. I've been waiting on PNM to do "an engine out job" for me since June. They finally agreed to take the car in December and when I spoke to Pete today (six weeks later), work has started, but likely to be several more weeks/months to get finished as its still competing with lots of other stuff that they've got going on. I think you've just got to pick a place that you think will do the sort of job you want and then get in their queue and wait....

Yeah...I get that, but still great fun. Its the second time I've done it so the instructor let us go a little more gung ho. The SVAD is my forth Rangie that I've had over the last 14years. In my hands they don't need to do more than pull a trailer across a muddy field or wade through the odd flood, but nice to know it can do so easily. Also amazing on tarmac - with ~550Bhp its a bit quicker than my old Lotus Carlton despite the extra weight and handles at least as well - though obviously no better for track use, they are barges after all!

Sadly not the Lotus cars this year as I managed to break both after relatively short drives - and no they're not flakey, just one of those things after 32 and 19 years respectively. But beside those, I'm always in awe of what the SVA Dynamic can do and have had many deeply impressive moments in that, probably only topped by seeing what they can really do in the extreme at the LR Experience at the factory in Solihull. Not sure if it was wading in water up to the top of the bonnet, driving up steep scree slopes or descending similar in full control despite no input from me as driver to the controls that took the biscuit. Loved it.

While I completely accept that motorways without a hard shoulder are less safe that ones with....and its clearly increasing capacity on the cheap...I'd rather we have them than the alternative not having them and suffering even less road capacity because the eviro lobby wont allow them to be built. I also find it a bit odd that the highways engineer quoted would rather divert over a significant extra distance on roads that clearly wont have a hard shoulder either since only motorways have ever had them. I bet he uses dual carriageways wherever possible - which would somewhat undermine his argument to me. I "choose" to use the A303 over the motorway alternative but actually think its a more dangerous road than the M4.

Interesting...but annoying how opaque the definitions actually are so difficult to understand where (eg) "I" might fit in as an individual. Its net income so after tax, NI and surprisingly Council Tax and what else? (not defined in the text). Then its "equivalised" - so in some undefined way, somehow takes into account the number of people in the household - taking into account (eg) that two people require more to live than one, but not double. Of course noone outside the ONS will ever drill into the stats to see how well they work and where they're weak. One reported weakness is that it inevitabley excludes all institutional dwellers (Prisons, care homes, etc) and homeless people, so misses out on some of the poorest sections of society which would obviously depress the numbers even further if they were included. Like all such stats probably best used to see trends over time rather than trying to read anything into the absolute numbers

Really?? UK Gvt papers say top 50% pay (nearly) 80% of receipts. Dont know how/if that includes anything about Scotland, but that's a lot different to the top 7%. http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8513/assets/889ae590-bb54-418b-9327-09c8be476303.png

Sadly, in practice I dont think the impact will be vaguely noticeable let alone immense. Of the 5.5m population, around 4.4m are old enough to have an income - so say 7.5% at the highest rate. 33000 of them paying an extra 10p in the pound isn't going to fund Sturgeon's own lifestyle let alone a "free" Scotland. It was a bit like the abandoning 50% rate on the richest down here. Tories shooting themselves in the foot politically of course, but I can see their point. The actual cost to the treasury was almost negligible and it might be good to have a world view seeing that we are a good place for rich people to go for low tax - they tend to be the industry leaders and entrepreneurs and of course wannaby celebs who merit very little. But the pervading view of envy of anyone "who has more than me" leads to the easy headlines of tax the rich and feed the poor. But where does rich start? I suspect many people would define it as at about twice their own income. So an income somewhere between maybe £25k and £500k??? Even at £500k we're not in helicopter owning territory so not really rich, just more comfortable than most. The higher you go up the scale the fewer people are in the net, and the actual tax take becomes pathetic. Its a cruel fact that a few pence off everyone will bring in a lot more than tens of thousands off "the rich" Its clear from what's written above that as soon as tax appears to be more punative in one place rather than another then there's an incentive to vote with feet and move. So that may well impact the numbers of "rich" people in a given state and therefore the numbers that might actually be any good at doing the more highly paid positions. At all levels there's plenty of people who don't actually merit their position and sadly it tends to be the good people that are bright enough to leave first. Those that hang on are just happy being as big a fish as they can be in a diminishing sized pool. And corruption looks good in there...

A new record for me on Tuesday this week - cold plus car charge day meant 121 kWh used in the 24 hours at a cost on my current contract of £28. Given prices have more than doubled since my last fix...it doesn't bode well for next year post Gvmt bail outs.

I reckon its this in a nutshell. If your facilities and usage mean that you can charge at home then a leccy car is all good. However that also means you need another car for long journeys - but if you have one, jobs a good'n.

The guru for all things Esprit is Brian Angus who retired from Lotus as Esprit platform manager a few years back. I would imagine drawings will be secure in Lotus archives, but Brian will know what exists where. Its quite possible that Lotus will be happy to share such archives given a reasonable approach. Brian has a regular column in the Club Lotus magazine...so if Bibs or someone on here doesn't have contact info, then I'm sure Alan Morgan at CL will have.

I'm fully prepared to to "blame" the consumers behaviour. I just fail to understand why we in the UK can't be as profligate as we want given the amount of water resources we have. It just needs to be better managed. I've played on golf courses in deserts so it can obviously be done where there's a will. I pay for the water I use (metered) and am happy with that arrangement. But cant see why I should cut down if I'm prepared to pay. Any more than I need to sell my car and get one with better MPG. Selfish yes, but not impossible to supply.