Happy day!

My car passed its MOT today.  No need for any remedial work - which you can't take for granted with any 18-year old car, especially an old Jaguar.  As you can imagine I'm feeling pretty chuffed.

A new development on the latest MOT certificate is a mileage history, showing the last four recorded odometer readings.  It is interesting to see how the mileage has increased over the years (I did 6,000 miles last year and 4,000 the year before).  Weather it will do anything to combat clocking is a different matter.  My instinct says that the greatest benefit in adjusting a car's mileage is in the first three years, before it ever sees an MOT bay.

I do like the Jaguar, it is a lovely old thing.  Hopefully it will keep going for a good few years as I can't think of anything within my modest means that I would rather own.

Chauffeur for the day

Spent all of yesterday playing with some fancy cars. I don’t think I’ve driven as many cars in one day before; in fact the seven cars I drove would make up most of a normal year’s worth of testing. In order I drove:

VW Phaeton LWB 3.0 V6 TDI
Lexus LS 600hL
Jaguar XJ6 lwb 2.7D
Chrysler 300C (diesel)
BMW 730dL
Mercedes-Benz S300d
Volvo S80 2.5d



Overall the cars were amazingly good, I’m sure diesel engines aren’t supposed to be as nice as they were. In the case of the BMW and Mercedes you might even wonder if it was worth going for a bigger engine. The only unpleasant surprise was how badly some of the cars seemed to cope with bumps. I couldn’t help thinking that a Citroën C6 would be better than all but the 7-series and S-class.