All new car

My car died t'other day, shame it was in the outside lane of the A3 at 75/80MPH. My engine blew; cue plume of smoke, nose dive into tarmac and discovering that adrenaline really is brown. I managed to steer the car to the hard shoulder where the small fire from oil on hot exhaust was extinguished quite quickly. All in all quite a moment was had. After the two hour wait for the AA I was quite calm, stoic even.

Had to hire a car, what a palaver that is, top tip; if you lose your driving license you can phone the DVLA for a driver/license check. Some car hire companies charge, if you do it in their offices on your mobile and authorise the DVLA to speak to the man hiring you the car it costs nothing. So that saved me £7.50, phewww.

So FFW a week with a 1.6 Twinport Astra '06 vintage, I lived with it, just. Small (well compared to the Delica), fiddly indicators and lack of dash illumination meant it was off the short list of cars I was considering not that it was ever on it. After a week of vacillating and investigating the criteria were;

Deal Breakers;
People Carrier
Safety was paramount a 4 star NCAP rating at least
Sliding side doors
Air Con
6 Seats (or more)
Big load area
good fuel economy
Diesel
Auto
Sliding side door

Wish list;
Tints
Sat Nav
Cruise control
Alloys
Any electronic goodies

After much debate with my mate and forensically scouring What Car? website and making a shortlist and cross referencing it with all available makes and models we came up with the following:

Fiat Ulysse, Citroen C8, or Peugeot 807 all where built around the same basic chassis, just with different body panels.

So a morning of scouring car sales lots, Thames Valley Trader, Exchange and Mart, and all the usual places, dealers etc... We came to the conclusion that those cas where just a big pile o'poop, unreliable and prone to electrical problems. Not ideal, so it was back to plan B, Kia Sedona (poor-ish MPG) or Chrysler Voyager (low NCAP rating, poor MPG). I then thought about the Chrysler PT Cruiser, maybe a bit smaller and with no sliding side door, it didn't fill all my requirements but it does look good (IMHO). So off we went to the Chrysler dealers, en route to the Volvo dealer (my mates, who was driving me about is looking for a car too) to check out the boot space of a PT Cruiser.

We walked onto the dealers forecourt and my heart stopped and I just fell in love.

Chrysler_300c

This is my new car, seriously, a big chunk o'savings has gone but I don't care, life is far too short and I am fed up with budget cars. It has fold down rear seats, so I can get everything in for touring, and the cars seats fit and so does the buggy in the boot.

So what do you think? Big mistake, or seriously cool?