Originally Posted by
foama
I bought my Mirage because the "stripped naked" model was just barely within my financial reach. The price included calculated running costs as well as the sales price, and that doing all repairs myself. As a senior satellite payload engineer with three university degrees, you don't get much salary (roughly € 30 000 PA) these days, much less than the average wage.
The Clio is is a much more expensive, wider and longer car than the Mirage. The Mirage itself is much wider than a normal car such as the popular FIAT Panda, for example. In narrow European streets with very narrow parking spaces, more width and unnecessary length is a definite disadvantage. My street is barely three meter wide, and the Mirage is already 1.95 wide with mirrors. Folks with SUV's are collectively getting on other people's nerves because of blocking or disrupting the flow of traffic in narrow streets, squatting on two or three parking spaces at the same time, etc.
Not that the Clio is wide like a SUV, but it certainly is much wider than most, more than our streets are good for. On top of that, it is far too expensive for me, and it is a Renault sharing their reputation.
Holy crap. You must be pretty frugal! Anyone working a full time job making minimum wage ($15/hr) over here is guaranteed $31200(cad) or 23128 eur. I'm not sure how cost of living compares but at least gas is cheaper.
Oddly enough, I met some people from Germany the other day. They seem to be pretty well off, the wife was a social worker and the guy was a welder. My folks are in the process of buying their acreage out this way. They plan to move back to Germany in the next few years if things simmer down over that way.
I couldn't imagine living on a street that's less than half the width of my driveway. Heck, my truck has got to be around 8' wide. With the bullwinkle tow mirrors in ghost trailer mode it's probably closer to 9. I like the fact that I can pull a you turn in front of my house, our neighborhood is 40 years old. Newer areas out here are becoming tightly packed that you could jump from roof to roof for blocks and the streets are so narrow they're basically single lane when cars park on both sides(which is usually the case).
Last edited by Fummins; 05-05-2022 at 08:13 PM.
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View my fuel log 2014 Mirage SE wussie cvt edition. 1.2 automatic: 37.7 mpg (US) ... 16.0 km/L ... 6.2 L/100 km ... 45.3 mpg (Imp)