New Company Car

[Helix_Von_Smelix]

Finally managed to get the company i work for to allow me to have a Toyota Prius as my next company car:santa:

Have had mondeo's up until now. Never liked them. I managed to blag a Prius from toyota for two weeks last year to test drive. Loved it. As i have to work in London quite a bit. Also the drop in the tax i pay is massive. Company car tax for me is down from 23% to 10%.

Can't wait:jabber::jabber:

:cheers:

[Bok]

I used to love my limited edition '95 Mondeo Si in Citrine Yellow..

Had to give it up when I came over to the states :)

[Helix_Von_Smelix]

the 2008 Mondeo is massive. Would have had the estate verson. It bigger than a BMW 5 series.

Very nice car,,,, but,,,, don't want to give all my tax money to the govenment.

Also>> BOK>> it looks like a litre of diesel will hit £1.30 by the weekend
Petrol will be about £1.19

Was under £1 at christmas:bang:

[IronBits]

diesel is $4.55 over here (where is PCZ's converson ?)

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

IB at $1.80 to £1 that's around £2.50 now is that a gallon a litre?
1 Gallon = 4.5 litres (approx)

[IronBits]

Gallons over here ;)
I promised PCZ I wouldn't do any conversions again... :)

[Shish]

I don't pay for my car. I have free car tax. I don't pay London Congestion charge or road tolls on most bridges and tunnels. I don't pay insurance. Or servicing. I DO get a new car every 3 years for free.
But I do pay for fuel and that is TAXED at 70% and despite seeming ungrateful, that GRIEVES me enormously especially as for every day of my working life the UK government took at least 50% of every penny I earned.
I won't pose anybody the puzzle of why I get all those freebies altho' that might have brought some funny guesses. Just let me say, I'd sooner be able to play tag with my grandkids and walk the dog or walk to the pub than have all those freebie privileges.
And so as not to get off target too much, I tried a Prius which was available on special offer to us and for our use, it didn't have some of the options we needed and as we don't have to suffer London traffic or similar, the fuel consumption also wasn't as good as our present Grande Picasso 2lt diesel. Make it clutchless, hydraulic semi auto with a diesel, and the space and comfort of a seven seat Grande Picasso and I'd think about it but at the moment, unless you're a company car tax payer, it's still mainly just a gimmick apart from the creep in traffic bit which it is good at. As usual, the UK government are just playing at the "green" thing and mostly just raise tax from any means possible to waste on new types of paperclips or similar and jumping on the green bandwagon is just another diversion. Ask the chairman of most FTSE companies if they've given up their next chauffeur drive Mercedes 500 LWB because of car tax? Most of the guys who have gone greener in the hunt for tax savings are the self employed, ordinary guys on the road (reps etc) or those who don't get a say in what their company gets them and those that do get a choice normally don't give a monkeys uncle.
YMMV of course and I know there are a lot of people out there who like to think they're at least a bit conscious of what they drive.
Just wondering helix/....did you get a GREEN one?:rotfl::lmao:

[PCZ]

A US gallon is smaller than an imperial gallon so we have to multiply US gallons by 1.201 to get a comparison.

Diesel

US Prices
US gallon $4.55 equals £2.33
Imperial gallon $5.46 equals £2.80 Cheap!! €3.51
UK Prices based on Helix's prediction of £1.30 a liter
US gallon $9.60 equals £4.92
Imperial gallon $11.54 equals £5.91 Ouch!! €7.42

One imperial gallon is exactly 4.54609 litres, whereas one U.S. gallon is exactly 3.7854118 liters.



At one time, the British gallon differed depending on what you were measuring and where you were measuring it. But, by the 19th century, two definitions had survived: the Queen Anne (or Wine) gallon, which was 231 cubic inches, and the Winchester (or Ale) gallon, of 282 cu in.

In 1824, the British abandoned both the Ale and the Wine gallons in favour of the Imperial gallon, based on the volume of 10 pounds of water (which works out at 277.41945 cu in). America, by this time, had already standardised on the Wine Gallon of 231 cubic inches (strictly speaking, this was defined as the volume of a cylinder 6 inches long and 7 inches in diamete, or, using the old approximation for pi, 231 cubic inches).

The result is that the US gallon is 83.267% of the British gallon. In more usable terms, the British gallon is about a fifth greater than the US gallon, and the US gallon is about 5/6 of the British gallon (or a little under 7 British pints)

Blue is those silly Euros.

[Helix_Von_Smelix]

>> Shish,, No mate getting a blue one.

Also i am following the tax breaks on this.

If i get a petrol, or petrol-/-Hybrid company car i get 13 pence a mile business miles.

For a diesel i would get 11 pence a mile

See>> http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cars/advisory_fuel_current.htm

If it was my own money i would go for the Ford Focus econetec, or the mini clubman.

We borrowed the mini clubman last week, it's a lovely car. My wife has a cooper convertable.

Hopefully the Toyota hybrid will save me £20 a week.

Maybe next time the tax break will change

[Shish]

Certainly saves some money but especially if you're in and out of London with congestion charges and plenty stop go traffic. Easier on the driving with stop go as well.
In my last job I had a Focus at first and learnt to hate Fords again for the first time in 20 years :D It was Green but only as far as paint went cos it got caned and had a half ton of switches/routers and cables plus a toolkit in the back seat and boot area. Also transported quite a few network cabinets and cost me in taxation for so called "personal use" :swear: Generous on mile pay tho' cos we got 18p a mile and cheap petrol cards. I fixed that tho' when I could specify what we got cos I had a 2.5Lt Black Pearlescent Volvo V70 turbo which was down as our "pool" car. It did do a lot of transporting other people so it was legal tax wise....more or less and was a fun car to drive until a bus sideswiped us. I also got 32p a mile for that but I was, by then, signing my own expenses :D.
I did like both the Prius we had for a fortnight each for evaluation, they just weren't big enough for us and, at the time, no auto on the hybrid. They also then refused to put the Prius Hybrid or Lexus 4x4 on the scheme Toyota/Lexus) and the eval that Motability did worked out too expensive anyway. We also got spoilt by trying the Citroen C4 Grand Picasso with standard 7 seats/comfort/loads of space loads of standard extras which both me and the wife fell in love with. And 37/48 mpg (realworld diesel 2ltr.) when we have to pay for the diesel (only thing we do pay for) won any argument. Then they came up with a deal for top of the range Exclusive trim plus a load of extra extras for free and we feel very lucky. Even if diesel is heading for £5 a gallon or more now the speculators are investing in fuel (all types) and pushing world prices through the roof. There will shortly be started a campaign to give us back the tax on car fuel exclusively for the use of a disabled person in a tax exempt car just as we are allowed zero vat on any other goods or services exclusively for the use of a disabled person. Whether this will pass through by this somewhat frightened government is another matter but if it does I will be a very happy motorist.
And as much as I hated Fords past theMkI and MkII Lotus Cortina and 1600E (eventually with a V6 2.5Ltr shoehorned in) my eventual reaquaintance with the brand left me disappointed and that includes both the 1.3 Focus, 1.6 diesel the same and lastly a pair of 1.8 Zetec C-Max's which was part of my payoff. but I've now renewed my love affair with Citroen who seem to have gone back to their innovating past a la DS 21/23/25 with steering headlights and hydraulic everything.

See what you've done here Gary?
Got me wasting time on the computer when I should be chasing these lazy builders ( according to her who must be obeyed :jester:). Always manages to get me off topic/ off the team and sitting here when I should be doing real work :rotfl:

[Darkness Productions]

Helix -

When you get it, make sure to sign up for mymiler.com -- I *really* need some real-world data on a Prius!

[Helix_Von_Smelix]

Helix -

When you get it, make sure to sign up for mymiler.com -- I *really* need some real-world data on a Prius!

Okay :cheers: