Should I get a car on finance or similar?

catoutthebag

Hello everyone

Bit about me: early 30s, driving 6 years, self employed, home owner.
Cheapest car purchased, £800, most expensive £3000.
Currently mk5 golf petrol, Insurance £1000 (pay in full). Had couple non fault claims etc, but getting better

Inevitably, road tax £200/yr, service £130/yr

Currently car value £1500

Have savings not massive, but emergency I'd rather not touch

Spend about 10hours a week driving, maybe not enough to warrant diesel, but close call as do several thousand miles a year...I'd guess 10k?

My cars inevitably develop problems etc

Current car ok

I can maybe push to £100/month towards some sort of finance deal...one where you own the car at the end... preferably 0% (or low %), clearly it would be hard to get something within 3 years old, would be happy with 5-7 years old. Like VW's, Hondas etc

So, would My situation and money available warrant doing what most people seem to do? Or save it?
.I spend a lot of time driving so maybe justifiable

But would garages do this on something 5-7 years old...over 3-5 year? With my car sale £1500 as deposit?

forgotmyname

Why pay interest on something that loses value?

Getting a loan for an older car could see a few rather expensive months when it needs something more than basic essentials whilst your paying the loan as well.

Sister got a car from one of those give anyone credit places. £7500 for a car worth about £3k. The car sat on her garden for a year needing work she couldnt afford to do whilst paying the loan. Made the final payment and phoned them to confirm its finished and scrapped it 3 days later.

Mental, because for £200 and a few hours work she could have fixed it.

AnotherJoe

Diesel doesn't sound like a good idea unless your 10 hours a week are in say 4 or 5 very long trips.

neilmcl

catoutthebag wrote: »

Current car ok

Thats all the needs to be said.

catoutthebag

After having old crap cars, I guess I had car envy:o

fiish

I wouldn't borrow money to buy an old car. If your current car is running OK you're probably better off keeping it until it starts getting too expensive to maintain.

forgotmyname

catoutthebag wrote: »

After having old crap cars, I guess I had car envy:o

Do you also want the debt envy?

Jlawson118

It depends really, if you can pay it all off earlier then great! Because car financing is an absolute rip off. My step-dad's car was worth about £7000 but I think with finance he's ended up paying over £10,000 if not £12,000..

But I will also say that I'm 20 and just got my first car, the car came from a proper dealership and is only five year old but it's been nothing but problems. I've only had it nearly three months and already I've been saying that maybe it'll be better if I just get a brand new car next time, because at least I know somebody else hasn't had it and battered it like they have with mine, and then the dealership don't have to cover it up like they do

jimjames

fiish wrote: »

I wouldn't borrow money to buy an old car. If your current car is running OK you're probably better off keeping it until it starts getting too expensive to maintain.

There's very little that is too expensive to maintain compared to getting a new car on finance. Many items that a lot of people seem to consider terminal are actually things that are worth fixing as you then have a car that will keep on running. New car might have exactly the same problems again.

jimjames

catoutthebag wrote: »

My cars inevitably develop problems etc

Current car ok

I noticed this quote. If your cars "inevitably" develop problems are you getting them properly serviced etc? Skipping on maintenance may save a few quid short term but likely to increase costs long term if you ignore issues.

chris1973

There's very little that is too expensive to maintain compared to getting a new car on finance.

Ok i'll bite. Bought a six year old car almost two years ago, one owner, full dealer service history - serviced on the dot and just 69k (verified by SH and MOT's) miles on the clock. Just outside of the six month second hand car warranty the dual mass flywheel failed - cheapest non dealer quote I could find for a clutch and flywheel replacement using LUK parts was £825 so taking into account the low mileage and thinking it would be a good car, I stupidly had the work carried out.

Recently, every air vent in the car began blowing out white dust, all over the car interior - like talcum powder, and when running the demist fan - covering the occupants too, then a few days later before I could get to the bottom of the mystery dust, the air con compressor also failed.

Turns out the white dust was actually thousands of tiny flakes of aluminium oxide from a corroding air con evaporator, corroded to the point that it holed, leaking out the gas and taking out the compressor, a job which will take around 14 hours to complete because the evaporator is buried in the heater assembly and the entire dash and most of the car interior has to come out, so factor in close to £1000 for non dealer labour plus the Evaporator (£485) and a recon replacement compressor and regas (£500) - not a lot of change from £2000 in that repair alone, all for a problem which was actually caused by a faulty batch of Denso evaporators and was seemingly a 'known' substandard part at the time the car was built and nothing to do with how the car was owned - just crap R&D / quality control / customer care.

Add to that some smaller repairs, like faulty air mass sensor, coolant and EGR thermostats needing replacement - all stuff I could do myself and not expensive in themselves but which the parts added about another £200 to the growing car repair bills.

So when repaired the car will have cost £3000 in repairs, in just under 2 years of ownership - still think that is a good deal?.

I've learned my lesson, i'm not buying a new car, or a six year old one, my next car will be a 1990's old school car, largely mechanical - not electrical so you could work on it yourself without having a professor from Jodrell Bank with £10k worth of diagnostic kit just to find out which sensor is pitching a fit today. A car dating from the days when engineers designed cars - not tree huggers and that there was a good chance, if serviced every 6000 miles, that the car would easily reach taxi-like mileages whilst still on most of its original factory parts, and the only remedial work will be the odd bit of age related welding.

Chances are, it will cost less than the repairs to my own car to buy and will last three times as long. The added bonus is that it will spend more time on the road, actually getting to places as opposed to modern day rubbish where their natural habitat seems to be on the back of an AA truck. It may not be cheap to tax, nice to look at or refined and it may get hot inside during the few weeks of hot weather we get, but I reckon it won't be costing £3000 in repairs anytime soon either, because there is little to go wrong.

If your cars "inevitably" develop problems are you getting them properly serviced etc? Skipping on maintenance may save a few quid short term but likely to increase costs long term if you ignore issues.

Most of mine have been design issues, for example the car manufacturer issued a Technical Service Bulletin identifing the Air Conditioning Evaporator when they realised that their supplier had sold them crappy parts without the correct anti fungal / anti corrosion coating, and this was issued to all of their dealers whilst my car was under the original warranty, yet they still refused to issue a recall or do anything about it unless it actually failed whilst under that warranty, now it has failed they of course aren't interested despite the batch actually being flagged as faulty just after the car rolled off the production line. Aluminium oxide is quite nasty stuff, would you want your family having it blown into their faces and breathing it in, within the sealed confines of the car? - no!, neither do I which is why i've had no option but to now spend almost £2k getting it fixed.

Would I give this manufacturer my business by ever rewarding them with an order for a new car? - like hell!.

Dual Mass flywheels - again a failure point for a lot of modern cars these days (check out the owners' forums) nothing to do with maintenance, and the sheer number of problems wouldn't suggest its some kind of modern driving style either.

EGR's / Swirl Flaps / Diesel Particulate Filters / SCR systems - all proving to be very problematic if you are daft enough to buy a modern diesel these days, and all serving no purpose but to please the Eco gobblins.

For the record i've changed my oil with quality grade stuff every 6k miles on every car i've ever owned from being aged 17 but its not made this car any more reliable and apart from the turbo being in seemingly good condition its not made any difference or would have prevented any of the expensive problems i've highlighted above.