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You could do alot worse than a Bini for hacking to/from work. Although if you can get an early Leaf cheaply enough, there's a strong case to be made, just don't expect it to manage much more that your commuting though, battery degredation on them is something to behold

I think there are way better banger cars than the rather crap BMW Mini.  They still command a premium, even at the snotter end, and are full of German engineering solutions to simple design issues.

The Leaf has nothing to like about it.  With no battery management technology on them, there aren't many that can easily do 20 miles between charges.  On the upside, refurbed batteries are fairly cheap by EV standards, just not cheap enough to make such a venture worthwhile.

I've owned less reliable new cars, but I think if I had to deal with the main dealer/manufacturer interface on a regular basis, I would be seriously considering my life choices.

Some people like that hand holding and warm feeling of a franchised dealer - not that most know they are just franchised.  Whether or not you get the support you need from a dealer when problems arise is debatable.

Additionally, most of us are likely to get to a point where working on cars becomes less practical, and have to start relying on "professionals", which can again swing the maths on old v new.

Modern cars - including our "old" ones - are horribly complex and can break down due to minor issues.  Gone are the ways when a simple toolkit and a can of WD40 would at least get you home.

Just had a look at the new radiator - it has two threaded brass holes on the offside facing the engine  which the one in the car does not have. I have checked online and all the radiators for sale for the 2.2 have these. Can they be bunged up or do I have the wrong radiator?

You can safely ignore them. That said, there's something to be said for closing them up with brass plugs to keep the elements out

There was a leasing deal on Leapmotor,s a few months ago, which was three year lease at £200pcm, with one month deposit, and 10,000 miles a year.
No doubt a loss leader just to  achieve market penetration, but if I had known at the time, i might have been tempted.
Would still have kept the Omega as a second car though, just as it is now.

As for your Merc - no point trying to make economic sense of it. Its your hobby that gives you pleasure and thats all there is to it.
Some people spend disposable income on golf bats, for reasons better known to themselves, people like us choose to spend it on cars. 

There's nothing economically sensible about a big V8 saloon, there never was even if you could afford a new one

You could do alot worse than a Bini for hacking to/from work. Although if you can get an early Leaf cheaply enough, there's a strong case to be made, just don't expect it to manage much more that your commuting though, battery degredation on them is something to behold

Just had a look at the new radiator - it has two threaded brass holes on the offside facing the engine  which the one in the car does not have. I have checked online and all the radiators for sale for the 2.2 have these. Can they be bunged up or do I have the wrong radiator?

Just fitted a set of dials / clocks / instruments (call them what you like) to Sons Civic .
Long story but after me messing around with them due to an airbag light that wouldnt go out, just before the MOT, they werent working properly anymore.
Disappointed to find that the replacement set have 30,000 more miles on than the original set, despite being advertised as having almost exactly the same mileage. 
Got to fit an exhaust rear box to it at the weekend.
Hoping to fix its various little issues before decent weather arrives so I cand start into the list of various *little issues on my own two cars.

* C1 needs a replacement steering column due to knackered PAS motor, which requires the removal of the  complete dash assembly before starting the actual swap over.
If it gets too much, or doesnt solve the problem, then it will be down the weighbridge, and replaced by a cheap milk float, aka Nissan Leaf.

There was a leasing deal on Leapmotor,s a few months ago, which was three year lease at £200pcm, with one month deposit, and 10,000 miles a year.
No doubt a loss leader just to  achieve market penetration, but if I had known at the time, i might have been tempted.
Would still have kept the Omega as a second car though, just as it is now.

As for your Merc - no point trying to make economic sense of it. Its your hobby that gives you pleasure and thats all there is to it.
Some people spend disposable income on golf bats, for reasons better known to themselves, people like us choose to spend it on cars. 

It could, not unreasonably, be argued that the type of person leasing a brand new Astra wouldn't dream about owning a twenty year old anything Not that it feels like a twenty year old car...

I've owned less reliable new cars, but I think if I had to deal with the main dealer/manufacturer interface on a regular basis, I would be seriously considering my life choices.

Yes, never had no functionality.

And whilst ranting about Cisco - it's a daily chore in my professional life - their useless crap servers....

Like all server manufacturers, they provide an out of band management capability, provided in Cisco's case by what they call Cisco Integrated Management Console, or CIMC.  And it goes non responsive all the time.  It has a watchdog timer to restart it should it go unresponsive, but apparently that runs from the CIMC itself, and therefore goes unresponsive itself at the same time.  Cisco's solution, rather than fix the bloody shit?  Suggest we do a 260 mile round trip to pull the power cables out for 2 minutes.  The irony of having to do that to fix out of band management is lost on them.

I mean, when was the last time you saw an HPE iLO of Dell iDRAC lock up?  I'm guessing never.

Lol Ive a case with HPe currently about their ilo functionality on one of their new servers

Ah, but I bet its not locking up all the time, and basic functionality is always available.

iLO (and it's forerunner, RIBLO) has always been rock solid, with the issues on earlier versions around java version on the client browser not matching, and the unpatched iLO4s eating their NAND through excessive writes. But they always still worked.

Unlike Cisco shite.