Bren

Top bombing.
 
I would love a series 1 - I like the simpler styling and the kent wheels.

Top bombing.
 
I would love a series 1 - I like the simpler styling and the kent wheels.

I have a Loan car today while my car is in the garage, a 1997 Xantia SX TD the interesting bit is it has only done 32,000 miles and drive like its mileage, smooth quite, rattle free and I am enjoying it.

Ba-dum tish.
 
Right, back from dinner now.  
 
In the metal the car looks just like in the pictures, which is very good news.  Paint is generally good but not great, has a bit of discolouration here and there (worst on the n/s rear wing) and some microblistering on the boot lid.  It's had a respray at some point, not recently, and could do with another.  Chrome is a bit pitted and flaky on the back bumper.  Outer arches and sills look great, and the inners all stand up to firm poking (fnarr fnarr), even the sill ends that are usually made of old Twix wrappers.  
 
It fires up immediately and sits there humming away, smelling of BFO petrol engines and money.
 
The inside is good: the veneer is tip top, the seats are pretty good apart from a bit of stray piping on the drivers side and slightly flattened side bolsters suggesting a previous owner may have eaten a fair few pies, or done a lot of on-the-limit cornering.  The carpet is good.  The headlining is scrap - grubby, slightly mouldy and hanging in festoons like a Bedouin tent: it's held up very effectively by some artfully sprung bits of plywood though.
 
We have a chat with the seller, like you do - really nice chap -  and do the paperwork bit.  The guys in the workshop are sorry to see it go and one of them makes me an offer for it on the spot, but I want to have a go, so off we drive (I'm in convoy with pal Ripper) to have lunch in Cardigan, by way of a petrol station:
 
1982 Jaguar XJ-S HE by Skizzer, on Flickr

Jags.
 
Bentley's.
 
Instead of a raffle, how about a sweep - the first person on here to have a car related nervous breakdown?
 
Who will be first to develop the inspector Dreyfuss- like twitch?

PS. This thread has kept me going through a boring day at work and for that I salute you fellow shiters.

Top bombing.
 
I would love a series 1 - I like the simpler styling and the kent wheels.

Obviously you've never been to Warrington......

Top bombing.
 
I would love a series 1 - I like the simpler styling and the kent wheels.

Car may make you happy. For a while anyway.
 
Paying for it won't.

I bought my Audi in April. It cost me £5k - top dollar but it was one owner and low mileage. The most I have ever paid for a car. The bank gave me a loan - I have never had a car on finance and never will.
 
I will never pay £5k for a car again - I feel extremely uncomfortable spending so much on a car.
 
I can weld, wield a rattle can and have a reasonable selection of tools - owning an old car is not an issue for many of us.
 
As I have got older I have realised happiness is about finding your level in life - cars bought with borrowed money are deffo not my level.

Like I said in the payday thread, I have commitments and no desire to over-stretch myself. So stuff (tyres for example) get saved up for over a few months
 
 
The beauty of modern communication is that the mongs will text "only worf £1500, m8" because that costs them nothing to do so, electronic window shopping if you will. The fact that yours had supporting history for it's good condition was obvious to the bloke that happily stumped up your asking price. Such is modern society, sadly.
 
 
I did a stint flogging forklift trucks and we would do exactly that, drill down to the lowest financial level that customer would understand. "Brand new fork truck, full servicing, £99 a month, sir? Sign here." and gloss over the fact that it was rental not HP, service but NOT repairs (people still don't explore the difference between the two), massive balloon payment at the end of the five year term... "it's all in the Ts & Cs, sir"
 
 
folk I work with seem to be confused by the concept of having a monthly budget which includes a contingency figure. Mine isn't a huge amount but it's a small buffer in case everything goes wobbly. I needed it last October when I suddenly got laid off, & it's taken me 6 months to build it back up again. Some weeks are quiet socially and there are things I would have liked (liked rather than needed) but I felt I needed the comfort blanket more.
 
 
Glad it's not just me. I was chuffed to bits to discover that my F has the same size tyres as a fiesta fusion. To the scrappy with me!
 
 
I think his point was that, as a father, there is a degree of comfort to be had in knowing that your child is driving a vehicle that is less likely to break down and leave them stranded. That was my read of it, anyway.

Suck it up you prick.........

Tell them you're not on the map - you're in the house.

That's why I drive everywhere at 95mph, it gives me 25mph extra to play with to make it to the hard shoulder.

finance on cars, this is why i hate it and the sales bods who prey on those who shouldn't be using finance.
 
 
1. i fuckin loath the shysters who lend money to people who shouldn't have loans, they live in places like Sunningdale and the walled and guarded estates of Wokingham and have orange tanned trophy wives and probably equally phoney obnoxious orange children, who get ferried to school, ok yah, in poncy blinged shit, all at the expense of poor bastards lured into easy payments for shit cars, which aint so effin easy when they haven't got two ha'pennies to scratch their arse with, then they default and get stung for penalties, which our Sunningdale cock o the south trousers readily and spends on champers at Ascot.
 
2. i can't stand modern shit, really i will never have a car with an electric parking brake or some wank automated manual/dual clutch box as long as i draw breath, if i wanted a new car it would have to be something worth owning, and a £60k Landcruiser 200 isn't going to be £200 a month all incl...the thought of a modern cloned hatchback fills me with dread.
 
3. you just don't know whats round the corner, and i/we love being as reasonably secure as anyone working class and not of private means can be these days, it's a bloody good feeling when no-one has you by the bollocks.
 
4. in case i didn't make myself clear in no1, i will not pay interest payments to fuckin sharks, they can fuck the fuck off and die.

I was looking for another job in 2013 - as I am now....and got an interview with a sub-prime lender, who shall remain nameless.
 
They lent on 3 levels, secured, against the house, ie taking a charge over it, so when/if it goes tits up, they foreclose and take possession of the house. APR 15.9% Steep, considering the bank rate is half a percent, mortgage rates normally about 3-5%....
 
Or secured against a vehicle, this one was more complex. Company gives Mr & Mrs Cockwand a car loan for £7000, with an APR of 33.8%. If this was a "normal" lender and transaction, Mr & Mrs Cockwand toddle off to Cavcraft Quality Vehicles Limited, and buy something off them. 
Except they can't. They have to buy the car off the finance company's sister firm, Pantsdown Motors, who flog everything at 20-30% over book, having probably bought it from an auction for next to fuck-all.
Mr & Mrs Cockwand make four payments at the hideously inflated rate, and then default. Much letter writing and phone calls ensue, and ultimately Mr Bastard Bailiff tows it away. Whereupon it's valeted, and sold back to Pantsdown Motors at some derisory amount, and put back on sale. Mr & Mrs Cockwand then get chased for the shortfall betwixt what they owe (£7000+ minus £2500 - car sale proceeds) say £4500, which they can take out the secured loan (above) if they own their home or an unsecured loan at 59.9%.
 
Hope that all makes sense.
 
I didn't take the job, despite them telling me they'd pay me an extra £5k pa over what i was getting then, plus performance related bonuses. My job ain't fun, but at least i have a (small) amount of morals left.

I was once told: Buy the biggest house you can afford and a car you can afford to throw away.

It's all about the cost per month. Since 1992 I've had over 150 cars - some financed, some cash. Some new. Mostly ancient.
 
The experience with the finance side was that ONLY bargain contract hire or PCP deals make sense.
 
The experience with bangernomics is that I am not good at it. I'm very proactive about maintenance and I'm the sort of person who winces if you slam the door without checking the seatbelt is out of the frame, and so forth. So an old nice car is always bad news - I will make it better then something outside of my ability (welding, usually) will result in costs and tears.
 
So far my best experiences have been running older Mercedes cars, and the worst was falling into the trap most people did in the '90s - the "gotta have a car that's not so old people think it's a banger". This was a reversal of how I started, used to get great "inverse snobbery" value out of rocking up to meetings with web developers and the like in my N-reg FE Victor, but bad experiences with keeping cars like that reliable led me to push for the 5-7 year old car deal, which the worst example of has to be the Volvo 480 I got - £7K in the windscreen with 75,000 miles, K-plater in '98. It needed rust repairs on the door, started rusting along the spotwelds on the roof, the A/C failed, the alternator went, I was daft and put 16" wheels on it at a cost of £1100 or so, the exhaust and suspension needed replacement, and by the time it had 85,000 on it - 18 months later (always a second car to take the strain) I had had enough. Tried to sell it, no interest at all, ended up taking £1500 for it.
 
Given what I spend on my cars, I'm generally happy if I get a good, new, guaranteed interesting car for £200/month. Ex. VAT on leasing deals. That budget has got me a Peugeot 306 Cabriolet, VW New Beetle Cabriolet, and a Mazda RX8. Also got a Citroën C3 Airdream+ which was a much better car than expected, zero rated and 72mpg on one occasion.
 
The Chrysler did well too - 300C was £250/month, bought at 5 years old but with only 15,000 genuine miles for £10K list (haggled down from £12K) and sold for £6495 when I didn't want it anymore, paying off the finance and leaving enough for me to get the E320 CDI and buy more SLK parts.
 
And then the E320 CDI, well, that's developed a gearbox fault after 2,000 miles. So I'd be up shit creek if I couldn't fix it myself or just use another car. As a normal person I'd get shafted the better part of £2K for that, and then there'd be the rust, the fact that the headlights look awful, the subframe bushes, the engine mounts, the amount of oil breathing that suggests I need to go through the PCV the same way I did the SLK. 6 months and the car would have cost me £3,300+ for only 2,000 miles.
 
On top of that, I really have a hard time trusting that even if I did give it to a gearbox specialist to fix, it would actually be done properly.
 
Not all finance deals are bad. Not all new/pre-reg car deals are bad. Not all bangernomics ideas are good. Comfort zone and expectation are all that matters.
 
Even my C6, which on paper went from £39,000 to £12000 in three years, did not actually cost me that much. It was 15 miles pre-reg, done on 2.9%, up at £28,000 (£11,000 for pre-reg!), plus I got £2,800 for my Suzuki Ignis that I'd paid £2K for and had 8,000 miles out of in six months, and £4,000 further off the price. It actually lost £12,000 over the 2 1/2 years I had it. That's too much - I try to keep each car spend below £2,500 per year and that's assuming that only one is 'dead' money - that the others can be sold. But it's no worse than a comparable BMW, Mercedes, Audi, whatever people think doesn't lose money these days.
 
The only finance deal I'd contemplate over those figures is a Morgan - £32,000ish for the little Plus 4 or 4/4 (always forget which), which is comparable to an SLK, Z4, any of the decent roadsters you can get new now, and if you treat those cars not as appliances, but as luxury, fun cars, the Morgan's dynamics and comfort won't be an issue. What will be an issue is the fact that a £33,000 SLK is worth £3,000 after 12 years; your Morgan will be worth £20-25,000.
 
Of course, financing a Morgan is £600+ per month, whereas that new SLK can be contract hired for 6+36 @ £193+VAT/month, with a powerful-enough-to-see-off-my-230K diesel and 7 speed box and all the toys.
 
The point is that for most users, being hit with a £2000 repair bill (and think about the hours you can spend stripping & welding a car - and the bodges that come from the trade) or more commonly, £400 bill for tyres, £300 for servicing and "£600 for the MOT Test! It's mad!" because they've not paid any attention to the brakes, body or bushes; and worse still, the inevitability that most 7-12 year old cars are in the phase where the wheelbearings fail, the exhaust/cat fails, gearboxes and clutches are wearing out, bushes are slack - they run up the highest repair bills and do the most damage to owners.
 
The people that go "We can't afford a new car" then go to Yes Car Credit or whatever they're calling themselves after the latest insolvency/shark the debt/phoenix to pre-packed firm attempt, get some leggy ex-rental/lease overpriced lump of porridge, then get screwed on interest, warranty and everything else - they're the people that MOST need and benefit from new car deals with zero-down, 0% APR etc.

We're more likely to be the people that can buy a £500 car and make it keep on going for another 10,000 miles, by which time we're bored and want something different, and don't notice that the pile of pattern parts from eBay at £30/time has actually amounted to paying for the same car over again - or that we've actually spent four hours every day fixing something or other because we enjoy it.
 
I can't really even say "Don't finance an old car!" because that's exactly what I did with the 300C and it worked out fine.

I bought my Audi in April. It cost me £5k - top dollar but it was one owner and low mileage. The most I have ever paid for a car. The bank gave me a loan - I have never had a car on finance and never will.
 
I will never pay £5k for a car again - I feel extremely uncomfortable spending so much on a car.
 
I can weld, wield a rattle can and have a reasonable selection of tools - owning an old car is not an issue for many of us.
 
As I have got older I have realised happiness is about finding your level in life - cars bought with borrowed money are deffo not my level.

Right. Seven years ago, I went into an IVA as my debts had spiraled, paying out more than I earned. None of that Wonga shit, just overtime at work dropped from 40+ hours a month at £18 an hour plus o/t enabling more bonus, to zero. Basically down £12 a year but I'd costed loans etc based on best case earnings. Silly mistake.
 
So, five years later (hence still two years inside an IVA) I went to AvailableCar for a car. And they gave me credit at £191 a month, a £9400 car. Someone who only five years previously, messed up so badly he defaulted on six creditors.
 
I made the mistakes, but Black Horse were more than willing to let me make them again.
 
People also don't think of worst case - needing a £180 tyre twice a year, how about if they have a bump and they've got £500 excess. It should be salesmen going through this, but like fuck will they - talk a customer out of a sale?

There's a quote going round about this sort of thing - something along the lines of...
 
"People buy expensive things with money they don't have to please people they don't know"

I bought my Audi in April. It cost me £5k - top dollar but it was one owner and low mileage. The most I have ever paid for a car. The bank gave me a loan - I have never had a car on finance and never will.
 
I will never pay £5k for a car again - I feel extremely uncomfortable spending so much on a car.
 
I can weld, wield a rattle can and have a reasonable selection of tools - owning an old car is not an issue for many of us.
 
As I have got older I have realised happiness is about finding your level in life - cars bought with borrowed money are deffo not my level.

Car may make you happy. For a while anyway.
 
Paying for it won't.

Car may make you happy. For a while anyway.
 
Paying for it won't.