Friday 12 July 2013

Our new car - everybody needs good neighbours!

As you may know, a couple of Saturdays ago my little Renault Clio threw up her bonnet in despair and declared she'd had enough! 
When I contacted the insurers I was told that the car would most likely be written off and my no claims bonus would go down from 9 years to 2 years! Now given that I didn't pay much for it in the first place I wasn't expecting a huge payout from the insurers anyhoo. There were quite a number of other things that needed fixing before I started my new job. Was it going to be worth losing so many years NCB and having my future insurance premiums go up? I didn't think so!
As luck would have it a neighbour, who deals in scrap, offered to take it off our hands. We were happy enough just to have it towed away for us and with a bit of cash towards the next car, it was a deal.
Enter another (car restoring) neighbour, stage right!
My husband and our neighbour are both big BMW fans. We have owned two in the past, one second hand and one new. The new one was my husbands pride and joy, it was a 3 series tourer and took us on many a family camping holiday to Mull in total comfort. I must admit we all loved it!! Sadly, due to redundancy and subsequent financial constraints we had to sell it (and his motorbike - I wasn't so sad about that, lol) and were left with my then car, an old Seat :-(
Imagine Malcolm's joy when our neighbour told him he had a beemer for sale :-D


Only £200 more than I'd paid for the Clio, a 5 series saloon! We had be discussing the need for a bigger, more reliable car anyway, the Clio had ONLY JUST made it to Leeds to get our son to uni and our daughter's Punto had ONLY JUST managed to bring him home again!  With both of them going to uni in September we were really not looking forward to the journeys. I have long believed in fate and this keeps me believing, and our long run of bad luck seems to be coming to and end.
As you can see husband and youngest son (car mad since the day he was born, BMW was 'bee-em-diddle-oh' when he was tiny) are in their element!
Oh, and it's an automatic which has been fun getting used to. My left hand and foot don't know quite what to do with themselves!

                                      

P.S Thanks for helping out (yet again!) Mum, we'll pay you back I promise :-D xxx

8 comments:

  1. Congratulations Louise. Glad it all worked out in the end.

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    1. Cheers! You were right, a better car did come our way :-)

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  2. Excellent news! Good that things are going well. I have never driven an automatic, I bet it takes some getting used to though!

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    1. The hardest thing now is remembering to change gear when I drive my daughters manual lol!!

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  3. Oh good, I'm glad you've got your car situation sorted. There's nothing worse than an unreliable car! x

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  4. yay good luck is returning.

    Automatics are really good as far as I am concerned. If we could afford to have to cars I would have an auto

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    1. I'm afraid a car is an unavoidable necessity in rural Northumberland, I couldn't get to work without it and the buses are few and expensive!

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