Can anyone give me advice re changing car?

BillScarab

Pretty much any family car with a sensible engine will be cheaper to run than your Zafira. Personally I would suggest an Octavia as they are a bit roomier than a Focus or Astra, have big boots and are decent prices. They are also reliable and always seem to do well in reliability and customer satisfaction surveys.

whitty121_2

i was looking at either a focus or a mondeo but after a bit of reserch i found out they have delphi injection systems, these are really bad news as the injectors are electricly keyed to the car so to change one is alot more expensive than on other cars. the injectors are also quite fragile and non oem ones can last just 3000 miles .

this is a shame as i really like the last mondeo.

i decided to sell my car and bought a £400 mondeo the £5000 i got for my car is in the bank, i have decided to wait 3-4 months and buy a vectra after the insignia has come out, a friend of mine who runs a vauxhall dealership said the prices of a nearly new or pre reg vectra is expected to plumit buy upto 30 % .

AdrianHi

Your problem here is a challenging one.
How to save on fuel costs, which is the single largest monthly expense (after big repairs) on the current car when you only do 6,000 miles a year and worse all in town traffic, where you can expect to fall around 33% short of official combined mpg for any car you pick.
Also you could do with trying to avoid the problem of expensive failures such as a turbo blowing.

In my view we should set some ground rules for the next car suitable for town driving and only 6,000 miles a year.

1. No diesels, especially turbo diesels. Diesels are designed for open road motoring, driven around town all the time you loose most of the mpg advantage over petrol and with the rising cost of diesel compared to petrol your just not going to save money this way. Diesels take longer to warm up than petrols so on short trips they are barely more economical and it is damaging to the engine, especially turbos which never get the right operating temperature to run at. The risk of expensive failure with your driving habits is much higher than for a petrol.
2. No turbo chargers, as said in point 1. short trips around town , never the right operating temperature, constantly spinning up and down. start, stop it is much more likely the turbo is going to blow in the end with a big bill.
3. Optimal engine choice - the smallest most economical normally aspirated (no turbos or superchargers) petrol engine we can get away with for a car the right size.

First the bench mark:
Using Parkers prices, if your Zafira can be sold for 5300 today and 4350 in a years time (could be less on both counts the way things are going) the next 12 months on this Zafira will cost around £450 a month and upwards as fuel prices continue to rise. Included here is everything, tax disk, 47.92 a month to cover non-routine repairs (you just had a £2K turbo job done) and £45.83 insurance (guess). The other cars below have £29 a month on their costs for non-routine repairs

For Astra / Focus sized cars we are really talking about a 1.6 petrol returning around 40-43mpg official combined which you will probably get 26-28mpg out of, giving up to a £42 a month fuel saving at todays prices, goes without saying the saving will get better as fuel prices rise.

Here are some cars in the £5800 to £6200 price range, some as others have suggested above and my best estimate of their monthly cost for the next 12 months, the longer you can keep one of these cars the better as your depreciation expenses reduce over time and the fuel savings mean more.
For each of the following cars I'm assuming 33.33 a month car insurance i.e. lower than a turbo Zafira.
I've also picked cars which are popular middle of the range choices, you could save a bit more by going for a more basic trim level. All are Hatchbacks. Most of these cars also have a 1.4 engine choice which would save you nothing on fuel if you did motorway driving but shaves about 2mpg off around town and a few hundred off the purchase price. I'd try for a 1.6 though as it's much better for the motorway for the odd occasion you might do it and because you will be carrying 4 people.

Skoda Octavia 1.6 FSI Elegance 2004 new shape - £395 a month, purchase price independent dealer £6170, make sure it's the "FSI" model for better fuel consumption, relative to others depreciation a bit higher at this age. As BillScarab says, the most spacious car here.

Ford Focus 1.6 Zetec 54 plate new shape - £367 a month, purchase price independent dealer £6085, good looking, fun to drive.

Mazda 3 1.6 TS2 2004 04 plate - £364 a month, purchase price independent dealer £5835, Ford Focus chassis so fun to drive, arguably more reliable than a Focus.

Vauxhall Astra 1.6 16v Breeze - £351 a month, purchase price independent dealer £5835, looses a lot of value early in life, depreciation now slower at this age, best on fuel.

Judging by cost alone I think the Astra is the best bet, all of these cars get between 40 and 43mpg official combined, the Astra is at 43mpg, but my guess is you will see about 27mpg out of it.

So by changing car, even if the trade in is rubbish on the Zafira (that money is already lost, it's where you go from here that matters), you can save up to £100 a month in the long run and get away from an engine/turbo combination that is very inapropriate for your pattern of car use carrying a risk of future failure.

If you are curious to know what having a diesel of the same purchase price does for you I can tell you that at today's prices is saves you only £10 a month in fuel but that saving is very likely to dissappear and go the other way inside 6 months and you would have to accept an older higher mileage car. Definitely not worth it and it's "mechanically" wrong to be driving a turbo diesel around town all the time.

Hope that helps, please let us know what you decide to do, it's always interesting to here.

JonathanA

If you are using your car for short journies, then the fuel economy will never be brilliant, whatever car you have. Do you need to make all those short journies by car or could you walk / use public transport / bikes etc?

It is a purely personal choice as to whether you sell now, or hold on to your car. In your position, I would sell and buy something more economical and cheaper to run, since I think that petrol is only going to get more expensive in the coming months.

Your car may be worth a little less than £5k now, but remember the important element is actually the cost to change, so you need to get a feel for what your budget will buy to know if you are getting a good deal. At 6,000 miles per year, I'm not sure that diesel would be worth the extra outlay to be honest, either on the purchase cost, or for the extra amount that a litre of diesel costs over petrol (I know that diesel is more economical, but that will probably be cancelled out by the higher cost to buy a litre of diesel).

Vectra's are already available at massively reduced prices if pre-registered or nearly new, and will only fall further when the new car is launched. Astra is a good car, as is the Focus, which can also be picked up quite cheaply. Someone mentioned to Skoda Octavia. Having run one of those for a few years, before regretting swapping to a VW Passat, I would have to agree, the Octavia is a very good car with plenty of space and is well worth considering. We've also owned 4 Focuses over the years (3 diesel, 1 petrol). The 1.6 was a bit underpowered for me, but would return 30mpg when used purely around town on short runs. The diesels were very good and were economical (50mpg on a run, 35 round town), so may be worth a look.

Performance is clearly not going to be as good as you are used to now, so make sure you thoroughly test drive any car that you buy! Finally, shop around and don't buy the first car you see!

tomstickland

are putting in approx £40-£50 per week petrol giving us around 130-150 miles

A turbo wagon like that is probably the worst vehicle to use round town. Lots of stopping and starting, rarely getting it fully warmed up etc.
If you really do use for just round town then you should consider a 1.4-1.8 medium hatch, the lighter the better.

Are you aware that you need to shut down turbo engines carefully? You need to allow them to idle for a minute or so after driving to dissipate the heat from the turbo into the oil effectively. Otherwise they fail prematurely.

consnmattsmom

Just to let you know that we took the car to a local dealer yesterday to see value for part ex and they didnt even want it. :eek: :eek: Not even against a car value of £10000.

Lets hope all the garages wont be as harsh. Might go back to the first one and snap his hand off if still offers us £5000 or close to that.

AdrianHi

consnmattsmom wrote: »

Just to let you know that we took the car to a local dealer yesterday to see value for part ex and they didnt even want it. :eek: :eek: Not even against a car value of £10000.

Lets hope all the garages wont be as harsh. Might go back to the first one and snap his hand off if still offers us £5000 or close to that.

This is the problem, in recent months the used car market has become "polarised" against anything with high fuel consumption and high tax disk charges. You might find it hard to even recoup the £2000 you've just spent on the repair.
There have been reports of cars that were depreciating by £200 to £300 a month this time last year dropping by as much as £800 a month this year.
If you can get £4000 for it you might be doing very well now. If you cannot get say £3500 it might be worth thinking about keeping this car but finding other ways to reduce costs by avoiding short (and damaging) trips, using bikes or public transport where possible if there is only one of you travelling.
In recent weeks I've heard of a number of BMW 540i, 528i and similar cars with the same fuel consumption and tax charges as your Zafira finally selling for 25% to 30% below the already reduced prices quoted by parkers.co.uk, after a month or two of being advertised.

elona

I did not want to start a new thread but DH has a company car which is a Toyota Previa, seven seater.

He needs to choose a new car from the company list which we should get tomorrow.

We have four DDs and need a big car to transport stuff to uni etc.

The tax he has to pay now is huge as it is added as a "benefit" so really need advice on how to find out tax on company cars - is it based on engine size?, list price, emmisions or all three?

The company pays for petrol for work and servicing and repairs.

AdrianHi

elona wrote: »

I did not want to start a new thread but DH has a company car which is a Toyota Previa, seven seater.

He needs to choose a new car from the company list which we should get tomorrow.

We have four DDs and need a big car to transport stuff to uni etc.

The tax he has to pay now is huge as it is added as a "benefit" so really need advice on how to find out tax on company cars - is it based on engine size?, list price, emmisions or all three?

The company pays for petrol for work and servicing and repairs.

BIK tax (benefit in kind tax) is dependant on CO2 emissions band, list price, petrol or diesel (3% loading for diesel) and finally on whether you are a higher rate 40% tax payer or not.
What car includes this info. under "running costs" for the car details it has. Here is an example, see under "Company car tax" heading.

elona

Thanks Adrianhi

Have bought a copy of what car and we are now thinking of a Ford Galaxy or WV Sharan.

DH and I will be looing at some showrooms next week to see what the cars are like in the flesh, so to speak!