It's not just the road tax which may cost up to another £500pa.

It makes little difference if you only do 2-4k pa - the extra cost is much the same as many hobbies - golf, football tickets, a reasonable meal for two each week etc.

But if you do say 12k pa the difference in cost between (say) a mid range Focus or Astra and 5-7 year old larger premium car is significant:

- fuel: about 50mpg vs around 35mpg = £500 pa

- set of tyres £240 vs £500 for premium

- general repairs: 1/2 year old hatch still in warranty vs £250-1000 for luxobarge

- servicing: £125-175 vs £250-500 for luxobarge

Overall the older nicer car would cost around £1500+ more pa to run - serious money not a trivial indulgence. Bear in mind if you buy a lemon a bill for £'000's is entirely plausible.

Individually we make up our own minds - modern, smaller, cheaper, functional or older, risker, costlier, larger. Car buying is driven at least as much by emotion as rationality - although we often somewhat dishonestly choose to rationalise the emotional.

£500 plus road tax kills the resale on anything short of high value metal. 911's, other exotica. Old Saab 9-5's, Honda Legends, big Jag saloons etc etc are next to unsalable if they fall into the higher brackets. But if used as a bargaining tool with the knowledge that few others will be interested in said car it can allow you to get a very cheap car.

Which was exactly what we did when buying our 2007 Shogun Sport 3 years ago. It only does about 5k miles a year - it's used for towing a livestock trailer and on the fields, and I use it for shooting from when I'm out foxing. It gets a decent run every few weeks, but it's only done 15k miles since we got it.

But it was an old model, not very popular, had a bit of an EGR fault when we bought it, and had that £500 car tax. So we got it for a bargain price, even considering all that. Some diesel booster, a new air and fuel filter, and a bit of ragging it got the EGR working again, and it still pulls like a train now.

I get under it and scrub off the rust with a wire brush, then prime it and give it a good coat of waxoyl each autumn, and as long as it continues to do what we need it to do then we'll keep it.

Edited by RobJP on 29/06/2017 at 15:24

I simply can't give £500+ to any of the mobs that our electorate insist on voting for time and again to throw up the wall, if i was to have a £500 ved vehicle it would have to be some 500hp jobbie that gives tree huggers nightmares.

I suspect its given a new slant on ringing though, wonder how many 2006/8 high ved cars have morphed identities to 2005 models, similarly how many 2006 on cars are now breakers keeping 2005 and older models going.