Hiring a bigger car occasionally rather than owning it all year.

WestonDave

Bear with me on this!

My trusty 8 year old Astra was in the garage yesterday for attention to the Air con and the proposed price of fixing it (which I declined and will use the windows down for now!) led me to start thinking it might be time to consider replacing it. As background we bought this one as a one year old car 7 years ago when we didn't have kids - we now have two. We tend to holiday in the UK given that we have two preschool age kids and we were considering moving up the scale to either a Vectra or a Zafira to cope with all the stuff we seem to need to take. (I know some don't like Vauxhalls and before we bought I would look at other options but humour this for the sake of the exercise). Now as I was driving back I passed Enterprise car rental and noticed a sign offering special weekend deals and that set off another train of thought.

What if we were to buy another Astra which is fine for 50 weeks of the year and just hire in a bigger car for the weeks when we really need to stuff it to the roof for holidays. Weekends away are probably OK due to the lower volume of junk required.

So I did a few sums - assuming I bought an 07 plate year old dealer car of each type, and compared that to the trade in value of an 02 plate car would give me the 5 year deprecation cost. I could then factor into that differences in tax and mpg (didn't bother with insurance or servicing but again I'd imagine the costs for the bigger car would be higher). That produced a comparative annual cost which I could compare to hire costs I got from Enterprise's website.

Interestingly if I bought an Astra instead of a Vectra, I could afford to hire the latter for 27 days from the saving. The Zafira is less favourable because its almost double the price to hire and on that basis we would probably be happy with the Vectra. Now in reality we probably only take maximum of 2 weeks away and even allowing for picking up Friday before and returning the Monday after if I had to I'd still only need 20 days for that. Of course I may be able to get a better deal than Enterprise, and I haven't factored in the insurance saving but it does seem to make some sense to me to only use a big car when I need it rather than paying for petrol to run it around mostly with just me in for work, and to pay the extra tax etc on it. Obviously if petrol prices fall back it cuts the saving but in fact the big difference is in the depreciation which probably won't change that much. Using someone else's car for the longest mileage journey's would also prolong the life of my car and may promote additional savings. There is also an environmental benefit of not driving a bigger engined car around 52 weeks of the year.

Have I missed something obvious or is there some mileage (excuse the pun) in this. It may be that everyone else is doing this and I'm the last to think of it!

Indout96

Sounds like a plan - BUT the hire price will not stay the same year on year so that needs factoring in + is the hire rate you looked at good for the time you are needing it. What I mean is like compairing flights in May with those in August is pointless if you have to fly in August.
Otherwise is sounds good.

hewhoisnotintheknow

406 estate

BillScarab

hewhoisnotintheknow wrote: »

406 estate

The OP will struggle to find an 07 plate 406 estate. Anyway an Octavia estate is better, I had a 406 estate before and it was a good car but the Octavia is better.

Hiring a larger car when you need it does make a lot of sense. Instead of a Vectra (or equivalent) though it may be worth looking at other options, something like a Berlingo could be cheaper and is very practical. I seem to remember reading an article about this in a magazine years ago and they reckoned it was a good idea and worked out cheaper.

hewhoisnotintheknow

would a trailer be any good? You can hire these cheaply or buy them and sell them without loosing hardly any money, great for other stuff too and you dont need to worry about booking the hirecar etc

AdrianHi

I went with the roof box option (£300-£400 new or less on ebay for second hand) to solve the problem you are talking about and it has worked out well for us.
I have also done the sums you have, I did it with a different and (much) more expensive larger car based on 25 days a year when I'd want the bigger car, and it worked out cheaper for me to buy and run the bigger car full time. I'm still on smaller car plus roof box for now.
It sounds like you are doing the right kind of sums and for the cars your referring to it may be a good plan. The only gotcha is you should expect the rental price of the Insignia (Vectra replacement coming in August) to be higher than the Vectra. Vauxhall are giving big discounts to leasing and rental firms on Vectras right now. May be there is another larger car you could rent for less instead though.

timnicebutdim_2

Sounds a good idea, we can't afford a car so we hire ones on the odd occasional weekend from Enterprise at their promotional rates (i.e. £11.99 per day). Bear in mind though that at Enterprise the excess is £500 unless you are prepared to pay for 'excess protection' which costs £10 per day. So for a 3 day weekend (Fri-Mon) that's another £30 on top. You could go without the excess but if the car was damaged, nicked, vandalised etc you would have to pay up to £500 excess.