I’ve flogged loads of Passat’s and older Audi’s, before they became overcomplex and rarely was a problem had. I particularly liked the 100/A6 from 1991- 1995 with the simple and very robust 2.0 4cyl or 2.3 5cyl motors and cast from granite build quality.
Spot on, SL076. It was actually a 2.0 5cyl (Audi 100 2.0E) with bullet proof 4 speed torque conv auto, the same great engine as the Passat GL5.
The Focus Mk I was by far the best car in its class and I still rate it today as a cheap runabout.
Yes, with the Mazda/Ford auto, another great powertrain.
The A8’s are a bit of a risk as any major failure will write it off but buy it right with that in mind and stick with petrol and it’s manageable as long as you can cope with the thirst. It’s certainly very well made......
....and so it should be as it was once briefly Audi's flagship sports saloon. I agree it's a risk, but it was a bargain at £12k with only 49,000 on the clock (as you know, few people want big old cars with thirsty engines) and now I've retired it does less than 3,000m per annum, so 20mpg is not an issue! I have always chosen powertrains carefully, and this one is unstressed - which even footballers in their Continentals rarely break. It is also aluminium so should last me out. I've had it well over four years now, so even if there is a catastrophe it will have cost me less than £3000 per annum which is what many folk seem to pay for relatively mundane cars these days.
The Passat GL5 was a great family workhorse back in its day.... I loved that 5cyl warble. Large simple and robust blue collar hatches and estates.
And white collar!
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Just done a quick calculation for the 10 cars I have owned since 1978 but since I still have it I have not included the Superb or since they are specialist cars either Caterham. All have been purchased new (2 were pre reg) and all have been dealer serviced except for one Golf and the Puma that went to local indies after the warranty's expired.
Over those 39 years I have covered about 400,000 miles
The difference between purchase price (after any discount) and sale price totals to about £46,000. The biggest loss was £11,000 on a BMW I kept for 5 1/2 years, the smallest was £180 on a Spitfire I kept for 2 years.
Depreciation per mile is about 11 pence.
Probably spent £3000 on servicing, had 15 sets of tyres averaging £100 a set over that time, total £1500, about 13 MOT's at an average of probably £25, total £325 but been very lucky with repairs. Biggest was £350 for a clutch and diff bearing on a Golf plus a couple of exhausts back in the 80's, total is no more than £600.That little lot adds up to about £5525.
Then there is petrol. No idea what it has cost over time but lets say its averaged at about £2.50 a gallon and I have averaged about 40 mpg for those 400,000 miles its £25,000.
Thus running costs have been about £30,000 over 400,000 miles, about 8 pence a mile.
Insurance has probably averaged at about £200 a year, seem to be paying no more now than i remember paying in the 80's. Thats another £7800 or 2 pence a mile
VED (or road tax) I honestly have no idea. It gone up over the years and then dropped when they brought in the low emissions groups so lets say £100 a year for 39 years £3,900 or 1 pence a mile
Total cost is about 22 pence a mile or an average of £2256 a year.
Well happy with that.
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This also is very interesting, Skidpan - I wish you'd responded like this in the first place.
I presume we're talking just about your car, and not Mrs Skidpan's as well. If so, an average of £2,256 pa for one car compared with £5,415 for 2.5 cars (no disrespect to the TR7, John, but as you say it's 'semi-retired') is pretty consistent, and not, as I expected above, a much greater cost to you.
If you bring John's cost down in proportion to 1 car (£179k x 1 over 2.5) you get £72k. Bring that up to 39 years rather than John's 33, you get £84k, playing your £88k.
Comforting, too, given that like you I buy new and change regularly: I still feel that John's method ought to be more economical by a bigger margin, so maybe wiser heads than mine can come up with some good reasons.
Some of it will be down to John's higher average mileage, although petrol costs pro rata aren't hugely higher.
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“I still feel that John's method ought to be more economical by a bigger margin, so maybe wiser heads than mine can come up with some good reasons.
Some of it will be down to John's higher average mileage, although petrol costs pro rata aren't hugely higher.”
That and the fact that he’s used the total purchase cost of all his vehicles instead of just the actual depreciation. Though this is understandable as he keeps them long term it’s still skewing his figures upwards. They’re altogether still worth a fair percentage of that initial cost and thus he hasn’t lost that money. He needs to work out their current value and deduct it from the total.
Edited by SLO76 on 09/11/2018 at 01:06
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Though this is understandable as he keeps them long term it’s still skewing his figures upwards. They’re altogether still worth a fair percentage of that initial cost and thus he hasn’t lost that money. He needs to work out their current value and deduct it from the total.
Again, spot on. At a rough guess if sold privately I would possibly get £8000 from a fellow enthusiast for the Audi - still only 65,000m so barely run in, £500 for the Focus as any well kept car with a year's MoT and nil major obviously impending is worth this, and the TR7 - possibly what I paid for it in 1981...£4250. So that would reduce the capital cost by 1.83 ppm, bringing the total cost to now well below £2000 per car year. But I never aimed to motor as cheaply as possible as I'm too fond of fast comfortable cars. SLO76 has eloquently described elsewhere how this can be achieved. I just sought to get best value for money from the fundamental philosophies of 'buy the best and make it last' (and yes, the much derided later non-Speke TR7 DHC is a fundamentally sturdy well engineered car) - and 'if it works, don't mend it' .
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......TR7, John, but as you say it's 'semi-retired') is pretty consistent, and not, as I expected above, a much greater cost to you.
If I considered the TR7 separately rather than just 33 of my 90 car years covered in my example, the cost per mile nowadays would be astronomical, even though its depreciation cost per mile would be zero.
Comforting, too, given that like you I buy new and change regularly: I still feel that John's method ought to be more economical by a bigger margin
Quite so. Skidpan's 'probably this, probably that, probably the other' reveals no careful record keeping. When I totted up my receipts at year end the service items always amounted to far more than I thought they were going to be!
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I suppose quite a bit can be subjective, as each person has their 'ideal car', and quite often people will pay (including to keep it on the road) over the odds to buy and maintain it, just because it perfectly suits them, or nothing on the market now does a better job, either overall or at meeting certain criteria.
That's the reason why, 18 months ago, I didn't buy a new car (before I jacked in my career). There were some cars that ticked the boxes and them some apart from one flaw, and unfortunately for me, each of those flaws was a deal-breaker. For other people with different tastes and needs, they probably wouldn't. As such, I'm prepared to pay over the odds (within reason) to keep my current older car on the road, especially as I've owned it from new, so know it's entire history.
I think though that most people can give a reasonable approximation of their average annual costs without resorting to totting up every single bill. I have all of mine as regards my current car, and can remember what they are to a reasonable degree of accuracy for my previous (only other) car I'd owned, but I just don't have the inclination at the moment to do an exercise encompasing my entire 20 year ownership history.
Fair do's to John and anyone else who has done - I certainly stand by my results as they probably wouldn't vary by more than a couple of pence per mile if I went into a greater amount of detail - that's good enough for me.
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My spreadsheet shows 40 years of data with 11 bangers bought and sold or scrapped at a loss of £4750 plus £9000 for my 13.5 year old Astra. The totals are as follows.
Mileage 212000 (5300/yr)
Petrol £17825 (27215L) 33%
Depreciation £13750 25%
Tax/Insurance £13012 24%
Maintenance £ 9654 18%
Total £54241
All maintenance has been carried out by me so the cost is parts only. As mentioned by others the cost of previous years needs to be adjusted for inflation. To gain some understanding of this I divided the cost of each motoring year by my annual take home wage for each year. My wages have roughly followed the Government average workers take home figure. Of course there are many variables but for me the cost of motoring has halved over the last 30 years despite the high depreciation of the Astra and the low depreciation of the bangers.
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Difficult for me to calculate an overall motoring cost due to the volume of cars ive owned and that many were stock cars I was running around in but if I pick one of my own cars, bought privately for my own use I can work out a few figures.
53 Mitsubishi Carisma 1.9 DiD.
Bought for £700
Repairs and maintenance over 12mths £340
Fuel at 130p/lt at 48mpg and 10k £1240
Insurance £195
Car sold for £1,000
Total cost £1475 p/a all in or just over £28 a week. I’ve others that come close but I think this was as cheap as I really managed over a year on a car I used daily. The next cheapest was probably a Ford Cougar V6 I paid £300 and sold almost a year later for £825. The negative depreciation offset the poor 25mpg economy over the low mileage I did in it and the insurance was surprisingly cheap at £185 in a limited mileage policy.
Our current Polo 1.2 TDi
Bought for £7,300
Repairs and Maintenance over 3yrs £950
Fuel at 130p/lt at 55mpg over 40k over 3yrs £3,400
Insurance over 3yrs £680
Car worth £4,500
Total cost p/a approx £2,300 or £44 per week
Running a car can be done very cheaply.
Our Honda CRV the wife demanded cost a lot more despite the good deal I got on the lease.
Over 4yrs
Initial deposit £1300
Monthly lease £259 discounted from £309 total 47x £259 plus £1300 = £13473
Annual fuel over 10k at 56mpg and 130p/lt £1055 x 4 = £4220
Insurance at £240 p/a x 4 £960
£4663.25 p/a or £89.68 per week
To compare with buying outright
Discounted new price at the time £24,500
Value now £11,000-£11,500
So in the case of a larger more valuable car leasing did make sense even with a five figure discount but it’s still expensive compared with buying a good well maintained used car at 5yrs old or more. Our current Toyota Avensis Estate should work out much cheaper and I already have a number of people trying to get me to sell it to them.
Edited by SLO76 on 09/11/2018 at 14:18
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Forgot to add in road tax which was £145 on the Carisma but only £20 on the Polo. It was included in the lease cast with the CRV.
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My own experience of small cars is that they start falling to pieces at 7 years of age, and maintenance costs shoot up. Hence my VW Up bought new worked out cheaper than a four year old used Nissan Micra which only lasted 4 years. I also had a Ford Ka that fell to pieces at ten years old, it would have been much cheaper to dump it after 6-7 years. I can’t say if bigger cars, Polo, Golf, Ford Focus, and so on are better engineered.
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My spreadsheet shows 40 years of data with 11 bangers .....
Mileage 212000 (5300/yr)
Total £54241
Interesting...and at 25.6ppm almost exactly the same as mine per car year if just running the one car at a time.
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In 37 years of every day car ownership I've covered 737,000 miles, in a combination of 21 cars, depreciation suffered has been £12,485. No other cost data recorded.
That’s pretty impressive
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Fair do's to John and anyone else who has done - I certainly stand by my results as they probably wouldn't vary by more than a couple of pence per mile if I went into a greater amount of detail - that's good enough for me.
Fair enough, but a couple of pence per mile over half a million miles is nearly enough for a new car - admittedly a small basic one. Every little helps!
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Fair do's to John and anyone else who has done - I certainly stand by my results as they probably wouldn't vary by more than a couple of pence per mile if I went into a greater amount of detail - that's good enough for me.
Fair enough, but a couple of pence per mile over half a million miles is nearly enough for a new car - admittedly a small basic one. Every little helps!
True - but I was more talking about my more-than-an-estimated figures comparing to an actual figure (i.e. my own margin of error), rather than comparing one car/make/type of maintenance regime. Sometimes paying a bit more is worth it if you have a very good reason and there's no alternative to achieving the same outcome - to many people, running a car is all about the numbers, perhaps because they're on a very tight budget, others because, to them, it's just A to B transportation.
To many, its much more than that - even a prized possession, an invaluable tool that can be depended on for work, a 'second home', a 'friend'. Probably why my former colleague spent so much on restoring his DB5 - I doubt he was doing it just to make a profit on selling it.
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I presume we're talking just about your car, and not Mrs Skidpan's as well. If so, an average of £2,256 pa for one car compared with £5,415 for 2.5 cars (no disrespect to the TR7, John, but as you say it's 'semi-retired') is pretty consistent, and not, as I expected above, a much greater cost to you.
Correct and here are the figures for Mrs Skidpan.
Since 1990 she has had a total of 6 cars. I have not included the Micra since it was inherited, only kept about 9 months, cost zero to run (other than insurance and VED) and since it was sold for £2800 would distort the figures.
All the cars with the exception of the first were purchased new or pre-reg.
Over those 28 years she has covered 275,000 mile approx.
Depreciation has been approx £44500
Servicing probably £2500
Tyres, from memory 4 sets, total approx £600
MOT's, 11 @ £30, £330
Repairs, one set of front brake pads, a cam belt, an alternator belt and one back box total less than £250
Fuel. All the cars with the exception of the first have averaged over 45 mpg and since that was only owned for a short time I will use 45 mpg @ £3.00 a gallon, total apporx £18000
Insurance, an average of £200 a year, currently paying less than that. total £5600
VED, an average of £100 a year, total £2800
Total expenditure has been £74580 or £2664 a year. Cost per mile has been 27 pence. Both those are a little higher than my costs, blame that on high depreciating Golf and Ceed.
But to me they still look reasonable figures considering she has been the first user of all the cars except the first.
Got to thinking about my first 5 cars that I owned during my first 4 years years of driving before getting my first new (pre-reg) car.
Depreciation was zero, actually made a small profit on one.
All except one were owned for less than a year so only that one was serviced, we had a Ralph at work (plant mechanic) who used to charge about £10.
Bought 2 sets of tyres, one set was £10, the next £25 total £35
Repairs were and engine mount, an exhaust 2 clutches, 2 batteries, a petrol tank, and a starter motor, total probably less than £100, thanks Ralph.
Fuel. Did not do many miles, probably less than 8000 a year but the cars were not great on fuel, about 25 mpg. With petrol averaging probably 80 pence a gallon, £256.
Insurance was about £50 a year, £200 in total.
Road tax was about £50 a year £200 in total.
So in those 4 years I spend about £800, just 2.5 pence a mile.
If I include that in my calculations since 1978 my totals are
Years 43
Miles 432,000
Approx total expenditure is just under £89,000.
Cost per year is £2064
Cost per mile is 20.6.
Still not depressed.
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Very interesting and not what I would have expected.
The people running used cars seem to have paid about between 25.7 an 31 pence a mile depending on annual mileage
The one person running bangers seems to have paid 25.6 pence a mile over 5300 miles a year
People buying new and running them for about 10,000 or 12,000 miles a year appear to have paid between 21 and 27 pence a mile.
I was told some years ago by a boss of mine that running new cars did not have to be costly once you had committed to the first one and kept it reasonably up to date i.e. swap before it lost too much and got too costly in repairs. Seems he knew what he was talking about. We used to think he was crazy buying new every 3 years but obviously not.
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Very interesting and not what I would have expected.
The people running used cars seem to have paid about between 25.7 an 31 pence a mile depending on annual mileage
The one person running bangers seems to have paid 25.6 pence a mile over 5300 miles a year
People buying new and running them for about 10,000 or 12,000 miles a year appear to have paid between 21 and 27 pence a mile.
I was told some years ago by a boss of mine that running new cars did not have to be costly once you had committed to the first one and kept it reasonably up to date i.e. swap before it lost too much and got too costly in repairs. Seems he knew what he was talking about. We used to think he was crazy buying new every 3 years but obviously not.
Indeed - I would say that if a car is structurally sound, reasonably free of rust and parts last a decent amount of time, work well and aren't too expensive/hard to come by and can be fitted by most independent mechanics, then a car should be viable economically for a decent amount of time.
What seems to often scupper them is when the availability (and thus the cost of parts) and labour to maintain them disappears - its just not cost-effective, even if the car is sound generally and reliable. I've noticed that this can be true of lots of things today - boilers, TVs mobile phones - often, the more complex, rare equipment can be just as vulnerable as those that are unreliable. My boiler fits that category - its now one really major failure away from not being worth repairing, due to the low availability/high cost of parts and patchy reliability record. Still, it has made it to 17yo, so I can't really complain.
At least with old cars, they are simple to maintain, even if that means you have to work on them more often, unlike modern vehicles that become uneconomic at an earlier age, seemingly by design. I suppose that generic parts can help keep cars viable for a few more, as long as they are structurally sound.
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People buying new and running them for about 10,000 or 12,000 miles a year appear to have paid between 21 and 27 pence a mile.
I was told some years ago by a boss of mine that running new cars did not have to be costly once you had committed to the first one and kept it reasonably up to date i.e. swap before it lost too much and got too costly in repairs. Seems he knew what he was talking about. We used to think he was crazy buying new every 3 years.....
You thought right. His accountant, writing it off at 25% a year, probably helped his delusion that it wasn't costly because of the huge amount he could set against tax. Assuming a bare minimum £3000 p.a. depreciation for a boss-type car the cost for each of those 12,000 miles would be 25p just for owning it. More if he did fewer miles.
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Very interesting and not what I would have expected. The people running used cars seem to have paid about between 25.7 an 31 pence a mile depending on annual mileage.
Not what I might have expected either, but it's difficult to make serious comparisons over many years with fluctuating prices, inflation and varying amounts of travelling. To test the value of bangernomics it would be more valid to ignore fuel expenditure, and tot up the standing cost: purchase, maintenance, insurance, MoT; deduct any resale value, and calculate the annual cost. Some expert practitioners might manage a negative overall expenditure ... :-)
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If you have the data in an excel table, correcting to today's cost equivalent should be straightforward. Here is the rpi data going back to 1987:
www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/ti...3
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Adjusted for inflation using the average income of £26K/yr my 40 years motoring cost is as follows.
Mileage 212000 (5300/yr)
Petrol £44169 (27215L) (£1.62/L) 34%
Depreciation £34788 (£870/yr) 26%
Tax/Insurance £27074 (£677/yr) 21%
Maintenance £24449 (£611/yr) 19%
Total £130480 (3262/yr) (61.5 ppm)
So I spent 5 of my 40 working years just paying to run a car. Thank goodness the price of petrol has come down.
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People buying new and running them for about 10,000 or 12,000 miles a year appear to have paid between 21 and 27 pence a mile.
I was told some years ago by a boss of mine that running new cars did not have to be costly once you had committed to the first one and kept it reasonably up to date i.e. swap before it lost too much and got too costly in repairs. Seems he knew what he was talking about. We used to think he was crazy buying new every 3 years.....
You thought right. His accountant, writing it off at 25% a year, probably helped his delusion that it wasn't costly because of the huge amount he could set against tax. Assuming a bare minimum £3000 p.a. depreciation for a boss-type car the cost for each of those 12,000 miles would be 25p just for owning it. More if he did fewer miles.
Totally irrelevant to my boss and everyone working in that organisation. We were all salaried staff and when we used our cars at work we were paid the approved HM Gov rate applicable at the time depending on engine size.
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People buying new and running them for about 10,000 or 12,000 miles a year appear to have paid between 21 and 27 pence a mile.
I was told some years ago by a boss of mine that running new cars did not have to be costly once you had committed to the first one and kept it reasonably up to date i.e. swap before it lost too much and got too costly in repairs. Seems he knew what he was talking about. We used to think he was crazy buying new every 3 years.....
You thought right. His accountant, writing it off at 25% a year, probably helped his delusion that it wasn't costly because of the huge amount he could set against tax. Assuming a bare minimum £3000 p.a. depreciation for a boss-type car the cost for each of those 12,000 miles would be 25p just for owning it. More if he did fewer miles.
Totally irrelevant to my boss and everyone working in that organisation. We were all salaried staff and when we used our cars at work we were paid the approved HM Gov rate applicable at the time depending on engine size.
I wish that was always the case - a previous (very bad) employer of mine said that, even when the HMRC approved (tax free) mileage rate was 45p/mile for the first 10k miles would only give us 35p/mile for the first 4k miles, then 25p thereafter. We could only claim (separately, via some kind of tax return) the tax on the difference (in my case, 20%) - wooo!
Note that this was when petrol was £1.40/litre and more.
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Quite so. Skidpan's 'probably this, probably that, probably the other' reveals no careful record keeping
To address this I have looked at old bank statements and created a spreadsheet that more accurately adds up costs
If you have the data in an excel table, correcting to today's cost equivalent should be straightforward. Here is the rpi data going back to 1987:
www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/ti...3
I have incorporated the indexes from the above info but because the info only starts in 1987 I have reduced the years I have included.
I have also downloaded a spreadsheet that filled in my lack of info regarding fuel prices and incorporated that info.
TL;DR
For the sake of the comedian panskid I will keep it short.
So for me over its 311,000 miles over 30 years in 7 cars (all new/pre reg), cost per mile is 23.1 pence.
For the Mrs its 275,000 miles over 28 years in 7 cars (2 used 5 new/pre reg), cost per mile is 25.1 pence.
The figures are not very different to my original ones.
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If you have the data in an excel table, correcting to today's cost equivalent should be straightforward. Here is the rpi data going back to 1987:
www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/ti...3
Thanks - but sadly beyond my competence - I am of the generation which had to learn how to use computers in their forties. Perhaps I should go on an Excel adult learning course to while away the retirement hours!
PS what is 'TL;DR?
Edited by John F on 16/11/2018 at 08:29
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I had to look it up, John. Apparently it means Too Long: Didn't Read. Meant light-heartedly but not actually fair to Skidpan who was simply presenting some more information.
Like you I use a computer as far as I need to: I've no great interest in acquiring more IT skills for the sake of it. As with anybody with skills that I haven't got, I respect those who do have them. I suspect that in retirement, John, you'll get a lot more enjoyment out of driving your cars and looking after them.
Edited by Avant on 16/11/2018 at 11:04
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Realised earlier I had not included insurance in my figures.
So its 24.9 PPM for me and 27.3 for the Mrs
I am of the generation which had to learn how to use computers in their forties.
I began using computers in the office back in about 1987, I was in my early 30's. They were just dumb terminals, a monitor and a keyboard working off a mainframe. All we did was store info on a database.
By the early 90's we were using IBM PS's which were most still dumb terminals but we did have the facility to do standard letters as well as the usual database stuff. One out of the 4 PS2's in the office actually had a floppy drive in it but with no software it was pretty useless.
1993 and the first Computer we had at home was an Amstrad PPC 640 which ran DOS 3.1 from the 2 x 3 1/2 inch floppies. Word processing was WS2000, spreadsheet was Multiplan. Still have it, still works.
By 1995 I had moved into the IT department and the office was on a different planet. We were using Sun workstations (UNIX) as well as Dell PC's with the still dumb terminal sat in a corner (still working but waiting for its redundancy). We used Lotus and AutoCAD on the Dell PC's and various heavy duty file processing software on the UNIX workstations, they were running 24/7.
By 1997 I was teaching CAD.
Still try to keep up to date even though I am retired now. Main difference is its much easier now with windows/linux.
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Like you I use a computer as far as I need to: I've no great interest in acquiring more IT skills for the sake of it. As with anybody with skills that I haven't got, I respect those who do have them.
Agreed, Avant. Although I have forgotten how to do it, my accountant son once showed me how to instantly write down my TR7 over 36 years to around the cost of a tankful of petrol, thus enabling me to tease him with the old saw .....'you know the price of everything but the value of nothing' , and to delude myself that the taxman had paid for most of it!
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heh very good!
On the budget tip, I am currently running at a profit on my Rover 600D this year.
I do around 4100 (410milesx10journeys)business miles & get 45p/mile, which equates to £1845/year.
Diesel costs about £70 for each of my 10 journeys, so £700 fuel costs.
So thats' £1145 / year left for servicing. Now the Rover might be old, but it doesn't chomp it's way through £1145 in servicing a year!
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