It looks beautifully made but this is not a car that will turn up at many country club car parks in its home country...

Thanks again for taking the time to pass on some local knowledge. As it stands, the USA would be a six months there, six months here option but everything is so up in the air at the moment.

The latest Jaguar systems are really good in that respect. Earlier iterations were like stabbing at a cheap resistive phone from some years ago, waiting seconds for them to react, stabbing them again and then accidentally queuing up a series of unwanted commands. (My rental XF experience).

UK sites reckon ‘from £50,000' based on where it fits in the line-up, so expect the same figure but in dollars for you folks.

For newer cars (and I include your Volvo) I’d be tempted to take it to a gearbox specialist. Quite a few gearboxes need exactly the right fluid, at exactly the right temperature and quantity when renewing and they can be a royal pain in the ass to do as well. Older cars aren’t so fussy.

Mine was the far more common 740 V8, but anyone who’s owned one has encountered at least one of these issues!

Thanks for taking the time out to make some recommendations. Much appreciated.

I’ll second the recommendation by Danny to get a 750 rather than a 740. Transmission failure did for my 740, although it would be worth getting a reconditioned gearbox these days rather than scrapping them.

Unfortunately I don’t have a professional skill that the USA wants or needs. I’m a pilot. You have many very well qualified people of your own and more license holders than jobs.

We have top men working on it right now.

The only good take from this is that it won’t happen again. At least, not with airbags. This year it might be tyres or the material used to manufacture brake pads, the coating used to protect leather seats, whatever, but there will always be something.

Only after you fetch me the key to the parade square...

I have absolutely zero intention of working for someone else or for the sole purpose of enriching share holders until I can’t walk anymore. My skillset is fairly niche which means I can’t really set up my own business without doing something else and this is why I’ve been out in Asia, China, the Middle East, taking…

Excellent analogy. We don’t really have a large group of far-right neo-Nazis in the UK but they exist. They are predominantly made up of young men with little education who have been told, or feel, they have little to offer society.

I’m struggling to think of something that’s matched the movies for me in the States, and I visit often. Mostly Florida or Texas, but the odd trip elsewhere.

Hard to disagree with that, but there is a very niche market for high displacement V6s or V8s due to fuel prices. We’ve had a couple of Holdens rebadged and sold by Vauxhall, the Mustang you already mentioned, but affordable V8s in the UK pretty much died in the 60s/70s.

You can take an automatic transmission test, but you’re then restricted to autos from there on. It’s becoming more popular with the younger generations (as flappy paddles count as automatics) and the newer transmissions are actually better on economy than the manual.

The STI is not my kind of car but, looking online, our prices for the STI are about the same. There’s one that’s suspiciously cheap for around 8500 of your shiny dollars, but the mean value of the rest is not far off. Some cheaper, some more expensive:

I fly into Texas a fair bit and rather than just stay in the city, I have wandered about when time has allowed. Florida too, and I rather like it, despite the stereotypes on here! Humidity is a killer, though... I though Asia was bad!

Have a look at the prices of cars you can get in the USA and tell me they’re not way, way cheaper...