Should we fix the car or try and afford a newer one?

NormW

We've just had the OH's car MOT'd and it's going to cost around £600 to get it to pass. The car is a P reg nissan micra worth about 50p part-ex!

We seem to have 2 options which I can't decide between :-

1) Pay the £600 and hope nothing else goes wrong in the following year. The car has been in the family for at least 5 years so we know the history, but 6 months ago we had to shell out £90 on a wheelbearing and it's done 104k miles so it's no spring chicken.

2) Buy a newer car. Brand new is out as we can't afford enough deposit (usually 20%) to qualify for 0% credit and the absolute most we can afford is £100 pcm and we can scrape £1000 deposit together.

I've looked about on the main site and it seems there's a few different ways to loan the cash. My own bank (HSBC) is 12.9% APR (whatever that means) and I'm still confused as to which is the best way to go and how to compare the loans from different places in terms of the least interest paid.

I'm looking for advice on which of the 2 options is best and if we are to buy a newer car how to finance it.

Thanks in advance....

XDA

Get a decent 2nd hand car for under £1000?

I wouldnt bother getting finance, as thats the expense way of financing a car.

Hintza

You have more you need to decide on I think. Do you take many long journeys and by that I mean 20 miles plus? Are you up to doing basic repairs? If the answers are YES and No then it might be more prudent to spend a bit more.

If it's just a run around for town then a cheap banger probably does make some sense.

Would I spend £600 repairing it? Gettingt to the very marginal stage and would only really think about it if the garage felt it was OK for another years trouble free motoring. How is the exhaust, tyres etc? Have water pumps and the like been replaced?

scheming_gypsy

option 3 - take it to a different garage and have it MOT'ed, or even your local bus depot as they do MOT's but don't fail it on the piddling little things as they don't do repairs.

last year mine failed it's MOT so i took it to my usual garage to be repaired (too lazy to walk there in the first place). They MOT'ed it first and passed it with a couple of minor issues (headlight beam too high), replaced the blue bulbs.. the other place had a list of about 8 issues that needed sorting.

Keith

£600 is a lot, what did it fail on?

passatrider

Keith wrote: »

£600 is a lot, what did it fail on?

Get a Second Opinion?

credit_crunch_victim

did the mot station quote you the 600-00 if they did do elsewhere for a second opinion

Scubabe

Don't necessarily believe the MOT station who told you it needs £600 of work... my car failed its MOT this year and I was told it needed £900 of work on it... considering it only cost me £800, I wasn't prepared to spend that much and was starting to look at getting another car.
Took it to a different garage with the fail certificate and got them to quote me on the work... £360 later I passed my MOT!

NormW

Hi, the MOT station only did the MOT so they have no axe to grind over the cost to repair.

The £600 comes from :-

£40 MOT Test fee

£400 welding - it needs 2 sills and the rear floor - I've been under it to confirm and got an estimate off an independent place for £310 (with £90 contingency if it's worse than it first looks which can be the case).

Set of brake pads £30 + labour

Anti roll bar link £20 + labour

A budget of £50 to fix a headlight (it's not just a bulb out, the wiring has a short somewhere and it's getting hot etc)

Another £40 MOT Fee as we'll miss the free retest period (there's no way we could get it done in time).

We've looked at a couple of Renault clios today but I'm rubbish at bartering so we've just walked away for now.

I'm worried if we buy a cheap banger it'll be forever breaking dowen or costing money to keep going and really no better than what we have.

Admittedly there's every chance we'll have to put our hands in our pockets to fix it within the next 12 months if we hang onto it.

Thanks everyone for all your advice

vansboy

Certainly wouldn't consider the expense, for something like welding, as this means that the car HAS passed it's use by date.

If it were for new tyres & things which wear out anyway, maybe, but it really is time to get rid & don't spend more at other testing staions, as the welding has been re-confirmed to you..

There are good value cheapies about, but you'll need to do a bit of searching &, as you've already done, disregard the ones you don't feel OK with.

VB

credit_crunch_victim

how much mot left on it
i allways put my cars in a month before they run out then you have a month to get it done
if it passes you get it added on so you can have a 13 month mot on your car
if you have any mot left i would px this asap with that amount of welding it sounds like it will need more in the future