Getting middle-aged. Should I buy a Volvo?

Yes, we get all of that. At the moment, if I'm driving through the city, I just have to rely on my lightning-fast reactions when a drunk falls off the kerb onto the road (it's happened several times). It'd be nice to get a bit of help with that sort of thing in the Volvo.

 

It gets very complicated and expensive. If you live abroad and own a car for a year and then import it to Australia, it's easy; otherwise you have to pay an import duty of 30%+. It's all to protect our "car-manufacturing industry". Ford is pulling out in 2016, GM is pulling out in 2017, and Toyota, the last manufacturer, is pulling out in 2018. All after years of us subsidising them. So a fat lot of good that's done us.

 

I'm sure we all already have.

Yes, I think those seats are what's going to push me to a Volvo. And while I'm not really an SUV person, I am spending more and more of my time on farms. So maybe I ought to have one, although the Prius does remarkably well, considering.

Well, so far you've helped me work out that I am currently a gay man, but that I am about to turn either into a professional-looking straight family man, or a heterosexual yummy mummy doing pilates in lycra and secretly sleeping with her personal trainer.

So that's definitely been helpful.

 

Gosh, I'd love one.

Maybe in a couple of years: if they're like other luxury cars in Australia, they'll lose half their value in the first two years, and then I can get one for a very reasonable price. By then, the charger network should be in place too.

 

Yes, they really are. Even a lot of the Japanese and Korean cars are re-jigged for the Australian market.

And in NZ, you get all those second-hand imports of Japan-only cars, don't you?

I think Skoda is no longer the social death it once was, at least in the part of town I live in.

I'm not sure that I could channel my inner bogan to the degree that would be required for the sort of Subaru that one would want to steal and torch.

Peugeots and Renaults are inexplicably sold as "luxury European brands" here. But my sister's experience with Peugeots, and my own experience with my parents' Citroens are enough to make me tar all three brands with the same brush.

Jags just don't depreciate much in their first couple of years here, so I'd have to buy an older one.

Our American options are limited to Chrysler 300s, Jeeps and Dodges, none of which would be in the running.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got a Chrysler 300 taxi in Singapore recently: it was far better-built than I was expecting. But I think I'm not gangster enough.

There was clearly something wrong with your 540 if it didn't have these key features. You should take it back to the dealer.

Last time I got in a C5, I closed the door, and the whole inner door moulding fell off.

I think the Optima is one of the finest-looking cars on the market. But here I think Kias (with the exception of the Sportage) carry more of a social-death risk than Skodas. Even though they are excellent cars.

The week before last, my taxi driver fell asleep on the Anzac Bridge. A few months before that, I got a Vietnamese driver who harangued me for the whole journey about how the Vietnamese rioters hadn't killed enough Chinese people. That's the thing: you never know what sort of terror you're going to face in a Sydney taxi.

 

UPDATE....

So I finally bit the bullet yesterday.

Earlier in the thread, I said that I'd found that Mercedes C-classes had very basic, uninspiring interiors and were poorly equipped.

What I didn't realise was that this was because the one I'd looked at was a 2008 C200 Classic, and that this really is basic.

But in the second-hand market, cars from higher up the range, with lots of options, don't carry much of a premium. So it turned out that, in the price range I was looking at, I could get a lot more for my money if I looked around carefully (and if I did my usual trick of checking out the car very carefully, but buying from an auction house rather than a dealer).

Eventually, it was down to a 2009 E220CDI sedan with 70,000kms, or a 2010 C220CDI station wagon (estate) with 120,000kms. Given that they're both Mercedes turbodiesels, the kms really didn't bother me.

I had a good look at both, but the E just somehow didn't do it for me. It had more room, but it felt a lot older, in spite of the lower ks. And it was basic: the C was heavily optioned-up, and had pretty much all the toys you can get on a C of that age. And a station wagon is more practical with the kids.

So I put the deposit on the C yesterday, and I'll be picking the car up on Tuesday or Wednesday.

It's a Mercedes C220CDI Avantgarde station wagon. It's a sensible family car, but it is also extremely nice. The fuel economy on the highway is about the same as the Prius, and in the city, it's not terrible. It's fast enough, and really comfortable, and very lovely indeed, and it just looks and feels nice. I'm very pleased with it.

Here are a couple of quite-crap photos from the website. It does actually look a lot better than this. And they'll be swapping the wheels for standard C-class Avantgarde alloys instead of the outlandish boy-racer things in the picture. I'll post more pictures after I pick it up if you like.