Do you drive a banger of a car?

jimmy_cricket

Two cars, one 13 years old, the other nine. Both run perfectly and nice to drive. There is now no depreciation on either so all they cost above any other car is the maintenance bits which, touch wood, are few and far between
At the end of the day, it's a metal box to get you from A to B. I'm not willing to pay 250 per month plus depreciation when I don't need to.

Joe_Horner

Two cars, one 16 years (Mundano 2l petrol auto on 145k) and one 23 years (525TD auto on 83k mies).

The Mondeo cost £400 on ebay about 18 months ago plus around £200 in bits I knew needed doing (one wheel bearing, rear shocks, full set of brakes). BMW cost around £1k as a 2 owner car 2 years ago and has had about £50 spent on it in a mix of sorting issues and preventative maintenance.

Granted, I've done a fair bit of the work myself on both and haven't accounted for my time in the numbers above, but that's usually a part of bangernomics and the longer you own them the less crops up to be done

Would trust either to go anywhere at any time.


eta: our previous Pug 405 estate cost £500, around £200 in work total, and we got 4 years & about 40k miles out of it before giving it to a mate who needed wheels because it owed us nothing. He's still happily running around the whole of North Wales & down to Brum in it.

Tiddlywinks

I also want to know what you mean by 'banger'.

I've driven older cars by choice - and brand new ones too...

My old Volvos all had big engines, high specs and full service history. I drove them because I liked the brand, the design and the drive. I kept them regularly serviced and treated them with the same respect as my new cars.

They drove perfectly, were super comfie and fast. No rust, no dents and just the usual wear and tear.

Just because a car is old doesn't make it a banger.

P.S. As an example, I sold my 2.0 52 reg V40 for £900 - it had a full dealer service history and drove like new. Turbo still powerful etc. Whoever bought that got a fantastic car for very little money and I'd put money on it still going strong in 10 years time (unless an accident gets the better of it).

liltzero

Nope. I've got to keep up with the Joneses

Robisere

Before injury and disability put an end to work as a workshop foreman, I made a habit of buying accident-damaged cars. These were usually sourced from the wrecks in various states that we recovered and kept in our compound, to await Insurance decisions. Over the years I rebuilt many cars that way, had them MOT'd if necessary at another garage and an RAC engineer report made. Ran them a few months or a couple of years, sold them on. Many were still running around my former home years after I sold them. I never had a new car in all those years and I never bought any car that I had not rebuilt myself, with help from our professional bodyshop for alignement and painting.

Nowadays I am fortunate to have a new Motability car every 3 years and am very grateful for it, but I look back on the days when I rebuilt my own cars with nostalgia. I owned several high-spec cars of the day then which I would have struggled to buy new, but I also ran some really old stuff. I had cars then which do not have the complex technology that cars have now, which meant that it was easier and cheaper to keep them fit and safe for the road, with the added bonus of being able to add 'extras' for some comfort or tune-up factors. I loved my work and I kept all my older cars in tip-top condition. If I had not been injured, I would probably still be "doing-up" my own motors now!

Then I climb into the comfort of my 17 plate Hyundai Tucson and forget about it....

AndyMc.....

liltzero wrote: »

Nope. I've got to keep up with the Joneses

What imaginary car do they drive this week?

jimjames

Yes, 16 year old and 10 year old car. Plus 31 year old car being restored.

I could buy many cars for cash but when an economical 16 year old car does all you need there seems no point changing.

Joe_Horner wrote: »

Would trust either to go anywhere at any time.

That's important too. No point having a cheap car that you can't rely on. My 16 yo one is my work car and also used for long journeys because it's so economical. A few weeks ago it was 300+ miles in a day and 60mpg without missing a beat

DUTR

PoorGuyNextDoor wrote: »

If so, why? Simply because you cant afford better or is there another reason?

Iv recently changed my situation from paying £351pcm finance to a banger that cost not much more than that. I could have kept driving the near new car but it seemed a right waste of money. Also had 4 figure bill to sort it. Can use the money saved by not having the finance payments/big repairs to make every month to pay off other loan and get debt free quicker all while building up a bit of an emergeny fund(definitley needed as with banger inevitable that something will break!) Hopefully the £351pcmx7 months = £2,457 just the rest of this year will actually be there come the end of 2017.

My last few cars I have bought outright and 2 of those were brand new, earlier today I was looking at rolls royce, previously owned ones were £75k, so perhaps a banger by age but not on purchase price, someone has to buy new to create a previously owned car, and the fewer new cars bought keeps 2nd hand car prices high.

divadee

We have a 14 year old Mercedes coupe that is just starting to go expensively wrong so we have bought a brand new car for the first time. We won't worry about depreciation as we are keeping it for at least 10 years and probably more like 15 years like the current one.

We aren't handy with cars so can't fix then ourselves unfortunately.

DUTR

divadee wrote: »

We have a 14 year old Mercedes coupe that is just starting to go expensively wrong so we have bought a brand new car for the first time. We won't worry about depreciation as we are keeping it for at least 10 years and probably more like 15 years like the current one.

We aren't handy with cars so can't fix then ourselves unfortunately.

Depreciation shouldn't be a worry, as you are enjoying the use of the car, better to be a healthy millionaire than not.