I finally got the response from the finance ombudsman earlier today and it was not the news I was hoping for. They rejected the claim on several grounds, including the car’s age, the mileage at purchase and he said he was satisfied reported issues had been sufficiently fixed…

How he could possibly come to this conclusion I will likely never know. There is no point in me appealing as he already has all of the information I can possibly give towards the case.

So here I am now, stuck with a car that is broken, is going to cost me potentially thousands to fix when the clutch and gearbox finally go, and I still have £1,700 to pay on the finance. Selling the car will only get me back about £2,000 part exchange if I’m lucky – so in essence I’ve lost at least £3000 on this piece of crap car.

I thought from the beginning I was at least in with a chance with the finance ombudsman given that they are the governing body for finance, and they are government operated meaning it’s not in their interest to “fix” the outcome of the case. I would have thought they’d be a little more forthcoming especially given all of the evidence supplied. Apparently not.

My advice to everyone is research your future car and be absolutely sure you want to buy it knowing it’s common faults etc before you commit. This is exactly what I will be doing for my next car.

You live and learn.

The title is describing what happened to my car this evening. Yes, another fail-wagon fail. Well, for a short time at least as I got it fixed quite quickly. Let me explain what happened…

I was on my way home from a friends when I turned a corner as normal. As I went round it felt like the car hit something but I thought nothing of it as the roads around here are terrible as it is. As I carried on up the road I put my foot down a bit to speed up when suddenly there was a loud “pop” followed by a very horrible “exhaust has fallen off” gurgles and rumbling. I noticed the lack of power as the turbo was no longer working and the first words to pop into my head were “FFS, now what”. I pulled over to investigate.

Before I even stop my mind has run over possible things it could be. It’s either exhaust related or it’s the intercooler pipes. It only took my about 10 seconds to realise it was an intercooler pipe that had popped off. Not knowing how to go about putting it back on properly I called the friend I had just left to see if he would come and sort it for me. He agreed. The car was still drive-able but the noise coming from it was pretty damn loud! I decided that since it was almost 11pm to take it very easy and keep the noise down.

10 minutes later, my friend turns up. His first words? “The fail-wagon strikes again!”. Yeah, cheers for that. No need to rub it in anymore than you already have previously! Anyway he gets underneath the car to have a look. Some mumbling could be heard from underneath followed by the odd profanity, until eventually he needed tools. We jacked the car up for better access and armed with a screwdriver he managed to put the hose back on in no time. We still don’t know how it managed to come off in the first place so I guess that mystery will likely go unsolved unless it happens again.

Once he had fixed it we went for a quick test drive with lots of flooring it to make sure it wasn’t going to pop off under pressure again. I booted it down the road several times through several gears and it seemed fine. So this time it wasn’t serious and the car could still be driven in it’s “broken” state, albeit with no turbo. And let me tell you, in a car that big you really do need that turbo to move quickly! Without it, it probably has about 70bhp, with it, that doubles to 140bhp and that makes a massive difference. I wouldn’t like to drive on the motorway like that (already did once when I got limp mode, but that’s another story).

So yes, I continue to own this fail-wagon, but hopefully in a month or two I won’t any longer. The whole situation with returning it is progressing, but slowly.