ZT-T 260 2004 89500 miles - Auction

I have owned this car since 2006 and have done around 50,000 miles in that time. It have taken me on many memorable trips across Europe including Portugal and Croatia. Just last week I used it for a 800 mile trip to and from Scotland. Over all that time it has been a reliable car which cruised quietly and lazily on the motorway but makes a fantastic noise and handles well when pushed a little harder on a country road.

The negatives:

Due to damage to the drivers door my insurance company have deemed this beyond economical repair and want to write the car off. This is ridiculous and I have decided to buy the car back off them and sell it privately. I would be tempted to repair myself but there are a number of other small issues that have made me decide it is time to move on. This car could be brought back to tip top conditions with a little work.

1. Drivers door damage - I have a spare door in my garage which is in silver but would probably be the cheapest solution with a respray. This will be thrown in with the car.

2. Intermittent ABS fault.

3. Heater Valve under the dash needs replacing - at he moment the heating/air con is always hot. This can be manually set to cold or anywhere in between under the bonnet, which is what I have been doing for a while now.

4. Central locking - I think there is a fault with the drivers door unit. It will open using the remote key but not lock...unless you are inside with the drivers door shut. You can lock the drivers door with the key.

5. CD changer and Sat Nav (boot mounted) no longer work. TV is analogue so obviously no use either. It is possible to upgrade this system to later BMW versions.

6. Tyres are worn. Two are probably illegal and two are worn on the edges but would pass MOT for a little while.

7. No MOT. This passed with no faults just over a year ago and the car has done less than 3000 miles since then. I would anticipate a couple of new tyres and the ABS to be the only issues.

I have receipts of repairs and servicing at Austin Garages in Burton on Trent (a specialist in Rover and experienced with the ZT 260 specifically) and from my local garage. General servicing lie oil changes and brake pads/discs have been undertaken by myself. I have completed oil changes at a maximum of every 5000 miles using fully synthetic oil. The engine is the most reliable and fault free part of this car!

ebay link to auction

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1720488026...84.m1555.l2649

Pictures

https://goo.gl/photos/ew8vG4XNUktMq7rS9

Sent you a message via the bay of E to see if you were selling elsewhere (DLAO1971) - surprised you're not selling via here really being a long standing member. Will keep an eye and hopefully bag a bargain via ebay then.

I need to sell it quick due to the insurance situation and to be honest I didn't think advertising on here would create enough interest.

So is the car Cat D?

It is also on here http://www.forums.75-zt.com/viewtopi...5d4fafec6f968b

Yes it will be Cat D. It's a biggish dent to the drivers door and a little of the adjoining wing. The Cat D is due to the insurance only valuing it at £2200 and reckoning that repair would be at least 50% of that. Cat D doesn't mean anything really as the car doesn't even get put off the road. I keep it as they just subtract the buy back (Scrap value) of the car from the payout. (and my excess of course! :()

If I would have accepted my insurance company's judgement on my Rover 45 it too would have been a write-off. That was four years and 60,000 miles ago. All due to an idiot reversing into the driver's door. I claimed from the idiot's insurance company (instead of mine), had a second-hand door fitted and resprayed for about £200, and the car was back on the road. The garage nominated by the insurance company to do the work is an ex-Rover dealer who had a 45 they were keeping for spares. I spoke to them and urged them to make the job as low-cost as possible. They even asked me whether I minded if I had a second-hand door! Of course I didn't! The car at that time was 11 years old and the rest of it was very much second hand already.

I've also had a Category D write off with a Metro in the 1990s. A dent in the rear quarter and a replacement rear light lens was all that happened. The dent was pushed out with a piece of wood and a scrappy provided the lens for £5 at that time. You could tell there had been a dent, but for that car at that time, it didn't matter to me.

The moral of the story is that insurance companies are used to dealing with people who cannot repair their own cars and for whom the value of a car is simply a matter of economics. For us, it's different!

Andrew

Hi there,

I'm very interested in this. I've just had a bid on ebay and currently the highest bidder.
A couple of questions:
-Any idea what the fault with the ABS is? Could you describe what the problem is?
-Is there any scope for putting some legal tyres and an MOT on it?
-If you were to do this, what would the asking price be? Equally, how much do you want for it as it stands?

well that's three of us watching it, could end up a dear car.
:~

I know a lad on the 75-ZT site that is also interested, good luck with the sale.