So, errrrm, yeah. The ownership of this little beasty turned out to be very short lived... When we bought the car it had noisy brakes, very noisy brakes in fact as soon as the they had been applied once. Once warm they almost appeared to be binding on. The chap we bought the car from had just replaced them, but after a few days of driving they got worse. With a bit of back and forth he agreed to replace the brakes again with a decent brand, turns out he had fitted the cheapest disc and pad combo when a mechanic friend of ours took a look.
So the day after the new set of brakes were fitted and a mere 17 miles later as we approached a roundabout a few minutes from home, the brake pedal went flat to the floor and absolutely no brakes whatsoever. The approach to the roundabout was downhill so even though Gareth downshifted to try and lose some speed the car gained further speed. We avoided the car coming round the roundabout but just caught the edge of the kerbed section of said roundabout which took us on a bit of a detour up an embankment and into a field... Both completely fine, car stood up really well but inevitably was a write off following the impact.
The approach to the roundabout :
Directly behind the sign is the embankment we climbed :
Most of the underside of the car left up the embankment :
Said fence :
And the damaged car :
Getting to the exact cause of the failure hasn't really been established either, no one will commute definitely to it be X or Y, independent inspections have been carried out and there are a couple of different possible reasons but sadly it's us who picks up the bill for it, protected no claims should soften the blow on renewal time next year but it'll still be a premium increase. And after much wrangling with the insurance over the value of the Z4 we agreed a payout - big thanks to Gally on the advice he gave which helped in getting our settlement increased. Feeling lucky, it could've been a lot worse if we hit another car or didn't avoid the roundabout. As precious and enthusiastic as we are with ours cars, it is just metal.
At the weekend we collected this as its replacement :
So very nearly bought another Z4, but opted for something slightly different in the form of the TT. 2 years newer, better spec including BOSE and also something slightly bigger inside - its amazing looking back on the Z4 just how vulnerable we felt afterwards given the small cabin and lowness of the Z.
Will do a thread on the TT once we've given it our own clean and done a few more miles, but first impressions are good
