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Mine was a Simca 1100 in the 80's. Oh how they laughed but my £300 gave me sveral years of motoring and it was a doodle to service..wings just bolted on and off etc etc. You could turn it into a van and the dog loved it. Whats yours?
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6 years ago (1999) I was after a cheap run about to tide me over for a couple of weeks until I bought something decent. I bought a 1986 D reg Passat 1.6 for £110, which was so good I ended up keeping it for 2 years and 30k with no problems, only the usual plugs, air filter and oil change (brakes etc were never needed)
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1500 for a 5 year old Vauxhall Cavalier V6. 2 years of trouble free and very quick motoring.
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About 6 years ago, paid £1400 for a Mitsubishi Colt GTi. Owned it for over 3 years, and sold for £300. As a real-term figure rather than a percentage that's pretty good depreciation in my book.
In those 3 years in only had 3 faults: 2 CV joints, one cambelt failure.
Came out of the cambelt failure OK though (amazingly), had slightly noisier tappets from that point on though.
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VW Devon Camper Van. Bought for £900, ran for two years. Sold it for £900 and a Ford Fiesta and bought it back 18 months later for £500 with a blown engine. Had good 1600 air cooled from old Beetle in the shed and fitted it myself. Ran it for another 3 years and managed to sell the registration number for £300. Sold to a colleague at work for £1000 who spent a lot refitting the interior from a Westphalia rusting in his garden. Two years later he fell in love wih a Harley and had to sell. Couldn't refuse it at £1100. Ran it for two more summers including epic trip to Spain. Too many kids to fit in and sold it locally for £2000 after fitting a third engine I bought for £250 and had it fitted by a local garage (£120). Saw it last year for sale in autotrader at £3400. Was very tempted ...
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I always like to think it will be my next one.
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I was given an old Ford Prefect 100E in early 70's that ran reasonably well until its next MOT, when it was crusher time!
Cheers, SS
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Mini 1.0 1975
Bought for £50 with no tax or MoT. A little fettling (£30) for MoT, taxed and re-carpeted (£15) the interior.
Ran round in it for 3 months then sold it for £450.
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My second car, a 1988 VW Scirocco Scala in Paprika Red.
I bought the car from a friend in '94 for £1700. Ended up selling it for £2200 to a Sloane Ranger from Wandsworth 2.5 yrs later.
Nothing other than usual servicing and consumables in between. Though I did fit a rather nice (and expensive) ICE system.
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Ford Cortine Mk V 2.0GLS. Was a Gl but had an 'S' pack on it.
Was a company car for a mate and I managed to buy it for £256 when it had 72,000 miles in three years. It lasted two years (after which it got its wheels stolen) and i sold it for more than I paid for it, even minus the wheels!
The definition of a bargain car is twofold: -
1) Obvious really - sell a car for more than you paid for it, after having driven it for some reasonable time and serviced it properly.
2) My favourite - something you don't want and can't afford!
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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As an impoverished student in the early 80's bought an old 1.8 TC marina coupe at an auction for £80 with 11 months tax and MoT on it. Ran it for 9 months without a single thing being spent on it and sold it for £100.
Whilst on 'big trip' in the mid 90's bought a toyota hiace camper van in New Zealand for about £2,000. Clocked up 10,000km over 3 1/2 months touring the whole country (with just a £10 solenoid bill diagnosed and fitted by the AA) and sold it 2 days before leaving for £350 more than we'd paid for it. Pretty good considering it was also our accomodation for the 3 1/2 months.
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Nissan Micra 1.0 GSX. I bought it new for £7,200 in 1988. Always serviced by Nissan agents. Only broke down once with a brocken cam belt - 3 weeks before I was going to get it changed. Other than regular services and maintables, the only work needed included new steering ball joints, a gearbox repair with new clutch, new distibutor and plug leads. Sold it for £340 in 2004. So the depreciation was on just over £425 per year over the 16 years.
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1972 MINI Mk3 850cc
Bought for £100 in 1981
I heard about a neighbour of my father in law who had a really tidy MINI but it wasn't starting and he had tried everything to fix it and was convinced it was a major fault and wanted to get rid.
I went to see it and offered £100, he accepted and I towed away.
Got it home, did the usual checks, found no spark at the points.Just a missing insulation washer causing earthing (!).Fitted new points, it started straightaway and it ran superbly for 3 years, as a cheap second car. Eventually sold it for £300. My wife always loved it and it is probably the reason she now has a new MINI ONE .1
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Mazdo Xedos 2.0 V6 (95 on an N), bought from BCA Bridgewater for £1100, sold 12 months later for £1600 & it needed nothing doing in the intervening period. Great car if a little thirsty, expensive to insure and with over-assisted power steering!!
MM
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Thanks for all your (legal) thoughts.
Don't forget that you need to include a cost of the capital in your new car purchase. I assume 10% cost (I know it can be cheaper, but borrowing on a CC is far more), so the Micra now cost you about £1,200 pa - still good, of course.
I'll get a 2.0 Cavalier if I can find a tidy one wih a 12 mth MOT - had one before (free from old man) and it was OK - 40 mpg if I was carefull - they seem to be about £400-500 in decent order. Because that's as cheap as I can get I can then justify getting the little lady a £4k Yaris, which should be ultra-reliable, and will be ready for daughter #2 to L-plate in 3 years.
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Late '60s. Brother bought an A35 van for a tenner and was given an A30 for spares, which he gave me. MOT and a tin of orange dulux and off on a 300 mile trip to Scotland on holiday with the paint still drying. Did me for three years and then gave back to brother. for a year before it terminally failed the MOT.
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An F-reg Austin Metro I purchased for £150 in 2001, had it for ~2 months before someone reversed into it outside our house, causing quite a bit of damage. Imagine my delight when my insurance company wrote it off and gave me £400!
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1986 Honda Ballade 1.5 auto. Covered 50k miles with me between 1998 and 2000. I gave it some new tyres and the odd oil change, but nothing more. Everything worked, it never went wrong once, and averaged 40mpg. I claimed ownership for free (family hand me down) which strictly speaking is probably cheating, but the car was nearly worthless when I collected it and worth about the same when I returned it. It continued to be used as the family pool car, where it served another two years before the alternator died expensively, writing it off. Definitely the cheapest motoring I am ever likely to see.
Ed.
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Honda Ballade?s are popular here. Mine was a 1987 E reg Honda Ballade. For those of you who don't know what this is, it is the Honda version of the 1984 to 1989 Rover 200.
Bought the car over 4 years ago, and it lasted me all through my Uni life. Paid £250 for it and sold it a couple of months ago for £300. Prior to me it had been owned by an old lady, and had only 31k genuine miles on the clock. When I sold it, I had more than doubled this to 65k. I carried out all the servicing myself, which involved an oil and filter change every 5k, one cambelt, three sets of plugs, one set of leads, one dizzy cap, rotor arm, one set of brake pads and 2 tyres in this time. Also one centre exhaust section. Had to get a friend to carry out a bit of welding on it for one MOT as well. Cost me a pint!
The only thing ever to go wrong was the valve which controls the warm/cold air feed flap to the engine which caused poor cold weather running. Cured cheaply by accidentally putting one in my pocket and walking out of the local scrappy.
The car averaged 37MPG, and as it was only 1488cc it also crept into the lowest tax band. It always started and never broke down. I am originally from Sussex and this car took me pretty much everywhere in the country. It got me to as far west as Newquay and as far north as the Lake District last summer during which it clocked over 1000 miles in one week. Also took me to about everywhere in-between! Had very comfortable seats as well. I could happily drive for 5 hours with no back pain.
Disadvantages to this car. Well, it wasn't exactly a babe magnet for a 19 year old! The red oxide paint around the front and rear windscreens to stop them rusting didn't exactly help. Nor the fact that the only straight panel on it was the roof, (the old lady who owned it before me really couldn't park).
I have also heard enough Victor Meldrew jokes to last a lifetime!
The really sad part about this was that I sold it to a local chav who needed a cheap runaround. Saw the car a month ago dumped by the side of the road with the side totally crumpled in. I was gutted.
Ah, happy memories!
Chris.
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An N reg Audi A4 I bought 2 months ago for £200.
Has since cost me £600 for battery and suspension repairs (forgivable after 183k miles). OK with the repairs it's not an out and out financial best buy, but certainly good 'cheap flash'.
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1931 M Type MG Midget,bought 1945 for £20 sold one year later fo £120.
ndbw
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Renault 18 TS 1979, bought in 1988 for £150. Wonderful mechanics, never broke down. Bodywork was dreadful for rust, in the end the whole front disintegrated along the inner wings.
But it went like a rocket, was economical, comfortable and reliable. I think I still got £50 for it when the time came for it to meet its maker.
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Bargain? Never found one yet myself.
The wife buying a succession of Japanese cars from her older sister has had several good deals. She gets them serviced at a local garage for a fraction of main dealer prices. The recent cars have survived as trade-ins or have even been sold to younger family members.
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I wasna fu but just had plenty.
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