A weekend of successful eBay foraging took me first to Wales, to pick up a set of 951 Fuchs. 951 = 944 Turbo, and early cars had beautiful 16″ Fuchs with a deeper dish to the rear of the spokes to give room for bigger brakes, and a slightly different offset to the 911 7s and 8s. They are unique rims, and the 7s and 8s both fit on the front of the 911, so when I spotted these on my birthday with a reasonable buy it now, I snapped them up.

The wheels were the other side of Cardiff, so I set off early on Saturday morning, setting the cruise control and heading up the M40 to the M42, then down the M5, onto the M50, then M4 to Pontyclun. Steve who had the wheels turne out to be a great guy and an ex-rally mechanic, so we had plenty to chat about over a cup of tea. Good craic. He had fitted Turbo Twists to his black 951 so the Fuchs were superfluous. Apart from rubbish tyres and a rattle-can paint job, they were great, so into the Prius they went.

Coming back, I decided to stop off and see Rob, who is working his butt off building an Allard for a German customer at the minute. The car is undergoing a total rebuild, from bare nothing up, and should be absolutely spectacular when it is finished later this year. The chassis has been optimised, not to mention straightened, and it has just had a new body which is BEAUTIFUL. Still lots of work to do on the car but it is coming along really well. I also dropped in to see how his extension at home is doing. In a word: fantastic! Hard to integrate a block-built extension with a 17th century cottage, but they have made a nice job I think - pics another time.  Here’s some of the Allard:

Today (Sunday) was a trip to Derby to pick up a new pressure washer. Well, eBay new I mean. My Bosch Aquatak gave up just before Christmas and I wasn’t impressed with the basic things that had failed in my ownership (it earned its keep regardless - good little machine when it worked right), so I wanted to step up a bit. The choice was either go for a decent steam cleaner, or get a proper pressure washer and keep saving for the steamer. I have spent a small fortune lately so the cheap solution won. Not that this was cheap.

I tripped over a Kranzle 115 on eBay that looked good but I knew would fetch OK money on ebay. These are serious hand-built Austrian machines with amazing performance, inherent durability with proper fittings, and valved pumps which can be stripped and repaired. The 115 is the smallest prosumer one they do, but it’s enough for what I want, so I bid 30% of retail three seconds from the end and took my chances. I won it. New they are £530 plus the VAT, but I got this for £160, so a proper bargain if it all worked OK.      

Got to the guy’s house at 9 and some other winners had just arived to pick up a little quad. The Kranzle looked absolutely new, as he said it more or less was, so I paid up, got a receipt and got it in the car before he changed his mind. Arriving back at home (breakfast at Jack’s Cafe on the way), I hooked it up and there began an afternoon of washing fun. First the truck, then the car, then the bike. It’s a great bit of kit and I am totally delighted with it. Pics to follow.

Speaking of pics, above is one of the Prius’ energy meter following two 80mph motorway cruise runs and some balls-out cross country work coming home yesterday. Show me another automatic car with this space and the same equipment levels that can do this sort of economy. Even our old V50 TDi only managed 40mpg average.  

We’ve now had our Prius for a month, so this is a good time to reflect on ownership so far.

I did weeks of research on these cars before I put my name down for one, and I am satisfied that the Prius is a better solution for our expected wants and needs over the next three years than another V50, A4 Avant, or Golf TDI would have been. One month in, I remain convinced. So if you want to pick a fight about the cons of the Prius then go somewhere else! It works for me and that is what matters - YMMV.

I have had turbodiesel company cars since 1993. TDIs are a great mix of power and acceptable economy but they are not the panacea. Their success has driven road vehicle particulate emissions way up and diesel is now a stupid price in the UK, killing much of the benefit of fuel economy. My last car was a V50 2.0 D SE. The engine was Euro IV, which was the latest eco tech at the time. Delivery was held up because Volvo couldn’t get the engine control systems right on time and I don’t think they ever did. Our fuel economy was a real-world regular 40mpg, 5mpg less than our previous A4 Sport 130 TDi 4 door. To match the V50’s fuel cost, the Prius only has to do 37mpg average, and the emissions are nothing compared to the diesel.

Prius wasn’t even on the radar when we started looking at Volvo replacements. Sarah and I did a bit of a garage tour one day, dropping in to Toyota to try an Avensis Verso. They had a metallic blue Prius in the showroom, so we had a sit in it and were seriously impressed. The rear leg room was absolutely amazing, and as any dad knows, rear leg room is really important when you have three under-tens in the back seat, all dying to put the soles of their shoes in the small of your back. The further away from me they are, the better!

The Avensis Verso was discontinued and I didn’t like the Corolla Verso with its ‘buried alive’ back seats, so  we went and looked at other MPVs, including the exceptionally ordinary VW Touran, and the apparently swish Mazda 5, which a friend of ours has. The Mazda was cramped and dreadfully cheaply-finished up close, so that was out. Then we tried the new Honda CRV. That was beautiful (if a little tight in the back seat) and we actually decided to go for one of those, in Bright Red with black leather. 

I came home and plotted the tax implications of various options using the comcar.co.uk data, and the Honda was £3500 in tax over three years, while the Prius was £1300. Yes, a third of the BIK tax on the Honda, so £2200+ net salary saved over three years - money I would much rather put in my pocket than donate to the unelected stealth tax maestro, a.k.a. the new Prime Minister. The following Monday morning, I rang Toyota’s fleet department at Redhill and blagged a week-long demo in a Prius.

Toyota sent us a silver T-Spirit, and it was superb: we did 500 miles in the first three days. I found myself going out for late night drives just to have the roads to myself. The kids and I practised using the self-park facility (crazy), the Sat Nav (average as with all manufacturer solutions)  and the reversing camera. They loved the rear space, the excellent stereo, little low tailgate window for the dog to look out of and the energy meter display, all totally fascinating for junior gadget freaks. After that week-long playtime, there was no contest - the hybrid was in.

After a huge argument with Orange, the mobile phone people, due to a nuts bill following the 2006 Classic Le Mans, I closed my account of 11 loyal years, and went to Virgin PAYG, the only other phone company worth bothering with around here (signal reasons). I saved a fortune in the year I was with them, but missed the flexibility and facilities of a contract phone, mainly:

• Saving voice messages for longer than three days and using sensible buttons, not ‘press seven to save, hash to delete’ 
• A proper recorded message on the answerphone
• Shedloads of talk time and no running out of credit mid-conversation
• Rollover minutes
• New phones with decent features
• Proper invoices that you can put in against tax

and so on. Thus I recently succumbed to the lure of a contract phone and returned to Orange, older and wiser.

I love buying tech. I love the research, comparing this and that and ultimately forgetting it all and just going for a decent price, despite the purported faults in the phones according to the 13 year-olds who write the single sentence ‘reviews’ about ‘crap battery life, innit’ on Revoo etc. In the end, I went for another Nokia, the N73 Black  (good detailed review here). The model is over 12 months old now, but has recently picked up hotshot upgraded firmware and does everything you want it to do, plus it has absolutely the best camera you can buy on a phone. The camera is why I bought it, with the added incentive of £30 a month for 400 minutes anytime cross network, 100 free texts and a whopping £210 cashback a month after connection. A killer deal.

I have to say that the phone itself is a nice looking thing, but it’s not the perfect phone to use, though much of this is just me getting used to something other than the wonderful old 6310i I have been using since 2003 or thereabouts. The shape is wrong for holding to your head: I find the speaker is very difficult to centre on your ear for example. Must be part of the plan to get us all wearing Star Trek bluetooth headsets - no thanks. Some people say the little joystick is hard to use, but you get used to it within 24 hours fiddling. The internet connects all too quickly but it is free for the first two months on this plan, and only a fiver a month after that, so I will keep it. The keypad is overly small but again, you get used to it.

 The rest is EXCELLENT. Feel, weight and size in general are all good. Battery life so far is great, not lost one bar in 2 days with lots of messing about here and there. Software is very quick, though it takes a tiny bit of time to accesss the (thumbnailed) main pic library on the internal memory. My mini-SD cards come this week so will seee how they work out. Diary and all that works great, contacts import from old phone via bluetooth was no problem, got to set email up yet though.

Like I say, I have lots to learn about the phone, but so far so good, and it is nice to be back on Orange, with good home reception and talk time to burn. I was going to port my old number but they have given me a nice set of 911/915 numbers by total accident,  so am probably going to keep it and drop the old one.  

The camera on this is the thing though: a 3.2 megapixel device with Carl Zeiss optics. I am really impressed with what I have tried so far. OK, it’s not my DSLR but it beats the chunky little Sony 5MP Cybershot I have been carrying around with me for such along time. Very excited about what might be possible with this unit and a big SD card - video quality not bad either. Here’s a few pics of nothing, but they give you an idea of what the future holds, for this blog if nowt else. Highly recommended unit so far.