The car saga rumbles on...

Some months ago we made our minds up, our Ned and me, about which cars we were going to lease when the current lease on our Nissans expired at the end of this month, so it be writ.

Well, we finally decided upon the new Ford Mondeo TitaniumX, got our head office to barter some poor leasing company down to a pittence a month and ordered two of them, for delivery end October.

Last week I arranged for my Nissan to be collected on the 22nd Oct, thats less than two weeks away now, so I sent an email to HQ and asked if we had a delivery date for my new car yet.

The leasing company wrote back on Monday to inform me that the new Ford Mondeo was proving "a little tricky" to source and that at the moment they could not give me a delivery date, but in two weeks time they might be in a better position to do so.

So I rang the person who had provided the lease on the Nissans to see if we could extend the contract a little, he thought we could, I aske dhim to check the delivery of a Mondeo for me, he came back and said "February", I told him that he was very funny and what was it really, "its really February" he said.

My second choice was an Audi A6, go away and check the delivery for an Audi A6 I told him, he came back and told me "March", there must be one in the country that no-one has bought I told him, "no" he replied, "not a single one".

The leasing company rang yesterday and asked me if I had instructed my broker to extend the lease on the Nissan, I told them that that was indeed so, they told me that I had to extend it for at least three months, "collect it on the 22nd then" I told them as I don't want to keep that car for a moment longer really.

So in under two weeks I will not have a car, until February I won't have a car, because lazy arsed European car manufacturers can't make enough to keep up with the demand, christ knows what their salespeople are doing in their showrooms right now.

So yesterday Ned and I took a look at a Saab 93, an ironic retro sort of car that has a dashboard that looks like it did back in 1974, because the truth is that Saab haven't redesigned their dashboards since 1974, but its retro and its back in fashion now and I'm sure that some junk shops somewhere will still stock 8 track cartridges.

More importantly we got the lease quote, even more importantly we then bartered the salesman down to a cheaper price but on a better spec and a bigger engine, all within our budget, and even more, more importantly we can have two within three weeks - the Swedes obviously shift their arses into gear properly when it comes to making retro cars, its what happens when you don't change your dashboard design for 30 years, you tend to have the stuff in stock then.

We're having a test drive today, god knows why because as long as it goes forward in a relatively straight line then it has fulfilled my only requirement for a car.