|
Yes, the OP's wording was misleading.....and I agree...go Japanese and petrol for the best chance of reliability and minimising any losses.
|
|
|
If you can find a rust free Mk I Ford Focus then they’re actually going up in value now. These were and still are great to drive and quite robust aside from rust
Good gracious - is our old Xreg Focus actually appreciating??!! Must tell my son to take more care of it. I have ensured the important bits are rust free. And gb is absolutely right - spending a four figure sum is not 'bangernomics'. There are scores of Mk1 Focuses with the robust 1.6 Zetec on a well known site for under £1000, many with sub 100,000 miles. I would go for one of these.
|
|
I don't know where the OP is located but
tinyurl.com/rjw576e
a Toyota Corolla
looks great value .
|
|
For £3500-5000 and a desire for something interesting and fairly rapid you will be looking at 8-15 years old, 80k+ mileage.
This may be great for a year or two and you could get most of your money back if you buy wisely in the first place.
But at that age and mileage on a prestige motor, unless you are capable of some real DiY, one major failure will see it into the scrap yard. The cost of even minor failures can make the eyes water.
Were it me I would look to spend no more than £2000 on such a car - with some luck I have fun for a year or two - if unlucky just accept the loss.
THe alternative is to go for an unloved gem (eg: Mondeo, X-type, Vectra etc) which will be newer and cheaper, or run of the mill family car size japanese which tend to be reliable with good resale potential. The chances of getting prestige, driving pleasure, performance, low running costs, relaibility, resale value etc wrapped up as a package are low!
|
Suggest you follow James Rupport in Aurocar each week. He is the author of Bangernomics.
He recommends Peugeot 46 diesels and VW PD diesels because they are chosen by taxi drivers.
But the main problem I have found is finding a good car and I have resorted for my last two to shaking the apple tree.
Heard that TOm Hartley the car dealer drives around stopping cars and asking the owners if they want to sell. Or place a post it on the screen, or get to find out by word of mouth about people trading in.
But Janes will tell you it's condition that matters most not specific make ?
Be glad to hear what SLO thinks about this method as I hear of som many bad car sold by dealers which have been taken in with major electronic faults , which are cleared only to reappear when the new owner has had the car for a few weeks.
|
Hi there
I took the plunge and bought a 62 plate Mondeo titanium with 91000 miles for £4100 private sale. Cam let and water pump changed at 75k FSH. So I will now pay around £3000 of this off in the next year and then hopefully sell it again £2000 -£2500 and pay the other £1100 off and have a bit of cash left!
I’ll keep you updated
|
|
We’ll update after just over 1 year.! Now covered 108k miles no service costs and nothing spent on the car. I sold the car last weekend for £2800 paid off the remaining £1100 on the car and now have £1700 in my pocket to start again! Bangernomics does work!
|
We’ll update after just over 1 year.! Now covered 108k miles no service costs and nothing spent on the car. I sold the car last weekend for £2800 paid off the remaining £1100 on the car and now have £1700 in my pocket to start again! Bangernomics does work!
Great to hear, and let us know what your next steed is!
|
|
|
|
Glad my advice was helpful. MK4 Mondeo are a lot of car for the money aren't they. The ride and handling are decent. Mine was an estate and the boot was massive.
That was a pretty cheap year of motoring you got. Probably couldn't even lease a Cit C1 for that.
|
|
|
...... I sold the car last weekend for £2800 paid off the remaining £1100 on the car and now have £1700 in my pocket to start again! Bangernomics does work!
Yes and no. It's a bit of a hassle swapping cars every year or so, and over the next ten years you may well not be successful. Your seventeen thousand miles has apparently cost £1300, the difference between what you paid for the car and what you got for it. That's 7.6p per mile.
It can make better sense to buy a decent three year old car and keep it carefully, as we did with our Focus (see my above post 22 Feb 20). It cost £7000 and so far we have had 125,000 miles out of it. It is still going strong and assuming its present value equates roughly to its minimal repair costs over the seventeen years we have owned it, that's 5.6p per mile.
And thanks for updating us - makes for an interesting thread.
Edited by John F on 02/07/2021 at 10:47
|
|
Depreciation of £1300 pa is reasonable. My approach in the past has typically been buy for ~£10k , keep for 5 years, 70k miles, and then sell.
Annual cost is similar but less risk of expensive surprises when you start with something two years old on 25k. Less hassle too as you now need to go through the rigmarole of finding another good buy (although it makes motoring life more intersting).
|
Depreciation of £1300 pa is reasonable.
I don't agree. That rate of depreciation was - until quite recently - to be expected for a car only 3 years old. So for an old banger it doesn't look such a bargain.
The theory was to buy a car worth little, but with a 12-month ticket, and hope to spend as little as possible before the next test. If it passes, repeat or sell; if not, carry out cheap repair or scrap.
|
|
I did bangernomics between the ages of 17 to about 22. The cars were unreliable rot boxes. Mind you, my first brand new car, an Alfasud was also a rot box but there you go!
Id prefer something that isnt older than our current late 2015 Twingo Dynamique S which is VED free to something that is older, probably less reliable and doesnt cost over 200 pound a year in VED. We got the Twingo for wifey when her 2001 Zafira, I imported new from Groningen, started costing £295 a year in VED and the local indie ruined a replacement clutch installation. Shame, it was a very good, reliable car and the Twingo would probably fit in the back.
I just cannot bear the thought of unreliable cars any more. Until something goes wrong with the Twingo, we'll stick with it. In case some wag says it will (go wrong), it's 6 year old this November, hasnt failed an MOT and apart from when the dashcam software update flattened the battery (replaced under warranty by the RAC), hasnt missed a beat.
|
I just cannot bear the thought of unreliable cars any more. Until something goes wrong with the Twingo, we'll stick with it. In case some wag says it will (go wrong), it's 6 year old this November, hasnt failed an MOT and apart from when the dashcam software update flattened the battery (replaced under warranty by the RAC), hasnt missed a beat.
There's an inconsistency here. It seems you plan to keep the car until it becomes unreliable; or do you decide to change on its tenth birthday when the stats say that will soon happen ?
We have owned SWMBO's Pug 207 since it was 8 months old, it is now 13. It's still here because nothing on it has failed except a rear-door lock. I could also expect it might fail catastrophically next week. If it does, it will be scrap as it's worth very little. It cost us about 9K and might fetch a grand if we're lucky, so about £600 annual loss (I don't count planned servicing or normal consumables which are unavoidable).
|
I just cannot bear the thought of unreliable cars any more. Until something goes wrong with the Twingo, we'll stick with it. In case some wag says it will (go wrong), it's 6 year old this November, hasnt failed an MOT and apart from when the dashcam software update flattened the battery (replaced under warranty by the RAC), hasnt missed a beat.
There's an inconsistency here. It seems you plan to keep the car until it becomes unreliable; or do you decide to change on its tenth birthday when the stats say that will soon happen ?
Yes, that does seem a bit contradictory!. If the thought of unreliability is so terrible, surely you'd be getting rid of said Twingo before it becomes unreliable and not waiting till your wife gets stranded by the roadside?.
We got the Twingo for wifey when her 2001 Zafira, I imported new from Groningen, started costing £295 a year in VED and the local indie ruined a replacement clutch installation. Shame, it was a very good, reliable car and the Twingo would probably fit in the back.
Also baffled by this?. A clutch is a small and minor (though obviously vital) part of a cars drivetrain. So firstly, I'd be interested to know what you mean by 'ruined a replacement clutch installation'?. Second, not sure why you felt the clutch incident would then make the car unreliable?. And finally, you seem to be mourning the loss of the Zaf's space, in which case, why buy such a small car to replace it with?.
|
|
I don’t regard a loss of £1300 plus interest in 12mths as bangernomics. True bangernomics comes via buying a private sale car in good condition, running it for a year or more then selling it for little or no loss. My old 60 plate Toyota Avensis estate cost £4150 three years ago yet today would fetch £3,500 with a well written private advert. A loss of £650 in three years is closer to bangernomics.
Others I’ve owned over the years.
99-T Mazda MX5 1.8 - Paid £1475, ran for 2yrs, sold for £1600.
02-52 Vauxhall Astra 1.6 SXi - Paid £1000, ran for a year, sold for £1100.
2003-53 Mitsubishi Carisma 1.9 Diesel - Paid £700, ran for a year, sold for £1,000.
2003-53 Honda Civic 1.6 S - Paid £2100, ran for nearly 4yrs and sold for £1500.
Edited by SLO76 on 02/07/2021 at 23:11
|
|
|
|
Some pretty deviant definitions of bangernomics in this thread, so I’ll give you mine, which I think is closer to that of the originator of the term, though I’d have to look that up.
Bangernomics is buying and running a car that has had most of the market value rung out of it by depreciation, so it cannot depreciate much further.
It is not a synonym for “economical motoring”. If you judged the market right you could make money by buying and selling a (new, even) Ferrari but you would not be practicing bangernomics.
A common extension of this basic definition regards the depreciated asset as disposable, so you don’t fix it if it needs significant spend to get it through the uber-anal UK MOT.
I follow the first part of this definition but not really the second, since I’ve regarded the old cars I’ve bought for a few hundred as inevitably superior to newer replacements, so I’ve tried to preserve them, though this has not always been possible in the UK.
I call this bangernautics. I drive bangers, but I don’t regard them as disposable, and I would certainly consider spending more than the market value to preserve one.
My current car was worth scrap when I bought it for 300 quid equivalent, and its worth scrap now, so I’ve probably lost about 200 quid over 8 years if I scrap it now. Of course it helps that I don’t have to pass a UK MOT here in Taiwan.
Bangernautics may not be applicable to newer cars which tend to be less fixable, but bangernomics may still work until the IC ban starts to bite, when the economics will shift
|
|
|
|
|
|
