In my own personal experience, there is nothing more annoying than that moment when you are on the motorway and you hear the dreaded clunks and screeches of your engine about to give up on life. There is very little you can do other than jam the clutch in, indicate and hope you can make it to the hard shoulder before you run out of steam. After this you have to spend hours (usually in the rain, sleet and snow) waiting for a repair technician to locate you. As you can’t wait in your car for safety reasons, you end up sat on the embankment in the freezing weather, feeling like someone upstairs is pointing and laughing at you enthusiastically.
If you want to avoid this kind of scenario then there are certain steps you can take to make it unlikely. The most important of these steps is to buy a car that comes with an impressive pedigree of reliability in the first place. This will probably ensure that those pleading calls to the repairmen are kept to a bare minimum. If you are unsure as to which car is capable of this then you can either look online for some advice, or do what I did and think Scandinavian. Yes, I bought a Used Saab.
The usefulness of this individual tip will depend on what kind of car you are looking for. Saab mainly deal in prestige saloons, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but certainly fitted all my needs and ticked all the boxes on my list of pre-requisites. If you are looking for a small family hatchback, or even a 4X4 then this won’t be entirely relevant to you, but please read on anyway.
My Used Saab 9-5 has been mine for about 7 months now and we are getting close to the ‘7 month itch’ to paraphrase a popular dictum. I have normally found that after 7 months of rigorous driving, that is normally when all the niggles and little problems begin to rear their ugly heads. By the time your 12 month MOT time arrives, these little problems have grown into blown gaskets, jammed clutches and a veritable plethora of dangerous (not to mention expensive) repairs to be made.
This has not yet been a problem for me as my Used Saab is running as competently and smoothly as it did the first time I took it for a test drive. It is this kind of reliability that helps me sleep soundly at night, knowing that I am not going to end up shivering on some lay-by waiting for a man from the AA to try and bring my rather pathetic car back to life.
SO even if you aren’t after a Used Saab, then I hope you take the following lesson. Do your research when buying a new car, as if you choose a reliable manufacturer, then you will be able to relax and enjoy your journeys with huge amounts of confidence and trust in your car.
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