Replacing my car - advice needed please!

FreddieFrugal

Skoda Fabia Estate could be a good choice. Smallish car but big boot.


Remember that your cars real worth is not just based on its trade in value.

My car has just gone over 100K miles. It's trade in value is probably similar to yours. Also 9 years old. It's due a new set of tyres and a cambelt change which is, on top of service and MOT, going to cost at least half the trade in value of the car.

However paying that should at least get another few years worth of motoring out of the car as it has always been very reliable.

Looking long term at how much the car has cost per year (including dividing the purchase price by the years owned) it has provided me with low cost motoring.

If I bought a new car at the prices you're talking about id have to own it for 15 years to get the same sort of value for money that I've had out of mine for 6. That's not including any maintanence costs that would occur over those 15 years.

If your car meets your requirements and generally has only required routine maintenance then it's almost certainly going to be better value for money to pay the maintenance costs than to buy a new car.





But if you're not happy with your car and you work out that it is costing you too much, then buy a good condition used car, not a new one.

We recently bought a nearly 3 year old Fabia for £7500 (£4800 minus trade in of wife's car).

£4800 is a much better price than £17K+ if you're looking purely at value for money.

But over 9 years is the cost of a few extra MOTs going to add up to that difference in purchase price?