Chimera deal

[Susie]

I have recently been offered a new Chimera 450 (half hide) from my local dealer for £32,000. Is this reasonable at the moment. Also can anyone give me a guide to servicing costs and the merits of running on 'normal' unleaded fuel?. Many thanks.

[paul]

Depends... Assuming no mileage, decent colour combination and no other extras this is a saving of about 3K on list(with tax). It will probably lose another 6-8K over the course of the year (rough guess). I suspect this is the 'old' shape - (i.e. not the new headlights/clear indicators/new seats.. see elsewhere on this site for details). Servicing at 1000 miles should be free - you can usually get the 6K service thrown in if you negotiate. If you're not bothered about the minor changes that the new shape has, you might get better value buying a 12 month old car... As to fuel - there are many schools of thought, I ran my 1st Chimp on normal unleaded for 18 months without a problem. I put Super in the second one only because I had a company fuel card...

[andyr]

On Fuel, normal unleaded gives you less mpg than super (apparently) so I have always put in super when available.

[GreenV8S]

quote:On Fuel, normal unleaded gives you less mpg than super (apparently) so I have always put in super when available.

Who told you that? Did they say what caused it? Sounds like fairy tales to me. Did they also try to sell you one of those wonderful magnets to go in your fuel line? Peter Humphries (and as green V8S)

[mmertens]

So that's a fairy tale then (more mileage out of 98 than out of 95)? I'd heard this from various people (not only TVR's, also "normal" cars), and my 4.5 seemed to get a few more miles out of a tank of 97 or 98, but if you say so, Peter, I have to assume this was all wishful thinking. The difference was minimal so that may well be the case.

[Paul V]

I have heard similar thing's, could this be due to the higher octane? As it burns more?

[Rob350]

Ah -- the super unleaded debate resurfaces. It is theoretically possible to get better MPG from a higher octane in an engine that relies on a knock sensor to set ignition advance retard. Higher octane fuels have a greater resistance to knock (pinking) and thus the ignition can be more advanced leading to higher engine efficiency. All this of course is rather academic if you are not operating at or near the limit... so both sides of the debate are right here. Oh and if you pay £32k for a car, unless you are doing mega mileage the fuel cost difference will be small next to the depreciation say £50 a year on 6,000 miles versus £6,000. I run my old car on super unleaded by the way and it goes like a very noisy dream!

[HIGHLANDER]

Super Unleaded available at :- Esso near Inverness Halfords, Kildary garage, Contin filling station, Conon-bridge filling station + many others I'm sure I don't know about. I run mine on super-unleaded North of Inverness without any problems. Car deal sounds OK - a classic - the summers coming, buy, enjoy and increase the Highland TVR numbers.

[jack5389]

At the risk of much derision, my son - high mileage photographer - has a Hyundia(sp?) Accent, during the petrol crisis he could only obtain 98 octane - he reckoned on an average mpg improvement of 15-20%. As he has to pay for his own petrol he has now converted to this on a permenant basis.

[TVR Engineer]

quote:Ah -- the super unleaded debate resurfaces. It is theoretically possible to get better MPG from a higher octane in an engine that relies on a knock sensor to set ignition advance retard. Higher octane fuels have a greater resistance to knock (pinking) and thus the ignition can be more advanced leading to higher engine efficiency. All this of course is rather academic if you are not operating at or near the limit... so both sides of the debate are right here. Oh and if you pay £32k for a car, unless you are doing mega mileage the fuel cost difference will be small next to the depreciation say £50 a year on 6,000 miles versus £6,000. I run my old car on super unleaded by the way and it goes like a very noisy dream! ---------------------------------------- I have mentioned this before elsewhere please be careful when using standard unleaded in your TVR the Rover V8 does not have a knock sensor fitted to retard the ignition when the ECU senses the point near pre ignition. If you must use bog-standard fuel have your timing re-set at your nearest official dealer. If not your cylinder heads will be subjected to a higher temperature than the design allows and while you may not notice any problems in the short term, a disaster on par with Krakatoa is waiting to rear its ugly head !

Edited by TVR Engineer on Saturday 31st March 23:27