The idea wirh bangernomics is to buy the best you can as cheaply as possible and run it as long as you can.

If you then suffer a major failure you simply rinse and repeat, not pour loads of money into it.

This is more about not understanding what bangernomics is, or means, rather than anything else. The whole USP is that you've bought a car cheap enough (not much more than £1k, but ideally less) that you can write off the car rather than pay out on any big bills. You then replace it with something else equally cheap and run it till you are faced with another big bill, then repeat the above.

To do anything else isn't bangernomics.

Edited by badbusdriver on 22/08/2021 at 12:19

My 1998 MX5 broke down a couple odd months ago at a set of traffic lights. Turned out it needed a new battery. That incident cost £160.

I did think about writing a letter to Mazda to complain!

i think the issue us knowing when to stop spending money on an old banger. We might just get too attached and tell ourself that spending 500 quid now will get me another couple of years free motoring.

My wife runs our 2003 Yaris D4D. I assume it is a banger by anyone's standard. Maximum repair cost of any single item - over 15 years or so of ownership - was a set of 4 glowplugs £40.

But I diy everything so Labour is free. (and it is reliable and rust proofed

Edited by madf on 22/08/2021 at 13:30

Our best:

In 2004, we were offered £1k trade in on our 1997 mondeo estate.

We gave it to a friend who was slightly down on his luck. It lasted a further ten years with only minor work.

Our worst:

I took the engine out of my triumph 1500 (like a dolomite, but front wheel drive) and trusted a local garage to rebuild it. Not only did it cost way more than the estimate, the big ends were knocking again within 500 miles. Off to the scrapyard.

The next time one of my bangers needed a new engine, I bought an identical model car (but rusty, with a few months of MOT) and ran around in it for a month or so, before doing the engine transplant.

I think part of a success recipe (though not nearly as important as "be lucky") might be knowing when to bodge..or not to bother.

Long time ago I was part of a 3-flatmate "syndicate" that bought a Triumph 1300 (like the above, but 200cc less) at auction, for 2 of us to learn to drive on.

It lost engine oil, and it also leaked oil from the differential breather hole. I deduced that there was a crack in the sump bottom, which was also the top of the diff housing. These things were basically a RWD design except the drivetrain was bent back on itself under the engine.

Faced with this problem today I'd epoxy up the breather hole, maybe putting a breather pipe in with an outlet above the sump level, and leave it at that. The final drive was supposed to get hypoid 90 but I doubt SAE 20W50 would kill it very quickly.

What we actually did was pull another gearbox from a scrap 1300 (getting gazumped on price once we got it out), remove the engine and gearbox (a heavy combo with a cast iron block) to our 3rd floor flat, dismantle both gearboxes, re-assemble one drivetrain in the un-cracked case from the "best" gears of both (this was of course a mistake, since wear will be accelerated in such a mixed set) and put it back in the car.

It worked , which in retrospect I still find astonishing, but it was all insanely difficult for a first foray into car mechanics, and probably completely unnecessary.

I can't remember if we received counsels of perfection, or did it to ourselves, but the experience taught me that, if a jobs worth doing, that doesn't mean its worth doing any better than needed.

Edited by edlithgow on 25/08/2021 at 07:54

I think Bangernomics can work quite well with an old petrol engined Jap car. With an old Jag, not so much....!

My old Focus which is almost 15 now puts me in the bangeromics category although I've never really thought of it like that. If a job needs doing then it gets done, cambelt, brake fluid the lot. I've had it almost from new and it's only on 85000 miles so probably will go on for a bit longer yet and it has the Yamaha engine that our valued contributor SLO recommends. I have a good local garage where I know the family, they probably don't do things cheaper for me but I know they won't rip me off (well I hope not)

The car has never given any trouble apart from leaks into the boot. I was tracking one down a couple of days ago and found it was the rubber washer where the rear light fitting screws into had perished. A quick dab of roof & gutter sealant I had in the garage has sorted it, perhaps not the neatest of jobs but you don't see it when the light unit is screwed back n position. I only do a few thousand miles a year so I see no reason to change it although I like the Evoque PHEV, I will have to see what I can find down the back of the sofa...

Safety - When my son was a toddler in a car seat Mrs BJ in a 1984 Polo had a parking speed conversation with a concrete pillar

SWMBO in a £50 Fiat 850 T-boned a Cavalier that pulled out in front of her. No injury to occupants of Fiat, but Cavalier driver was lucky not to lose his leg.

1. Reliability - Would I trust a banger with lots of cross Europe trips - A previous old 1990 Passat started suffering CV joint issues a few hundred miles into a 2k miles trip. I wont recant the whole story but it was stressful. It was about 10 years old at the time and it was actually an inner CV joint that had started to fail - I've since found out on older cars the inner CV joint above the exhaust eventually suffers from dried out grease.

All the FWD cars I've owned had the inner CV (tripode) joint in the diff/gearbox and ran in oil.

The biggest cost is depreciation and the biggest risk with a cheap older car is that it hasn't been looked after properly and maybe has some lurking problem. My philosophy is buy a new or 18 month old car and look after it well. I keep them till they become uneconomic. My current daily driver is a 2003 ford and I got it in 2005. It still runs fine so I have no plans to replace it. My previous car was bought at 18 month old, kept for 25 years of daily use and only disposed of because I wanted automatic transmission and air conditioning. I know I am soft but air con is desirable when it gets to 45'C as it does every summer here in Australia.

I agree with BJ about all the potential hassles with particulate filters and electronic distractions. Also the threatened change to electric for new cars in 2030 will surely be accompanied by increased fuel charges and ULEZ restrictions so why get a new ICE car now?

Over time bangers will cost ~£1k pa unless you are diy capable or an extraordinarily good judge of obselete automobilia.

Assuming basic physical and mental capacity I'd think anyone is "DIY capable".

The "learning experience" I describe above (far harder than any car repair I've attempted since) was carried out without any prior experience. As the son of landless peasant flat dwellers I had hardly any "garden shed" background of domestic tool use at all. We bought a socket set, a Haynes manual (the Internyet wasn't really a factor in them days) and we chose to be "diy capable", just as people who are not "diy capable" choose not to be. It aint rocket science.

Of course nowadays it might be computer science, and the question of DIY capability might not arise, since it might not be realistic for anyone.

The bangernomics route I have taken is unplanned by hanging on to my 2008 V70 at 154k. Now I have a banger but I know everything that has been done in the last few years. It isn't real bangernomics but very satisfying, hopefully go on for a while yet.

Very wise, but, as above, it's not bangernomics if you bought it new. Assuming it cost somewhere between 20 and 30K and is now only worth a few thou, that's somewhere between 10 and 16 p per mile, much the same as Alby's 200K milers. Hang on in there!

Bought in 2016 for 8k with £500 px on old car. Had a nasty bash from a van which put it off the road for months but eventually came back looking good. Done appx 90k in that time, gets a service and mot every year, did the belt and water pump so fingers crossed. Probably worth £1200 now.

That looks much better....at around 8p per mile. Banger- eco- nomics really isn't working unless you're in the single figures.