Why I love my ZS!

[Mr ZS180]

Aside from the obvious, as already stated by almost everyone on the site, I realised a few more reasons I love it yesterday.

Basically, I was driving home from my parents house when I got a call from the missus saying the window on our family car (a 307SW) wouldn't go up, so I had to go down to meet her to see what was up. Basically, after dismantling the window switch unit, I found a tiny bit of plastic had broken off the switch, stopping it pressing on the up button. Replaced it with one of the back ones for now, no problem, job done!!!

Except, now the electric mirrors don't work! They have power, as the powerfold works, but cannot adjust the direction of them any more. Great! Not the end of the world though so I thought 'Time to go home'.

I then realised that she had a puncture on the rear pass side, so I grabbed the tyreweld from the boot and was about to use it when I saw a whacking great screw poking out of the tyre! By this point I was getting quite annoyed. I was wearing good clothes and was tired from working till 10am in the morning!

Went to change the tyre, but the way Peugeot have done the spare on these cars is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen! It's a winch system, that winches the tyre into the boot floor. Except the cable was stuck, meaning I had to get under the car and start tugging at it to get it free.

Got it out, changed the wheel (finding out there was only 3 bolts holding the wheel on), ended up filthy and more annoyed.

The kind parking attendant then pointed out that the pass rear light was out. At this point annoyance really set in so I thumped the unit and the light came back!

So far with this car there have been numerous niggly faults, and I really hate niggly. (most annoying one being an 'antipollution fault' beeping all the time which happens to nearly all of them and is pretty much uncurable!)



This brings me onto the point about the ZS, and pretty much all Rovers I have owned.

They don't seem to have niggly faults for me. I can deal with big problems. To me, big problems are just a reason to upgrade, and this was the case with my 220 turbo when I blew the engine twice. I just thought 'have to get a better built one next time'!

Niggly faults cause me to sell cars, and so far my 180 has been good to me in the 18 months I have had her. Only things really were:

ABS Kicking in all the time - Relector rings replaced.
Clutch hydraulics went - now upgraded.
90k miles passed - Belts done.

The only annoying thing I have had was when it was running on 5 cyls for ages and couldnt work out what it was until Lates wiggled the ECU and cyl 6 came back to life and hasnt gone since.

The only car I forgave that had niggly faults was my old MGF. Roof leaked by drivers window if it started raining, but only if you opened and closed the door. If it stayed closed, it didnt leak, causing me to have to get out the pass side when it was raining!! It also drove like it was on ice when I fitted the MK2 ZS 11 spokes, but that was more my fault!!

Anyway, theres the story about why I love my ZS so much, and I really cannot see me selling for a very long time, and bearing in mind I have had 30 cars in 10 years, thats a good statement for me to make!