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Nail on the head, there, Leif. All cars are now competent enough that the fashion statement is a majority factor. At my place of work, old cars are only driven by 'blokes' - all the shiny new ones belong to the women. They don't want to get their nails dirty thinking about such grubby concepts as MOTs and repairs: Just have the continuous shell-out of £170 a month or whatever, and another new one appears after 3 years before MOT required/ warranty expires (and possibly having had only 1 service, what with extended intervals).
Kind of a mobile phone with wheels, in concept.
And why not, I suppose.
Until, perhaps, you get made redundant? Still, carpe diem.
The thing that always strikes me though, is, re the folk that run the old cars: Surprisingly, they seldom seem to have to take a day off because their car has let them down. They're still here, turned up, in the building, every day, while their cars sit out in the carpark for 8 or 9 hours. Exactly the same as the £40k Audi S3 parked next to them, which similarly joins the 5mph crawl through town every evening, on its way to where it will sit stationary again for the next 12 or 13 hours...
;-)
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The thing that always strikes me though, is, re the folk that run the old cars: Surprisingly, they seldom seem to have to take a day off because their car has let them down. They're still here, turned up, in the building, every day, while their cars sit out in the carpark for 8 or 9 hours. Exactly the same as the £40k Audi S3 parked next to them, which similarly joins the 5mph crawl through town every evening, on its way to where it will sit stationary again for the next 12 or 13 hours...
;-)
I find some of the people who buy new cars are not logical in their thoughts, They spend thousands on a new car because it might do 5mpg more or because it will save them £110 a year on road tax but, Will lose about 50% of its value in those first 3 years.
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Or they may just enjoy getting a new vehicle every few years and know that except for consumables they won't have any lareg bill sot pay.
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Or they may just enjoy getting a new vehicle every few years and know that except for consumables they won't have any lareg bill sot pay.
I think that's true of people here in the UK, and the need to keep up with the Jones. How many older cars do you see broken down these days?
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Quite so - I won't argue with you about that, Alan. If you can afford it, then why not. You have to spend your money on something, I suppose.
I can afford it, but somehow can never quite bring myself to do it. It's most odd. I think there must be some sort of unconscious eco-warrior controlling me.
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I can afford it, but somehow can never quite bring myself to do it. It's most odd. I think there must be some sort of unconscious eco-warrior controlling me.
Ha ha, I'm the same. I can afford it, but as much as I like cars, I can't bring myself to blow thousands on a thing that spends it's life sitting outside in all weathers depreciating, generally wearing out and getting salt laden water and bird crud thrown at it.
Still, someone has to buy them new, and I'll be there in eager anticipation about err, 8 or so years down the line.
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Quite! I bought a new car with cash, and the purchase cost will be ~£1,000 a year assuming an 8 year life, after that it gets expensive to maintain.
Oddly enough upgrading from an old car was a huge saving. Fuel savings are ~ £800 per year, road tax is £150 less, servicing was a huge cost, so overall it was cheaper to scrap the 10 year old Ford and buy a new car.
Maybe part of the answer is that cars are now so cheap, and servicing is expensive!
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It will be interesting how many current cars will be 'classics' in 50-100 years.
I was at a show at the weekend and there was everything from a Model T through to some early 1990s cars - still largely mechanical and fixable with a few basic tools.
However in the last couple of months two colleagues have had to send completely sound vehicles to the scrapper due to terminal failure of ECU and associated failures of electrical items making them almost impossible to fix. Replacing one item lead to a problem elsewhere which even the best auto electricians were struggling to fix.
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I bought my old company car at the end of the lease and the wife used it. It was a Honda Accord 2.0i petrol. A fabulous car, no trouble at all for 17 years and 170K miles. In the last two years of ownership she only drove about 1400 miles so we decided to get rid. We wanted to give it away to someone who needed a car. We couldn't give it away!! The youngsters we offered it to thought it was an 'uncool' motor, and other people were just plain disinterested. You would think we were offering to give them Anthrax instead of a free car. Eventually scrapped it, nearly crying, it was still such a good car. However when you no longer need it, what do you do with a car?? Maybe the same with other 'old bangers'.
Cheers Concrete.
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A local elderly gent has a mint-condition bright green Toyota Starlet (old X or Y reg if I recall correctly). Just shows that with a bit of TLC, cars can keep going for years, even bog standard ones.
Definitely noticeable how many younger people these days are buying newer cars, mainly on finance, to satiate their lust for having the 'newest in town'. How my neighbour on a nurse's salary can afford a brand new Audi is beyond me, but its her money I suppose.
One guy living down the road from my parents insisted on getting a new car every two years - the weird thing was that they were always Fiestas - he could've saved so much money by buying a more upmarket car and holding onto it for longer. Oh well.
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>>How my neighbour on a nurse's salary can afford a brand new Audi is beyond me, >>but its her money I suppose.
NHS lease scheme - do the miles and the "private cost" is a lot less than paying for such a car as a private punter.
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Hmmm... and is the taxpayer subsidising the NHS's special cheap lease scheme?!
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the costs are probably more than you think
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Hmmm... and is the taxpayer subsidising the NHS's special cheap lease scheme?!
The nhs lease scheme is like other salary sacrifice schemes. Read about it on Google. It has its pitfalls. Change your job, end the lease, and mileage and condition restraints like other leases.
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A few things enable a nurse to have a brand new audi if they are Band 6 nurse earns between £26-35k and works 3 days/nights of the week (3x12 hour shifts). So can easly have another job or overtime 2 days a week. Further with super low interest rates lease prices are rock bottom, so why not!
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One guy living down the road from my parents insisted on getting a new car every two years - the weird thing was that they were always Fiestas - he could've saved so much money by buying a more upmarket car and holding onto it for longer. Oh well.
Some people just don't want an upmarket car. I know of a man who has had Fiats for years. He doesn't like upmarket cars at all - he is a socialist.
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We've got three of those old bangers, and have no intention of getting anything newer.
There's a sizeable number of us out there who really don't like cars made since around the early noughties...personally i don't like modern lorries either but i'm stuck behind the wheel of one cos the choice isn't mine.
We can afford new, we bought a new car in 2007, a Hilux, still on cart springs, that's my definition of state of the art..:-)
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If a car is doing low miles, and serviced, then I'm sure it can go on for yonks. My neighbour's Toyota is 12 years old, and looks in nice condition. Whereas my Ford Ka fell apart after 10 years, and about 160K miles, too expensive to repair even at the local indie garage. Mind you, I think Japanese cars tend to last longer than Ford's, and Italian cars too.That said, my Nissan Micras (old style) fell to pieces after 150K miles, and 10 years on the road.
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Swmbo still has her 1990s Toyota 1 litre starlet in amman, her sister has a 1967 Toyota corona and I want her brother s Mercedes, as I wrote on another post...
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Round here there's a daily driver in a very rusty 1959 Rinley 1.5.. the BMC type. It's been very rusty for decades...
And less frequently we see a 1950s Bentley Continental.
Next door neighbour drives a 1988 Mercedes 300SE...(restored) - when it's not raining.
Son swapped his 14 year old Yaris for a 3 year old one and will drive it for years..
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... too expensive to repair even at the local indie garage. ...
Are you talking serious money, or simply more than you could sell the car for? If the latter, that's a spurious argument if you like the car, as some of us have said before. The fact that no-one else wants it is no reason to take it to the tip. Unless it really has no future of course.
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... too expensive to repair even at the local indie garage. ...
Are you talking serious money, or simply more than you could sell the car for? If the latter, that's a spurious argument if you like the car, as some of us have said before. The fact that no-one else wants it is no reason to take it to the tip. Unless it really has no future of course.
I think people see the repair costs differently. Some will compare the cost to the book value of the car and think it is not worth spending £250 on a car with a book value of say £600.
I tend to look at it the other way, To buy a car in the same physical condition as mine and in the same class as mine would cost at least £5000, so spending a couple of hundred on a new set of tyres for a car worth about £600 was fine for me. Even if I buy a newer car it will still need tyres and servicing.
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I'm constantly trying to convince folk to look further than the monthly payments of say £2 to £300 a month. While it quite possibly is affordable while there's a steady income, it's an enormously expensive way to run a car. I can't think of any other material item we buy where we are convinced through smart financial packages to stay right on the steep part of the depreciation curve for ever. Say £300 a month for 10 years on repeating PCP deals = £36000 !!! I may be tight or odd but I just cannot see the sense in that for something that depreciates to nothing and I'm actually only using for what- about 1 or 2 hours a day? Maybe when interest rates rise, things will change again but it's a fallacy that it's cheap.
On the subject of older cars, a work colleague runs a perfectly serviceable Vectra bought for £500! Also our son's 11 year old Corolla looks and drives like it has another 11 years in it, it is so cheap to run cars like this, if it breaks we can choose from hundreds of others all around £1500. Motoring needn't be expensive if you take a different view.
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its keeping up the jones syndrome. People convince themselves old cars cost more to run and breakdown more often so they can justify buying that newer one. Most people are embarrassed to be seen in an old car IMO
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Yes, that embarrassment syndrome can stop you doing what you'd like, however one should take an example from this lady.
A good few years ago i delivered a networkQ convertible Astra turbo to a lovely little village Vx dealer in the depths of the west country, couldn't tell you where it was now...as i was unloading it this delightful lady of senior years (well over 70 is all i'll say) came bounding up the road like a spring lamb, yes the car was hers and she was over the moon to see it being delivered.
Fine looking lady too, melted a few hearts in her time i daresay, good for her refusing to be a stereotypical pensioner, too many people follow the herd.
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