Thats worth knowing, thanks for that.

Am I right in thinking the the £500 per month car allowance would just go onto my pay and be taxed at 40%?? do you know if id have to pay NI on it too?

Leasing it yourself, 3 years, 60k miles would cost you around £400 a month inc VAT. That would leave you about £100 a month to run it plus maybe £100 a month back from HMRC on mileage allowance depending on how many extra miles you do over the first 10k. You'll make a bit of profit on the fuel costs for the first 10k miles. I average around 30 mpg and do 10k business miles a year and get 45p a mile from the company so I clear £2,200 a year which pays my 10k pa private fuel. At 35mpg you'll spend £1,800 and get £3,300 back in allowance and tax for the first 10k business miles. The business miles over 10k wont give you back much of note.

Over 3 years you'll have to pay for 2 or probably 3 services (£1,000) and 8 tyres (£1,000), 3 years of insurance premiums (£?) and if you have my luck 2 windscreen excesses and 1 new tyre due to a puncture. Somebody keyed my car a couple of weeks ago and that's £300 thats not worth claiming on with a £250 excess.

The only way IMO to get into a very nice pricey car like that is to have it as a company car and sleep easy safe in the knowledge if anything breaks or hits you its someone else's problem. Alternatively buy a 2 year old Focus TDCi, find a good independent garage and you'll have "some" money left over in your pocket each month.

If you want a fancy car you are probably better off on a company car for the simple reason that they will provide much higher capital outlay and pay its higher maintenance costs.

I had company cars for 12 years until a change of job last September switched me onto a £5k allowance, which after tax and NI is around £280 a month on top of salary. Also factor in the tax saving of not having a company car (albeit might not be massive depending on what you had). In my case I handed back my 2011 520d (which I disliked in so many ways) and took over my wife's Hyundai i30 1.4. In red. We owned her 3yr old low mileage car outright, and spend my allowance on a Citroen Grand Picasso which is much better transport for my 3 kids.

The plan is to pay off the Picasso in 2 years and then run both cars for as long as it is economical. I get 15p a mile plus a further 12p tax rebate to run an i30 TTY that costs around 12p a mile in fuel, so the rest covers modest maintenance costs (new tyre was £58 vs the £240 for the 5-series). As you will be able to add I'm going to make a significant amount if I can run the cars for another 5 years or so after paying them off. OK so its a more modest drive than I had, but I'd rather have the cash