Oh, all right then. I drive a Fiat Multipla. Good to see the haters have been out already, don't we all agree that this is a beautiful car. Well, the reason I have it is that it's my parents' old one, and it's free - my dad still pays the tax and insurance; when I briefly felt guilty for this and offered to give it back to him so he could flog it, he said he'd probably still leave it taxed and insured and parked by the side of the road, so I kept it and don't feel guilty any more... besides, I pay for repairs myself, and since it's a Fiat, well, you know.

Anyway, it's quite a good ride really, six seats have come in handy a few times. Plus the three rear seats come out, leaving a LOT of cargo space when needed. And it's proved to be surprisingly durable for a Fiat. 230 000 km so far, it's had some repairs including a couple of new exhausts but the gearbox, clutch and *most* of the engine is original.

But there was this one incident. Student group trip, we were using a hired minibus plus my car for extra seats/luggage space. It was fine on the way out, but on the return trip (from the Eden project back to Exeter, via Looe to pick up a few people) the engine really started acting up. It'd shown occasional signs of this before, but now it was serious. Basically, severe loss of power, plus it sounded and FELT incredibly rough at idle and low revs - and it's a petrol engine, so it's normally barely audible at idle. It got us back home, though it wasn't much fun to drive - the car was fully loaded with six people plus luggage, and by my estimate I was getting at best half of normal power from an engine that most people would consider barely adequate under normal conditions. Going up the A38 from Cornwall into Devon I would floor it on the downhill bits, reaching 95 mph or so, and by the time I got to the top of the next hill, I'd be doing 15 mph while constantly flooring the accelerator. Being overtaken by tractors gets a bit humiliating after a while.

Back home, dropped it off at the garage at the next opportunity. Turns out two of the fuel injectors were basically fucked (so by my reckoning it had been running on two cylinders!?!?) and the other two were about to join them, so the whole set needed to be replaced. At just over £100 each, plus a new ignition coil. Amazingly, after driving it ~100 miles with only half the engine working, it suffered no other lasting damage, and after the injectors got swapped out it ran as good as new and I've put about 15000 miles on it since then.

There was also the time the gearstick came off in my hand while shifting. But that was actually just the plastic handle, I made it home by shifting using the bare metal stick it had been covering and then superglued it back on.
(julius, Sun 25 Apr 2010, 21:55, Reply)