Our 2009 Renault Safrane continues to chug along reliably thanks to its Nissan underpinnings, as we predicted back when we bought the car new in 2010. Well, reliably except for the power windows that is.
There’s nothing much to report on the Honda. It is a Honda after all. The only niggling thing was that, a few months ago, it was taking a few seconds too many to start, which was the sign of a weak battery. This was confirmed by the dealer workshop during its last service. But we chose to get our battery replaced via A&F Auto Parts’ battery delivery service.
Our 2008 Mitsubishi Galant GTS got a send-off last week, after having spent just under 2 years with us. Our fleet of four cars needed to be trimmed down, so it had to go. We find it rather unbelievable that so few people contacted us when the “for sale” advert went up, compared to the eleventy-million calls we got when we sold our 15-year-old Toyota Corolla.
As much as Land Rover’s PR people like to downplay it, the British carmaker is now owned by India’s Tata, in a role-reversal that took more than 60 years to play out. While we’re still denied the chance to drive the new Range Rover, our own “L322” Range Rover Vogue has been doing a great job as the family minivan.
The coolest thing about owning a Honda sports car is that it’s a Honda. So it’s relatively cheap to maintain compared to, say, a Porsche Boxster or a BMW Z4, aside from being more reliable. We just took our S2000 in for its first service at the dealer.
Apparently, if you keep asking Land Rover’s PR agency politely for the past eight years why you weren’t invited to any of their major press events, they keep saying they have no space. Then when you publicise that they aren’t inviting you to events, instead of making amends, they simply bury their heads in the sand and ban you. So we won’t be able to bring you any review of the Explorer-esque new Range Rover, but we can certainly keep bringing you updates on our very own Range Rover. It’s been four months since we picked it up, and we’ve finally taken it in for an issue that’s been bugging us since we bought it.
Our previous-generation 2009 Renault Safrane V6 has been a reliable-enough car, but certain interior parts had prematurely worn out in just 2 years — a sign of cost-cutting if there ever was one. So we asked for those parts to be replaced under warranty.
Our long-term Mitsubishi Galant continues to run strongly without any hiccups, despite raking up over 40,000 km in less than a year due to regular Dubai-Abu Dhabi runs. Besides the minor A/C fix few months ago, there really has been no costs involved besides our self-imposed 10,000 km interval services with the major one done recently at 80,000 km on the clock. However, as mentioned in our last report we faced a minor issue and that is the battery finally crapped out. Mind you, the battery was not changed since we bought it back in June 2011, so we guess its death was pretty much near.
Our Renault Safrane continues to chug along without issues since the last service. It’s been several months now since we asked for some prematurely-worn interior panels to be changed under warranty, but it finally looks like it will get done this week as the parts have arrived from Mars. Anyway, last month we gave the car in for an exterior detailing at Farba Guard.
Our Range Rover has been busy for the past month, getting back into top shape. A trip to the dealer was in order, especially since the 100,000 km service was due as soon as we bought the car. That in itself made for a good story.