YANO (Yet Another New Owner)

[Rip Van]

We have just returned home (a two hour journey) from Inverness, where we collected our new MG4 SE Long Range.

The car coped with our roads here in the north west Highlands with ease, an inkling of which we gained during our test drive the other day. It was good on the single track that is the last 7 miles too, and the steep hills here, previously needing a lot of waggling of gear sticks, were a dream.

We stopped in Ullapool, around half way, to do Our First Charge. All went according to plan, and we were comfortable enough to leave it to its own devices. On our return, a Tesla driver was waiting for us to finish so that he could recharge, and it was rather satisfying to to see him casting what must have been envious eyes at our new car. He was very complimentary when we got chatting.

We would very much like to thank everyone on this forum, which we have been studying for the past couple of weeks. All your input, answers and questions have been extremely helpful, and has meant we are not having to learn lessons from scratch. And the near-universal enthusiasm for your MG4s has meant we could be much more reassured that we have made the right decision.

Welcome. We're getting ours from Inverness too, in the very near future (possibly today). What's your impression of the handover there?

 

[FiferMG4]

We have just returned home (a two hour journey) from Inverness, where we collected our new MG4 SE Long Range.

The car coped with our roads here in the north west Highlands with ease, an inkling of which we gained during our test drive the other day. It was good on the single track that is the last 7 miles too, and the steep hills here, previously needing a lot of waggling of gear sticks, were a dream.

We stopped in Ullapool, around half way, to do Our First Charge. All went according to plan, and we were comfortable enough to leave it to its own devices. On our return, a Tesla driver was waiting for us to finish so that he could recharge, and it was rather satisfying to to see him casting what must have been envious eyes at our new car. He was very complimentary when we got chatting.

We would very much like to thank everyone on this forum, which we have been studying for the past couple of weeks. All your input, answers and questions have been extremely helpful, and has meant we are not having to learn lessons from scratch. And the near-universal enthusiasm for your MG4s has meant we could be much more reassured that we have made the right decision.

Welcome to the forum, QLeo! Great to hear you’ve got off to a good start with your new car and I hope with the popularity of the North Coast 500, improvements are made to the charging infrastructure.

We were up in Ullapool last Summer. Beautiful countryside and we had a delicious bite to eat at the Seafood Shack.

 

[QLeo]

Welcome. We're getting ours from Inverness too, in the very near future (possibly today). What's your impression of the handover there?

Martin Hagan was the salesperson there, but we overheard the other two salespeople and both sounded informed and clear. Martin was very good, patiently asking the barrage of questions we brought with us thanks to the info on this forum. After a while he settled in to us and relaxed and it made for pleasant interaction.

The handover was fine. He helped with the phone binding, but was more used to the Trophy than the SE LR and so we had to find a few things between us. Not a concern, though, and he was able to answer questions easily and thoroughly. He was competent with the paperwork.

As soon as we got home, though, I removed the orange "Dicksons of Inverness" sticker they put right across the rear window. The window isn't exactly panoramic and the height of the sticker was a little too much. I htought it best to remove it immediately before it stuck forever.

Welcome to the forum, QLeo! Great to hear you’ve got off to a good start with your new car and I hope with the popularity of the North Coast 500, improvements are made to the charging infrastructure.

We were up in Ullapool last Summer. Beautiful countryside and we had a delicious bite to eat at the Seafood Shack.

Thank you. Yeah, it's about time we residents got something from the NC500!

 

[Rip Van]

Martin Hagan was the salesperson there, but we overheard the other two salespeople and both sounded informed and clear. Martin was very good, patiently asking the barrage of questions we brought with us thanks to the info on this forum. After a while he settled in to us and relaxed and it made for pleasant interaction.

The handover was fine. He helped with the phone binding, but was more used to the Trophy than the SE LR and so we had to find a few things between us. Not a concern, though, and he was able to answer questions easily and thoroughly. He was competent with the paperwork.

As soon as we got home, though, I removed the orange "Dicksons of Inverness" sticker they put right across the rear window. The window isn't exactly panoramic and the height of the sticker was a little too much. I htought it best to remove it immediately before it stuck forever.

Thanks for that. My experience with Dickson's, over years, has always been good but things can change. We are also armed with our checklist so looking forward to getting it (Trophy).

 

[FiferMG4]

Thank you. Yeah, it's about time we residents got something from the NC500!

I just sent this email to Visit Scotland. I’ll post the reply when and if I get one.

Dear Visit Scotland,

I am most interested in doing the North Coast 500, however I have an electric car and looking at the charging infrastructure on my Zap Map app in that part of Scotland, it looks very inadequate to confidently make such a long journey. My family and I would love to spend a good week there staying at B&Bs and seeing the sights and enjoying the local food, but it doesn't seem possible to do it easily and safely at the moment.

I was wondering if you knew of any plans to improve the charging infrastructure on the route, so that it will become accessible to the burgeoning number of electric car users in Scotland and further afield. This is a rapidly expanding market which needs to be tapped into and with the Scottish Government's climate targets being on the horizon, there are many good reasons to build on the small number of public charging points along the route.

Can I ask if your organization is lobbying for such changes? I look forward to hearing from you.

 

[QLeo]

I just sent this email to Visit Scotland. I’ll post the reply when and if I get one.

Dear Visit Scotland,

I am most interested in doing the North Coast 500, however I have an electric car and looking at the charging infrastructure on my Zap Map app in that part of Scotland, it looks very inadequate to confidently make such a long journey. My family and I would love to spend a good week there staying at B&Bs and seeing the sights and enjoying the local food, but it doesn't seem possible to do it easily and safely at the moment.

I was wondering if you knew of any plans to improve the charging infrastructure on the route, so that it will become accessible to the burgeoning number of electric car users in Scotland and further afield. This is a rapidly expanding market which needs to be tapped into and with the Scottish Government's climate targets being on the horizon, there are many good reasons to build on the small number of public charging points along the route.

Can I ask if your organization is lobbying for such changes? I look forward to hearing from you.

Can't hurt, and thanks for trying, although VisitScotland isn't known for its proactivity, and actively shut down all its offices north of Ullapool some years (pre-COVID) ago. But whoever punts the NC500 might be worth a contact as well. It used to be the North Highland Initiative, but I think it's now in more private ownership. In general, though, their take is to fill the hotels in which they seem to have a stake along the route. But you never know.

 

[AidanTM]

Got mine today, a white Trophy. Think I'm a little bit in love with it

 

[Rolfe]

Infrastructure on that North Coast 500 is pretty poor. They seem to have marketed it without much thought for how they would cope with an influx of visitors. When I did the trail ride, which was 250 miles of a more inland route, every time we had to go on the road we were constantly dodging camper vans, and every grass verge was infested with camper vans.

Tourists in EVs would want accommodation, and be more likely to do the trip with more stops and so spend more. You'd think this is something they might want to encourage, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

[bowfer]

Infrastructure on that North Coast 500 is pretty poor. They seem to have marketed it without much thought for how they would cope with an influx of visitors. When I did the trail ride, which was 250 miles of a more inland route, every time we had to go on the road we were constantly dodging camper vans, and every grass verge was infested with camper vans.

Tourists in EVs would want accommodation, and be more likely to do the trip with more stops and so spend more. You'd think this is something they might want to encourage, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

The west coast and anything further north than Inverness is pretty much a mystery to me, we’ve enough Bonnie scenery around Aberdeen that I’ve never felt the need and anything appealing to me is South.
However, we did decide to visit Tobermory some years ago, on the back of the popularity of the kids’ programme ‘Balamory’.
The apathy, borderline antipathy, of the locals towards Balamory tourists was astounding.
So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if NC500 businesses did sod all to help tourists make the change to EVs.

 

[Rolfe]

At some point they'll have to, but that point is probably not yet.

 

[QLeo]

The west coast and anything further north than Inverness is pretty much a mystery to me, we’ve enough Bonnie scenery around Aberdeen that I’ve never felt the need and anything appealing to me is South.
However, we did decide to visit Tobermory some years ago, on the back of the popularity of the kids’ programme ‘Balamory’.
The apathy, borderline antipathy, of the locals towards Balamory tourists was astounding.
So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if NC500 businesses did sod all to help tourists make the change to EVs.

That's not our experience of businesses here. Quite the opposite, in fact. But these things are not easy, and expectations from visitors can exceed the ability of small businesses, which also cost money to run in the off-season, to invest, if investment it really is. In other words, "it's complicated".
The flip side of that of course, is that there is a need to make hay while the tourist season shines, and the difference between that and raw greed is often hard to determine.
I would also say, I understand what you experienced in Tobermory. Places like ours are living, lived-in places, but there is sometimes an assumption that everyone here is a holidaymaker. Case in point - it's just taken me 30 minutes to do a 15 minute journey, including a campervan stopping me and telling me to wait in a passing place because his mate was some distance behind. It didn't occur to him that I was going to an appointment.
So as I say, "it's complicated."

 

[QLeo]

Got mine today, a white Trophy. Think I'm a little bit in love with it

Just been in to Lochinver, and the last time a car I was driving got such admiring/enviousd glances was my lovely old 200MY Heritage Special Edition Land Rover 90.

 

[Rolfe]

... a campervan stopping me and telling me to wait in a passing place because his mate was some distance behind...

That is horrendous passing-place etiquette.

 

[QLeo]

That is horrendous passing-place etiquette.

It does make it hard to maintain one's equanimity, that's for sure. Or as a crofter friend said, "Sometimes you have to bite your tongue until it looks like a doily."
But maybe our new shiny MG4 made me look like a tourist!

 

[Rolfe]

Once when I was on Mull in my old Fiesta XR2 I rounded an awkward corner with a nasty drop on one side to see a lorry coming towards me. That was fine, there was a passing place between us, closer to him than to me. The passing place was on my side, but I expected him simply to stop opposite it and let me pass him by going into it. Not a bit of it, he came straight on. I had nowhere to go. I stopped and looked at him. Reversing a car round the corner just behind me was not a safe operation and I wasn't really prepared to try it.

As I looked behind me, a second car came round the nasty corner and stopped behind me. Well, no chance now. The lorry started to clash his gears and double-declutch or whatever, and emitted a lot of smoke (I presume he was trying to put it into reverse), and stalled. A lot of huffing and puffing and it wasn't going anywhere. I was trying to catch a ferry at Craignure back to Oban, where my dinner was. (I had spent rather too long in Tobermory, where the natives seemed friendly.) I looked at my watch, and eyed the machair either side of the road wondering if it would support a Fiesta.

I decided that if I did bog the car down in the machair then that would definitely scupper my chances of catching that ferry, and just waited. Eventually the man got his lorry moving and he reversed as far as the passing place, allowing me (and the other car) to get round him.

I discovered it was actually possible to break the national speed limit on Mull. We caught the ferry.

It's not always the tourist who is the problem!

 

[QLeo]

Once when I was on Mull in my old Fiesta XR2 I rounded an awkward corner with a nasty drop on one side to see a lorry coming towards me. That was fine, there was a passing place between us, closer to him than to me. The passing place was on my side, but I expected him simply to stop opposite it and let me pass him by going into it. Not a bit of it, he came straight on. I had nowhere to go. I stopped and looked at him. Reversing a car round the corner just behind me was not a safe operation and I wasn't really prepared to try it.

As I looked behind me, a second car came round the nasty corner and stopped behind me. Well, no chance now. The lorry started to clash his gears and double-declutch or whatever, and emitted a lot of smoke (I presume he was trying to put it into reverse), and stalled. A lot of huffing and puffing and it wasn't going anywhere. I was trying to catch a ferry at Craignure back to Oban, where my dinner was. (I had spent rather too long in Tobermory, where the natives seemed friendly.) I looked at my watch, and eyed the machair either side of the road wondering if it would support a Fiesta.

I decided that if I did bog the car down in the machair then that would definitely scupper my chances of catching that ferry, and just waited. Eventually the man got his lorry moving and he reversed as far as the passing place, allowing me (and the other car) to get round him.

I discovered it was actually possible to break the national speed limit on Mull. We caught the ferry.

It's not always the tourist who is the problem!

Yes, that expectation that you would be happy to reverse around a blind bend is not uncommon. You did the right thing. The thing we have to remember is that many people simply do not know how to reverse. The excuses are varied and myriad*, but the real issue is, they don't know how to reverse. So often, even though it's a pain, it's easier just to reverse half a mile down the road. But that lingering sense of entitlement from some is not always easy to shrug off.

* - for example, a huge white, probably hired BMW (people hire performance cars to "do" the NC500 to play above their pay grade for a few days) came around a corner and overshot the passing place as I was approaching it. I stopped and waited. He looked in his mirror and didn't do a thing. So I folded my arms, and continued to wait. After a while, he got embarrassed, and managed to reverse the few measly metres necessary, clearly fuming. As I went by, he yelled "I'm in a BMW and you're only in a F***ing Fiat!" I still don't understand that one....

 

[Robf]

That is horrendous passing-place etiquette.

Ahhh for true passing place etiquette, you should have experienced the exodus from the Howard Doris yard at Kishorn around 4.30 PM on a Saturday afternoon. It wasnt just the sheep that were traumatised. I used to wonder at the cars in the middle of the glens on my return from Conon Bridge on a Monday morning. Anything in the road of that exodus was dumped to the side of the road, passing place or not

 

[Rolfe]

 

[Ian Key]

Yes, that expectation that you would be happy to reverse around a blind bend is not uncommon. You did the right thing. The thing we have to remember is that many people simply do not know how to reverse. The excuses are varied and myriad*, but the real issue is, they don't know how to reverse. So often, even though it's a pain, it's easier just to reverse half a mile down the road. But that lingering sense of entitlement from some is not always easy to shrug off.

* - for example, a huge white, probably hired BMW (people hire performance cars to "do" the NC500 to play above their pay grade for a few days) came around a corner and overshot the passing place as I was approaching it. I stopped and waited. He looked in his mirror and didn't do a thing. So I folded my arms, and continued to wait. After a while, he got embarrassed, and managed to reverse the few measly metres necessary, clearly fuming. As I went by, he yelled "I'm in a BMW and you're only in a F***ing Fiat!" I still don't understand that one....

I used to be well practiced in the folding arms technique with an addition of unfolding a newspaper, propping it against the steering wheel and starting to read it.
This was usually employed when despite having right of way a car comes in the opposite direction and expects a 40 foot bus to either vanish or reverse.
Unfortunately buses don't vanish and legally they can't reverse with passengers on or without a competent banks-man on the public highway.
Oh! And I was getting paid until my shift ended whether the bus was moving or not.

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, that expectation that you would be happy to reverse around a blind bend is not uncommon. You did the right thing. The thing we have to remember is that many people simply do not know how to reverse. The excuses are varied and myriad*, but the real issue is, they don't know how to reverse. So often, even though it's a pain, it's easier just to reverse half a mile down the road. But that lingering sense of entitlement from some is not always easy to shrug off.

* - for example, a huge white, probably hired BMW (people hire performance cars to "do" the NC500 to play above their pay grade for a few days) came around a corner and overshot the passing place as I was approaching it. I stopped and waited. He looked in his mirror and didn't do a thing. So I folded my arms, and continued to wait. After a while, he got embarrassed, and managed to reverse the few measly metres necessary, clearly fuming. As I went by, he yelled "I'm in a BMW and you're only in a F***ing Fiat!" I still don't understand that one....

Obviously, the more expensive your car, the more right of way you have?

When I was back in Mull about ten years ago I tried to find that blind corner again to photograph it, but I couldn't. The road hadn't just been improved, it had been realigned, and the whole thing was gone. Basically the road rounded a rock, going downhill, with a steep drop on the other side with no safety barrier at all. I'm good, but I'm not prepared to do that. Reverse uphill, round a blind corner, with a steep unprotected drop on the outside of the curve, on a road little wider than my car? Nope.

A farmer in Perthshire told me about a guy in a campervan who tried to get him to reverse across a narrow hump-backed bridge in a Land Rover - while towing a horse trailer containing a sick mare he was trying to get to the vet.