Car Prices

forgotmyname

My car was valued at £6k by the insurance, that was 4 years ago.

I paid a lot less due to high miles but now it really is worth 6k even with the extra miles since purchase.
Bonkers because a replacement is also stupidly inflated.

Rather than getting a sub 5 year old car for my money, the cars advertised are around 9 - 12 years old.
Seems my current car will be with me for a while.

fiatman

400ixl said:

What is the fascination with Punto's? Personally I have always liked the Fiat / Alfa brands, but the Punto wasn't really a reliable car from the offset, especially body wise.

There are plenty of other cars from that era which will last a lot longer body wise than a Punto in similar price brackets.

I've always liked Fiats and the Punto is the right size.

When it reaches the end of its life it will be 21 years old and I never expected it to last that long. It still runs well and aside from an electronics issue around 18 months after I bought it nothing major has gone wrong with it in that sense. It's just unfortunate that the one thing that is wrong with it has proven to be fatal.

I'm also well aware that I may not be so lucky with my next car. Once a car is 10 years old it's probably not going to last much longer. That's why I'm reluctant to spend so much money on a car that old. 

Goudy

I can understand your preference for the Fiat Punto.

Fiat's "FIRE" engine has been around in one sharpe or form since the mid 80's as has the rest of the running gear and they are pretty robust, fuss free and cheap to kept running.

Older cars generally have less tech in them to go wrong, though later cars like the Grande's and Evo's did start to get some more electronics and other fancy kit on the engines to clean the emissions up a bit, along with some more modern engines like the 1.4 Multiair and 0.9 Twinair which require a bit more to keep them running right and perhaps not as robust.

In the same vane though a bit more recent is the Dacia Sandero.
Until recently they ran on older Renault running gear, most of which is pretty fuss free, particularly the four cylinder 1.2 non turbo engine.

The 1.5 diesel is a really sweet workhorse that was fitted in the a lot of Nissan and Renault cars and vans, though it's a common rail so bills could be very large if it goes wrong.