What are you driving?

2500-3000 rpm for diesel, 3500-4000 rpm for gasoline, those are approximately the most economical regimes for normal car engines. Yes, a bit too high to be the most economical from a fuel consumption point of view, but the most healthy for the engine and therefore the most economical for avoiding future mechanical problems, because you will keep the engine clean of carbon deposits and will avoid engine and transmission extra estress by driving at too low rpm.
 
I was always taught (by a man of Yorkshire heritage) that the ideal acceleration in the one that doesn't cause you to use the brake stopping yourself constantly. Wears on the brakes, and wastes fuel!
I'm often amazed at the amount of braking I see going on from cars in front of me. On some occasions I've even been on the accelerator constantly (albeit lightly) and not even gaining on them while they've been braking the whole time. I can't even get my head around what they must be doing on those occasions.
 
I do not get car prices. How can a 1996 911 be worth ~8 times a 2007 Cayman? The 911 has keys and runs, but the Cayman has an MOT. I think those are roughly equivalent in value.

1996 PORSCHE 911 TARGA TIPTRONIC S Coupe Current Price £18,550.00

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2007 PORSCHE CAYMAN COUPE Current Price £2,377.00

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Links at end 'cos edit window broken

911
Cayman
 
Nobody wants the Cayman. It is not a 911. Poorman's Porsche?
 
Even having the engine in the wrong place, the 911 is THE Porsche, a classic that will only increase in value. The value of the Cayman will go down, even if technically it is a better car. Still that price for a Cayman is a bargain, even without keys there must be something very wrong with it. IIRC the Porsches 911 and Boxster/Cayman from those years had a pretty horrible problem with some bearings in the engine or gearbox which were very pricy to solve. Maybe that is the reason.

Don't know what MOT means.
 
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Don't know what MOT means.

I don't either, but if you "pass" the MOT is a certificate that the car is roadworthy for another year. Lights, brakes, etc etc.
 
Even having the engine in the wrong place, the 911 is THE Porsche, a classic that will only increase in value. The value of the Cayman will go down, even if technically it is a better car. Still that price for a Cayman is a bargain, even without keys there must be something very wrong with it. IIRC the Porsches 911 and Boxster/Cayman from those years had a pretty horrible problem with some bearings in the engine or gearbox which were very pricy to solve. Maybe that is the reason.

Don't know what MOT means.

Nine (!) previous owners on the Cayman (eight for the 911) - yikes, that should be a huge red flag. That suggests, that there's something wrong with it and previous owners have driven it a bit and then dumped it, when a mechanic gave them a report of what's wrong and how much it would cost to sort it out the lemon. Most likely engine and/or transmission issues, which wouldn't necessarily fail the car getting through the MOT.

A 95% value depreciation on the Cayman is nuts. Not a good sign.

I don't either, but if you "pass" the MOT is a certificate that the car is roadworthy for another year. Lights, brakes, etc etc.

Yep, most European nations use a MOT equivalent system, here it is every second year your vehicle needs to pass the MOT to stay on the roads.
 
ITV in Spain.
 
Not only are cars tracking us, but they are leaving the data lying about for anyone to access

We know where your car is (Autotranslated)

When Nadja Weippert started driving her new VW ID.3 last September, she immediately downloaded the Volkswagen app . It can be used to preheat the car, read the battery charge level and check the current range. You need the app to make full use of the car and its amenities.

After setting up the app, her car apparently began collecting and transmitting data to the manufacturer, including the exact GPS location of where she parked it every time she turned off the engine. This created a data set that can easily be used to create a detailed profile of her daily movements.

All of this information should not be publicly accessible. But it was. A data volume of several terabytes on around 800,000 electric cars was largely unprotected and accessible for months in an Amazon cloud storage system . VW, Seat, Audi and Skoda vehicles in Germany, Europe and other parts of the world are affected . And so are many of their owners.

Much of the vehicle data could be linked to the names and contact details of the drivers, owners or fleet managers. Precise location data was available for 460,000 vehicles, allowing conclusions to be drawn about the lives of the people behind the wheel - as was the case with the two politicians.
 
And it gets worse. Lots of details here about what is happening to your data:


From the link:
With the troves of data offered by patients’ cars, however, there’s a very clear risk, as what was once considered basic medical care becomes criminalized. Even assuming every other step for data privacy is taken—such as not traveling with a cell phone and avoiding digital communication while seeking care—having a car automatically log that its doors were opened at an out-of-state Planned Parenthood could be enough to potentially be enough to warrant investigation, civil lawsuits, or even criminal proceedings. To make matters worse, data like this is already out there in the open on the public market, specifically targeting people who’ve been to clinics such as Planned Parenthood. Poland, for example, is strictly anti-abortion and recently created a registry to track every person who becomes pregnant and seeks any care. The location data for every pregnancy clinic a patient has visited would be a valuable addition to those lists.

Even more shockingly, accessing this data does not require a warrant. The techniques discussed above have already been put into practice by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which has been deemed exempt from needing a warrant to search digital devices in general at the border. Thanks to a loophole in the Fourth Amendment (the amendment that prohibits unreasonable search and seizures), state police can also download telematics data during routine police stops if they feel the need to, which means that a traffic stop could quickly become an examination of every place a driver has been for weeks.
 
@BOBAH1 Hello and welcome to Off Topic! :)
 
While I have always bought cars under £1k, my sister bought a newish half electric 4x4 for loads of money. She when to go to work the other day when it was cold and the car said since the tempurature was under -15C the car would not start!!! I had to laugh, this is another way new cars are less reliable than old ones.
 
While I have always bought cars under £1k
Damn!😳
You must understand a lot about auto mechanics then.
A car under 1000€ here would, if you can find something like that for sale, mean many trips to the mechanic!😱
 
I had an uncle who did his car shopping in a salvage/breakers yard.

He'd buy something that was running but had something fundamentally wrong with it like corrosion and would drive it for a year or two then bring it back to the breaker and buy something else.

If something went wrong in the meantime it didn't get repaired, just driven into the ground.
 
Damn!😳
You must understand a lot about auto mechanics then.
A car under 1000€ here would, if you can find something like that for sale, mean many trips to the mechanic!😱
In anglo countries there is a much bigger second hand market than in Latin countries and you can find really cheap used cars in good shape. In Spain, France, Portugal, etc, most people buy new cars and use them for a lot of years until it breaks down.
 
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