Autocar - Ultimate Point to Point test
Discussion
In this weeks Autocar, ultimate point to point car test - Murcielago, Mits Evo, Caterham, 996 Turbo etc.. and Noble GTO3.
Noble did very very well indeed, infact almost took top honours - until the front suspension collapsed at the end of the test - oops!! Apparently in a statement from Lee Noble, they inspected the car, and it was caused by them replacing the lower ball joints at the front - not with their ususal parts, but with 'unsuitable' parts. They said that the parts were not 'unsuitable' because there was anything wrong with the quality of the part, but it was a cheaper part and its thread was too short, so it did not feed through the nylon locking ring far enough. Hopefully there arent any of these parts on new cars.
Lee was very apologetic in his letter to Autocar. Still a blinding showing from the M12 though.
Noble did very very well indeed, infact almost took top honours - until the front suspension collapsed at the end of the test - oops!! Apparently in a statement from Lee Noble, they inspected the car, and it was caused by them replacing the lower ball joints at the front - not with their ususal parts, but with 'unsuitable' parts. They said that the parts were not 'unsuitable' because there was anything wrong with the quality of the part, but it was a cheaper part and its thread was too short, so it did not feed through the nylon locking ring far enough. Hopefully there arent any of these parts on new cars.
Lee was very apologetic in his letter to Autocar. Still a blinding showing from the M12 though.
)?996 Turbo - they say for 2 reasons:
1.Initially they said that the Noble was quicker out of the corners than the 996, and probably carried more speed into them - but - when they checked the data logging kit, the 911 was infact just slightly quicker.
2. The front suspension fell off the Noble
1.Initially they said that the Noble was quicker out of the corners than the 996, and probably carried more speed into them - but - when they checked the data logging kit, the 911 was infact just slightly quicker.
2. The front suspension fell off the Noble
I read this today and despite being a diehard Porker fan I was rooting for the Noble as I genuinely beleive it has more character than the 996TT.But unsuitable parts?? what in a £50k car,,ok it goes trmendously well for the money but this is SO unacceptable.
As Mr Noble says it was fortunate that nobody was hurt,hopefully this will actually help Noble in the long run as you cannot sell cars with such traits in the real world.
As Mr Noble says it was fortunate that nobody was hurt,hopefully this will actually help Noble in the long run as you cannot sell cars with such traits in the real world.
Oh come on. My X5 has had two recalls, both that could have killed me or my partner, and both down to substandard manufacturing of parts.
In a modern world where anywhere between 10 and 90% of a car is outsourced, you cannot expect anything else. The mere fact that Lee's held his hands up in a public forum is credit and shows Lee's care approach to his customers and true engineering approach to the cars.
Personally I feel a lot safer in the Noble than I do the X5....
Remember the Audi TT "unstable above 120mph" issue - it took *5* people to die before Audi admitted there was a problem. Then the Ford Explorer tyre issue, that is approaching nearly 50 deaths.
Even someone like Porsche with millions to billions of investment still has quality problems - take a look at the recalls (www.alldata.com/recall/make/Porsche.html) and you'll find that it's a common problem - the GT2 has had over 25 recalls/technical bulletins where things have had to be changed / advised since the original car - and that's in just 2 years!!!!!
Please get this in perspective.
J
>> Edited by joust on Tuesday 24th June 23:33
In a modern world where anywhere between 10 and 90% of a car is outsourced, you cannot expect anything else. The mere fact that Lee's held his hands up in a public forum is credit and shows Lee's care approach to his customers and true engineering approach to the cars.
Personally I feel a lot safer in the Noble than I do the X5....
Remember the Audi TT "unstable above 120mph" issue - it took *5* people to die before Audi admitted there was a problem. Then the Ford Explorer tyre issue, that is approaching nearly 50 deaths.
Even someone like Porsche with millions to billions of investment still has quality problems - take a look at the recalls (www.alldata.com/recall/make/Porsche.html) and you'll find that it's a common problem - the GT2 has had over 25 recalls/technical bulletins where things have had to be changed / advised since the original car - and that's in just 2 years!!!!!
Please get this in perspective.
J
>> Edited by joust on Tuesday 24th June 23:33
Let me tell you about 2 oil leaks on my £93k 996TT that took 4 weeks to resolve and also the problems with the car starting from hot.... I don't even want to start on the 2 AMG Mercs at £90k and £67k and the issues there.
I could have pretty much any car that I want, but drive a Noble GTO3 at the moment and love every minute in it.
I could have pretty much any car that I want, but drive a Noble GTO3 at the moment and love every minute in it.
tjasper said:
No, go on Lee, tell us about the problems you had with the Mercs. It's not often that we get to hear about problems with such expensive and supposedly well-engineered machinery!! 
TreVoR
CL55 wasn't too bad but had an overheating problem that took weeks to resolve also electric seat problems that never really got resolved, CLK 55 AMG (new shape) what a joke, took delivery had problems with the paint work, then had an awful banging from the gearbox turned out to be heat shield banging underneath the car. Then a piece of plastic trim fall off into the engine (onto the exhaust)stuck to it and then filled the cabin with smoke, lastly and the final straw was the radiator pipe splitting and dumping the rads contents onto the M4, Merc customer service has gone down hill and as a customer you feel cheated ALL IN 2 Months!!
>> Edited by Lee77 on Wednesday 25th June 14:47
The only question for those with a noble of course is how many are fitted with the dodgy bit, and is Noble capable of telling us. Hopefully they will do an info via the distributers to let us all know. I would certainly like to know what is fitted to mine? The fitting of the part to failure was quite short in days, but I guess a few hard working days.
The only other car I have seen with a front wheel at that angle was the old Morriss Minors which seemed to suffer from it in old age. Hopefully they never went fast enough for it to be too much of a safety issue though.
>> Edited by buxton on Thursday 26th June 22:53
>> Edited by buxton on Thursday 26th June 22:57
The only other car I have seen with a front wheel at that angle was the old Morriss Minors which seemed to suffer from it in old age. Hopefully they never went fast enough for it to be too much of a safety issue though.
>> Edited by buxton on Thursday 26th June 22:53
>> Edited by buxton on Thursday 26th June 22:57
Simple answer - none.
Buy the mag and read the article. The person within Noble that specified a cheaper, but perfectly good quality part, that just happened to have a slightly shorter thread on the bolt part has been suitably kicked.
The subtext of Lee's letter to Autocar is that "the bean counters have moved in, but over my dead body will they win".
For that simple fact the Man glorious still has my little worship every time I step into the car.
Given some bean counter could have actually killed me in the X5 (a failed front ball joint is a very simple matter to cope with compared to total brake failure that could have happend in the X5) I actually feel far safer.
To cap it all BMW UK decreed it was "OK" for us to drive around in the X5 for *4* weeks after the brake fault was made public..... Now judge for yourself which one you would rather be in...
J
Buy the mag and read the article. The person within Noble that specified a cheaper, but perfectly good quality part, that just happened to have a slightly shorter thread on the bolt part has been suitably kicked.
The subtext of Lee's letter to Autocar is that "the bean counters have moved in, but over my dead body will they win".
For that simple fact the Man glorious still has my little worship every time I step into the car.
Given some bean counter could have actually killed me in the X5 (a failed front ball joint is a very simple matter to cope with compared to total brake failure that could have happend in the X5) I actually feel far safer.
To cap it all BMW UK decreed it was "OK" for us to drive around in the X5 for *4* weeks after the brake fault was made public..... Now judge for yourself which one you would rather be in...
J
buxton said:
The only other car I have seen with a front wheel at that angle was the old Morriss Minors which seemed to suffer from it in old age. Hopefully they never went fast enough for it to be too much of a safety issue though.
Oh tosh dam you, tosh and tosh.
I could show you loads of cars with that sort of failure - my Spitfire MKIII did it twice, the Herald 1250 once, my mates 2CV once etc. etc. 10 years ago it used to be common
This isn't a world where "nothing goes wrong". Sure it would have been a serious "moment" had that done it mid corner, but read the article - not only did it give warning that it was going, but it did so gracefully.
Having nearly stuffed my Spitfire MKIII into a 10'+ ditch because the same thing happend I can tell you there was absolutly no warning. And that was with OEM parts!!!!!!
Lee's stuck his hand up in the letter that explains it all against the article. It's not going to happen on production cars (this was a press car, a totally different kettle of fish), and with over 200 cars, all that have been engineered with safety in mind (ask Lee for the pictures of the SA 100+ mph crash if you don't believe me) it was a simple case of someone making the wrong call on a press car.
Speaking to two of the 6 authors at the last Noble/Autocar day it was treated by both of them as "well - that happens"....
Read the article, and the subtext, and then you may judge the same...
J
>> Edited by joust on Saturday 28th June 08:31
joust said:
For that simple fact the Man glorious still has my little worship every time I step into the car.
I too think of Lee like that - he's built exactly the type of car I would build if I had the talent to do such things.
He has built a car that caters only for the 'thrill of driving' (to quote evo) and drivers everywhere should be grateful that such people do still exist.
Quite simply I have read the article, and there is no definition to which cars apart from the broken one, the cheaper part is fitted. Do you think he just went out and bought one from Halfords, for the press car, or he went and got it from the stock room where they keep the parts for assambling the new cars and sending out spares.
I like the car, otherwise I wouldn't have spent a lot of money and waited nearly a year to get one. But I would still like to know if the part is fitted to my or any other cars on the road? The one big difference between the old cars which had this problem, was that they were old and worn out and lucky to get to seventy.
The Noble is a high performance car, under a lot of stress if being driven hard. The failure occured 12 days after the part was fiited, because the nylon locking on the nut didn't bite into the thread, this allowed the nut to came undone and fall off. and as Lee said we are all lucky that no one was hurt.
Magazines take a while to be published, so this happend a while ago, and at lets see at 4 cars a week, and 12 days before ethe failure, thats about 8 cars delivered with this potential failure on both front wheels before the problem was found. Now lets assume that the part has been in the stock room for four weeks that gives another 16 cars or 24 in total (worst case?)
Best case, it was only fitted to say 8 cars of which 4 they caught before delivery (if we are all lucky). Now if your car was bult 6 months ago then you are probably OK. if you had one for less than 3 months (erring on the side of safety)then you may be a little bit more concerned about this issue.
Yes all cars have issues, but unfortiunatly no one is perfect. I also applaud Lee for being honest, and I'm sure that he knows by now exactly how many cars are affected, from a hopeful zero to ??
A simple recall if needed for affected cars would suffice, this is not an oil leek, this is serious steering / suspension failure.
A simple note saying that your car is OK, would also ease the minds of a few drivers as well.
PS. Have you checked your ball joints yet?
>> Edited by buxton on Sunday 29th June 00:00
I like the car, otherwise I wouldn't have spent a lot of money and waited nearly a year to get one. But I would still like to know if the part is fitted to my or any other cars on the road? The one big difference between the old cars which had this problem, was that they were old and worn out and lucky to get to seventy.
The Noble is a high performance car, under a lot of stress if being driven hard. The failure occured 12 days after the part was fiited, because the nylon locking on the nut didn't bite into the thread, this allowed the nut to came undone and fall off. and as Lee said we are all lucky that no one was hurt.
Magazines take a while to be published, so this happend a while ago, and at lets see at 4 cars a week, and 12 days before ethe failure, thats about 8 cars delivered with this potential failure on both front wheels before the problem was found. Now lets assume that the part has been in the stock room for four weeks that gives another 16 cars or 24 in total (worst case?)
Best case, it was only fitted to say 8 cars of which 4 they caught before delivery (if we are all lucky). Now if your car was bult 6 months ago then you are probably OK. if you had one for less than 3 months (erring on the side of safety)then you may be a little bit more concerned about this issue.
Yes all cars have issues, but unfortiunatly no one is perfect. I also applaud Lee for being honest, and I'm sure that he knows by now exactly how many cars are affected, from a hopeful zero to ??
A simple recall if needed for affected cars would suffice, this is not an oil leek, this is serious steering / suspension failure.
A simple note saying that your car is OK, would also ease the minds of a few drivers as well.
PS. Have you checked your ball joints yet?
>> Edited by buxton on Sunday 29th June 00:00
Dear all I was not going to get involved in all this because I thought I had explained things, obviously not. The ball joint issue. Only this one car was fitted with the cheaper joint, all others come from a different supplier. We have only ever fitted four front lower joints to customer cars all from the original supplier.
This only happened the once and on our car.
Yes we made a mistake, no one was hurt.
And if there was a problem with customer cars we would have said, but there is not.
Safety is always at top of list you can rest assured we take it very seriously.
This only happened the once and on our car.
Yes we made a mistake, no one was hurt.
And if there was a problem with customer cars we would have said, but there is not.
Safety is always at top of list you can rest assured we take it very seriously.
Great to see you on the forum Lee and I would like to reiterate the comments of many of the members here. I find the open way in which you conduct your business and your obvious concerns to get things right, gives me total confidence in being able to safely thrash the arse off one of your products , when I eventually get one.
So with this public vote of confidence is it possible,do you think, that you could see yourself clear to stick my car to the front of the queue ?
Apologies to all the others waiting , billywiz , goodlife etc but desperate times....
So with this public vote of confidence is it possible,do you think, that you could see yourself clear to stick my car to the front of the queue ?
Apologies to all the others waiting , billywiz , goodlife etc but desperate times....
Lee, I have to say that the outstanding attitude the factory shows towards its customers was a huge contributing part to me placing an order. Sure I thought the car was fantastic, most exciting thing I think I have ever been out in, but probably would have gone with a safer, known quantity (996 Carrera) if it were not for your comapnies customer first stance. I would not have liked to buy one with little factory support offered.
It was also very refreshing to see an honest letter written to Autocar, I can imagine what a similar letter would look like had this happened to BMW and been written by one of their PR spin doctors!
Look forward to seeing the factory in the not too distant future.
It was also very refreshing to see an honest letter written to Autocar, I can imagine what a similar letter would look like had this happened to BMW and been written by one of their PR spin doctors!
Look forward to seeing the factory in the not too distant future.
Gassing Station | Noble | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff