Bangernomics: Is this the cheapest possible motoring?

Furey

imo the undisputed king of cheap reliable cars is the 1.8 8v MK2 VW Golf. there is no correlation between cheap and unreliable if you pick the right car, and the MK2 golf is the right car. many mk2 golfs will be rolling around long after the brand new cars of today are on the scrap pile (seriously). theres no point in buying any abused piece of crap at a minescule price if its going to cost you for the spares when for a bit of hunting a little minter can be found.

my scirocco (which is a sporty bodied golf essentialy- it cant take 4 adults so its actualy even cheaper to buy than the golf these days, but i would rather have the golf after owning both) cost £500 to buy with 60k on the clock, one previous owner. insurance is £400 a year (alright for mid twentys male driver), tax is an unavoidable money guzzler, breezes the MOT and add an oil/filter change once per year (DIY- very easy). i can pay for all my car expenses in a months wages, so each month all i shell out is petrol money. with a more expensive car i always used to pay £250 on my car loan and £100 insurance instalments, so thats about £300 extra in my pocket each month!!! the 80's golf based cars are also uber easy to work on, which is a massive help for diy but importantly it should save you labour costs at your local garage, if you arnt mechanicaly minded.

Old Beamers, polo's and audi's are a good buy as well. see the connection here? vorsprung durch technik! built like houses in the 80's/90's! most mercedes will kill you on parts prices though.

i'm pretty passionate on this subject as bangernomics was a big part in helping me turn from having 15k bad debt to having a 12k house deposit sat in a ISA.

chrisnorden

Probably all just boasting now, but like most of you, I've been doing this for 12-15 years.
I like big cars, preferably automatic, and "unpopular" with the general buying public. Usually find that company cars go that way, which have been well maintained initially, and all the depreciation has gone.

Currently running a '97 Nissan QX 2litre V6. Comfortable, most of the toys, which all work - paid £600. 2 MOT's cost £250, with new discs and pads.

32mpg on a run at 70-75mph (400 mile - 8 hour trip to Aberdeen about every 6 weeks)
Also I can take the dogs to the park in it - the upholstery cleans up well, and if & when I want to sell it, it will either go as a runner or sell the parts, which are in short supply, simply because they are so reliable.

What's depreciation??

Fancy a Citroen C6 next - value drops like a stone, but the Renault Vel Satis may be more achievable sooner. All £30000 cars to start with!!

Archway_Designs

jdavtz wrote: »

Something worth considering, which may or may not make a difference to your final calculations, is petrol costs:

Using £1.20/litre for petrol as a rough guide.
A old banger doing 40mpg (maybe optimistic) will cost 13.6p/mile in fuel.
A newer car (e.g. my Toyota Aygo, 3yrs old) does over 60mpg, but using 60mpg for easy maths costs 9.1p/mile.

Using the original poster's 20000 miles/year that's and extra £900/year in fuel costs.

A 3yo Aygo might be about £3000. Three £500 bangers to cover the three years would be £1500. Three years of fuel would be £8160 for the banger, but only £5460 for the 60mpg Aygo.

Total cost over 3 years:
Bangers: £9660
Aygo: £8460

And the newer car would be much less likely to have expensive repairs required, only costs £20/year in road tax, and is in lowest insurance group (1E), and is probably significantly safer if you end up in a crash.

Worth a thought, anyway!

My Mercedes 300CE, £1000 two years ago, 30+mpg on runs 25mpg in town, no significant faults for a 1991 car with 200K plus miles, fully comp insurance including business use is only £230pa and its still probably worth £1000 and I know which car I'd rather be in if there's an accident, actually I'd rather be in my Merc any day of the week. Plus cheapest Aygo on Autotrader, Ebay, Exchange and Mart or Gumtree seems to be about £5k! And where do the golf clubs go in an Aygo?

Archway_Designs

Furey wrote: »

Old Beamers, polo's and audi's are a good buy as well. see the connection here? vorsprung durch technik! built like houses in the 80's/90's! most mercedes will kill you on parts prices though.

i'm pretty passionate on this subject as bangernomics was a big part in helping me turn from having 15k bad debt to having a 12k house deposit sat in a ISA.

My Merc running parts are reasonably cheap, 4 new discs from Euro Car Parts were only £60. I had to replace the rotor arm cam follower, this was £10 from Euro and only £12 from Merc dealership. An indicator lense was only £10 including coloured bulb from Euro. So far the cost of parts has been very reasonable. Also many jobs seem easy to diagnose and do DIY, can the same be said for newer cars? The average garage hourly rate seems to be about £50. An A Class Merc had a gearbox control box go wrong, £400!!! and the car was only 4 years old! A replacement ignition key cylinder for A Class was only £50 but it cost £200 labour.
By buying old 'bangers' can we claim we are doing our bit for recycling rather than the environmental cost of the manufacturer making a new car?

mike_paterson

With some old classics - mg midgets etc. you can buy them, insure them as a classic (very low cost) and then sell them years later for the same or more than you paid for them. This is worth considering especially if you can follow the basic servicing plans detailed in a Haynes manual. You also can have the fun of joining the local club and meeting fellow owners.

Another option is the kitcar route. You can often pick these up for peanuts and again insurance is next to nothing. I used to have a westfield that did 0-60 in around 5 seconds, Insurance was less than £100 per year. I sold it for what I paid for it after 3 years and lots of smiles.

Archway_Designs

jdavtz wrote: »

Since I started driving with half a thought to fuel economy, I've definitely averaged over 60mpg.

My overall average over almost 35000 miles is 59mpg since buying the car, but here's the graph of my last 4500 miles where I've been trying to save a bit of money by driving economically:
(mpg on the left, miles on the bottom)

Hands up to anyone else who keeps this kind of record for their fuel consumption

Furey

Archway_Designs wrote: »

My Merc running parts are reasonably cheap, 4 new discs from Euro Car Parts were only £60. I had to replace the rotor arm cam follower, this was £10 from Euro and only £12 from Merc dealership. An indicator lense was only £10 including coloured bulb from Euro. So far the cost of parts has been very reasonable. Also many jobs seem easy to diagnose and do DIY, can the same be said for newer cars? The average garage hourly rate seems to be about £50. An A Class Merc had a gearbox control box go wrong, £400!!! and the car was only 4 years old! A replacement ignition key cylinder for A Class was only £50 but it cost £200 labour.
By buying old 'bangers' can we claim we are doing our bit for recycling rather than the environmental cost of the manufacturer making a new car?

thats good that merc parts can be found for a good price now. was just going off my grandads old 190E, years back his spares costs were nasty. my mum has an A class, i agree its a joke. nice to drive but you cant even see the engine let alone work on it. and it needs work far too often.

and i definately agree with it being recycling. new cars must take a massive amount of energy to produce, yet there are plenty of usable cars going to the scrappy every day. but the govornment is hardly going to discourage you giving your hard earned to car manufacturers so it conviniently ignores the environmental benefits of used cars in the same way it fobs off the enviromental and traffic congestion benefits of motorbikes because of the perceived safety implications.

anewman

Archway_Designs wrote: »

Hands up to anyone else who keeps this kind of record for their fuel consumption

http://www.spritmonitor.de/en/ is a good site for keeping such records :beer: not only of fuel consumption but also repair costs and so on. The only annoying thing is it converts amounts you input into euros.

tomstickland

A old banger doing 40mpg (maybe optimistic) will cost 13.6p/mile in fuel.
A newer car (e.g. my Toyota Aygo, 3yrs old) does over 60mpg, but using 60mpg for easy maths costs 9.1p/mile.

You could be running an "old banger" 1.1 Citroen AX at 60mpg, or buy a new Zafira 2.0 Turbo and return 22mpg.
So I don't see why you assume that an old car with do worse mpg than a new one.
Someone buying the old AX or 106 etc would be returning the same mpg as the Aygo and only spend a few 100 on it in the first place.

Meanwhile I achieve 38mpg from an old BMW which is better real world results than people manage in much newer Focuses (because it's lighter and smaller).

Paul_Varjak

I have a Motability car on lease because of a disability. Users of this scheme can drive up to 60,000 miles over the three year lease without incurring an mileage surcharge.

But I do around 12,000 miles over three years and efectively susbsidise higher mileage users as I get no rebate for doing under 60,000 miles.

Being disabled I don't want a vehicle that will break down, and older cars are simply not as safe as modern cars in an accident. One option, for people like me, is to get a three year-old car (perhaps an ex-Motability lease vehicle) that still has a two year warranty remaining for peace of mind. At the moment I think that may limit me to a Hyundai, and some Daihatsu and Kia Models (unless anyone know different).

The Kia Cee'd is the best of all, now has a full 7 year warranty (which was backadated to the older Cee'd cars).

Of course, if you buy a second-hand car you need to make sure that any necessary servicing (including recalls) was done on the vehicle before you bought it to keep the warranty intact.