Advice Please

Diamond78

Hi,

I purchased a car in March this year as I finally passed my driving test. I do not know a lot about cars in general so went to a second hand car dealer and brought a suzuki, r reg 1998. I paid £700 and was not told that I needed a new timing belt which I had fitted in the week after. The dealer said it was not his problem and he did not have to tell me that it needed a timing belt. So that was that.
It is a nice car but I am stuck with it for now. My insurance is £104 a month as I have added my brother as additional driver although he hardly uses the car and my road tax is £205 a year.
I did not know it would cost me so much to run a car and I was told the reason the road tax and insurance is high is due to the cars engine (1590).

Do you think I could sell the car for the same price? Or should I get it scrapped and borrow to buy a more economical car? Either way I will be out of pocket but I just dont know what to do?

Kilty_2

Providing it runs well and has a MOT (the longer, the more you'll get) someone will buy it for at least £400 imo. You'd get back what you paid with a full MOT I reckon.

vaio

as long as it has 10+ months mot you should get most of your money back if you sell, you could even try and find somewhere that will accept it as a trade in

Rolandtheroadie

The road tax is probably only around £7.50 per month more expensive than if it was under 1500cc at that age.
Does removing your brother save anything on insurance?
What kind of Suzuki is it?

Diamond78

Thanks everyone for your replies. MOT runs out in November and road tax runs out end of this month, so I am going to get 6 months road tax. Before I added my brother, the quote I got was only £10 less. I live in south London, so not sure if that has an affect on insurance lol. Although a first time driver, I am 32. I don't mind having my brother on the insurance for now.

It is a Suzuki Baleno, 3 door. I may look into trading the car. Do car dealers trade? I don't think I would want to buy from a second hand car dealer again. I know they are not all bad.

Thanks again.

iolanthe07

Do car dealers trade?

Blimey, you really are new at this, aren't you?! Car dealers make their living by trading. The whole business is a minefield where the innocent can lose a lot of money quickly. There are some real rogues out there, as well as a few honest ones. Ask a trusted friend or relative who knows about cars to come with you when you next buy one.

rev_henry

I know its a minefield but your experience sounds pretty normal. Don't mean to sound judgmental but you should have asked about the timing belt before buying, and you could have found out about the road tax before, sorry. I'd keep it, and please tax it for 12 months if you can afford, its more expensive for 6.

trubble

It'll cost more to sell it, buy something else, tax and insure that and then fix anything that needs doing on the new car.
Keep it and run it into the ground - with a new cambelt and japanese reliability chances are it'll keep going for a while yet, but before you do, take your brother off the insurance, and really REALLY search as hard as you can for a cheaper deal on insurance.
Go third party fire and theft if you have to - the car isn't worth a great deal anyway.
Ask for a limited mileage policy, tell them if it's kept in a garage or off the road, ask them what you can do to get the insurance cheaper - cheap immobiliser, anything to get the £1200 a year cost down.
And next time do a lot of reading before buying - you could possibly have done better running-costs-wise, but at least it's japanese rather than a clapped out fiesta that'd cost you more in repairs

Diamond78

Thank you everyone. I think I will keep the car for now as I need to get to know more about cars. I know its not rocket science but as other poster said, I am new to everything. I doubt I will get what I paid for if i sell the car, so will just keep my eyes out after a few months and see what comes up. By then hopefully I will know more.

I didn't know I could cut down the cost of my insurance. It will be two monts next week since I had the insurance, I was told if I take my brother off, it would affect the cost more, although I am not sure if that is true. I did the insurance through confused.com andgocompare and tesco were the cheapest.

I will call tesco and see what they say. Thanks again for all the advice. Have a great weekend.