Martin and I have been lucky enough to take advantage of this scheme since January 2004. Take a look at my post called "New Car" which will tell you our experiences over the past ten years!
We were able to order a new car earlier this year because the car we had, which was a Ford B-Max, had a few issues that we had problems getting resolved. Motability cancelled the contract we had for that car which allowed us to go out and choose a new one.
Normally when we are coming close to the end of our three year contract we have been looking around at cars we'd like to test drive but because this happened suddenly we didn't have a clue what we wanted!
We went around to several dealerships and test drove a few different cars until we narrowed it down to two, the Fiat 500L MPW or the Citreon C3 Picasso. Both were similar designs but with there own pros and cons!
Of the four Motability cars that we've had, our favourite was the Chrysler PT Cruiser.....you know, the one that looked like a London taxi!
It was an American car so it was lovely and spacious with loads of room inside. It was wonderful to drive but it did have a big negative against it and that was that it was a 2.8 litre engine and we were doing well if we got 26 to 28 miles to the gallon with it......VERY impractical! ;-)
We loved that car though, even down to the cosmetics because we got it in a beautiful lilac colour! Ever since we had that car, it has been the one that we've measured other cars against. Every time we went out in it we felt pretty special and there was just something about it that made us proud to be driving it and so we try and get that feeling with the other cars we've had! The Nissan Note, which we had directly after the PT, was a good car but it wasn't exciting and didn't give us that buzz to own it....then we had the Ford B-Max. That one again was a good car with the novelty of the sliding passenger doors but we fell out of love with that one with all the problems we had with it.
And here we were choosing between two similar cars but which were we going to choose?
We decided on the Fiat 500L MPW because for the first time since the PT we felt real excitement at being able to own one! It is a quirky looking car, which we love! It is very spacious, it's actually a 7 sweater and even though we don't need that many seats, by putting those seats down it more than doubles the amount of boat space......we've gone from a 318 litre boot in the B-Max to a 636 litre boot capacity in the Fiat! For the first time in any of our cars we can lie the wheelchair down or we can stand it up and still have plenty of room to put other things in around it!
We ordered it and then had twelve to fourteen weeks to wait because it was being built from scratch for us! We knew from the time scale that it would be close to us going on holiday and we had our fingers and toes crossed that it would arrive before then because we wanted to use it for that holiday. We were driving up to Bromsgrove, Martin, myself and my Dad and we'd be able to take one car if we could use this one!
We needn't have worried because on September 1st 2014 we picked up our nice shiny, dark green, beautiful Fiat 500L MPW!
It is also a Diesel engine and yes diesel is a couple of pence a litre more expensive than petrol but the economy that you get from it certainly makes it worth having. In our first trip in it we filled it to the top with diesel and drove well over 500 miles on that one tank of fuel......that was insane!! ;-)
It is a great car.......We definitely made the right choice! :-)
XxXxX
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