It now seems that there’s no sign yet of the tax disc as – apparently – the Local Vehicle Licensing Office at Lincoln is building up a backlog of registrations/licensing and there’s no tax disc for my RX-8 yet.

Great! Let’s hope it’s there by Friday.

In the meantime, it just makes me think I won’t bother buying a new car again: too much like hard work!

Obviously anything I spend now won’t give me any real benefit as – hopefully – I’ll be collecting the R3 on 15 March.

Let’s hope so, eh? My sister’s new Seat was promised to her by her dealer in March a few years back and she didn’t actually get delivery until the end of June!

So in the meantime, I’ll just have to keep checking the oil and tyres and see if I can nurse it through the last couple of weeks. The cash is sitting there in my bank account waiting to be spent. I’m willing but it’s on a slow boat from China Japan!

I was very disappointed to be told, after waiting for 20 minutes, that it was probably going to be delivered at least a fortnight later but even that isn’t guaranteed.

Now my present insurance runs out on the 9^th March. The promised delivery date of 1 March obviously would have meant that I would not need to take out insurance on the ST200, but a later date means I will have to take out new insurance and then almost immediately cancel it which will mean I incur additional costs as the best insurance quotes for the RX-8 R3 and ST200 are from different insurers.

Similarly, I was going to obtain a refund for my road fund licence but again I will be out of pocket because of the delayed delivery.

When I placed the order on 22^nd January, I was told that 1^st March delivery was achievable and had relied on this date, even to the extent of booking a service on our other RX-8 bought from them recently for the same day.

I have now asked the dealer for their proposals for achieving the 1^stMarch delivery date or alternatively covering the extra costs this delayed delivery will mean for me.