Your definition of cheap motoring?

[Bren]

How do you define cheap motoring?

 

Good fuel consumption? Low road tax?

 

For me it is buying something secondhand that has been cared for, and looking after it yourself as much as possible. Previous to buying my vec I did most of my own servicing and repairs, only going to a garage when I could'nt be arsed or I was faced with a bastard of a job.

 

When I buy something I consider fuel economy, parts prices and how easy the car is to work on.

 

I pay around £170 to have my vec serviced purely to get a stamp in the book - in the past it has been £50 worth of parts and an afternoon on my driveway.

 

My old xantia with the xud engine was probably the best car I have owned - no rust, 45 mpg, no fancy synthetic oils required, even the suspension was'nt an issue as there was a local cit mechanic who was very good and very cheap - sadly now retired. Pity the C5 was no where near as good.

 

I can see myself going back to owning so thing older and unfashionable as it is more fun than getting bummed for tyres and other things.

 

Mk 1 focus anybody?

[dugong]

Vauxhall Cavalier MkIII low-blow diesel. 

[EssDeeWon]

Leaving my 330 at home and walking / cycling.

[Mr Lobster]

How do you define cheap motoring?

 

Good fuel consumption? Low road tax?

 

 

Personally its all down to reliability and not having to replace parts that frequently.

 

If it is reliable and isn't constantly needing a never ending stream of parts replacing then its cheap to run as far as I'm concerned. If something needs little other than routine maintenance and standard consumable parts replacing (tyres, brakes etc) then its cheap to me.   

 

What it costs to tax is just what it is, certainly wouldn't feel that I needed to buy a different car just because tax was cheaper.

[Guest Breadvan72]

Anything that does not catch fire more than once or twice a month.  

[laser wheels]

Insurance is still the biggest issue for me when deciding on a new car. Ideally it has to be cheap enough to just pay in one go and not have to worry about paying out every month.

[sutty2006]

Buying a car, using it for a few weeks while giving it a good clean, then selling it for a little more than I payed for it. Bargain motoring

[dollywobbler]

I'm pretty crap at cheap motoring, as I buy old heaps, then spend loads of money on them, then sell them for the same/less than I paid. Still, it's all a lot cheaper and more fun than owning a new car. With a cheap banger, there's a limit to how much money you can lose. I could give away all of my cars and it'd be less than the depreciation a new car has the moment you drive it away from the showroom.

[oman5]

I can live with slightly poor fuel consumption to a point, a car that I'm comfy with, is reliable and doesn't need loads of welding every year does the trick. I tend to stick with old Volvos because although they will invariably have high mileage they tend to have been looked after by the flush first owners, who keep them for decades spending loads at the main dealer on regular servicing and then sell them to me.  Touch wood I've never had any major problems with any of them, the 240/740 is a proven long lasting design whilst the 940 is the very pinnacle of development on volvo's RWD cars. as such there really isnt a great deal that goes wrong. I don't think there is much to beat them in the value for money stakes. yeah you can buy something newer for similar money but it's not going to be in a similar condition and it sure won't last as long. I only ever tend to spend money on servicing/consumables.

 

If fuel economy was an issue, I would have another Peugeot 306 Dturbo in a heartbeat. they are superb.

[messerschmitt owner]

when I''m buying something new, I decide what I want and buy what I think is the best example of that model I can find for as cheaply as I can. Ideally that will be a one or two owner car with fsh and a pile of receipts.

 

I try not to buy rashly, nor quickly, but would rather spend a couple of weeks trying to find the best example.

 

I always assume I will be spending a few hundred pounds on purchase on a service, and a bit of tarting up. In the case of the most recent purchase, the few hundred went on a new roof and a hardtop. It didn't need a service or a cambelt as it had had them recently.

[Junkman]

Fuel consumption is not an issue for me - most of the time.

What little I drive, I could do with an 8.2 litre Cadillac and it wouldn't make me much poorer than I am already.

Insurance is not an issue either, since I blatantly refuse to buy anything remotely newish.

For me, the essential problem is and always was coughing up the purchase price.

[CortinaDave]

Regardless of the woes my Autoshite throws at me.. its still bargain basement motoring.

 

My sister has often asked me "why don't you buy a decent car, these old heaps are costing you a fortune to keep going"

 

She bought a 59 plate Scenic new in 2010... costing her £17k. Its now worth somewhere around £5k.

 

12 grand lost in four years, thats before you take into account the servicing and repair bills etc... and its needed a fair few repairs in that time, admittedly not as many as my shite.

 

Even with all the hassle I had with having to get clutches done etc I'm still QUIDS in... but she thinks I'm a mug.

[Cavcraft]

Road tax is fairly irrelevant to me, often (post 2001) cars with cheaper band road tax are quite more expensive to buy in the first place. 

 

Cheap means cheap to buy and cheap to run, hopefully with cheap to maintain added into the equation. So a £500 XJ40 (as a wild example) might be cheap to buy but probably won't be cheap to run. In an ideal world a £500 Fiesta/Corsa/206/Astra/Focus (you get the picture) SHOULD be cheap to run, assuming you strike lucky and buy a good one.

 

How do I personally describe cheap? A Ã‚£350 (or less) car with loads of MOT that's dirt cheap on fuel and is reliable enough for you not having to keep throwing money at it.

[Squire_Dawson]

Anything with an Austin badge on it.

[Spiny Norman]

Low repair bills and depreciation I'd say were the important things for me.

 

I don't care about fuel consumption or insurance, but I don't DIY so anything that keeps needing one big repair after another won't last long. Also I tend to try to buy stuff that's near the bottom of its depreciation curve so I don't get too stung when I sell it.

 

All the above goes out the window if it's something I just enjoy having, and I find engine size or the perceived 'prestige' of a car has bugger all to do with how much it costs over a couple of years. One of the dearest cars I ever owned was a 1300cc VW Jetta, one of the most cost effective over a period was a 5 series BMW. Go figure....

[twosmoke300]

A customer of mine uses a 2003 Pontiac trans am ram air as his daily. It does 15 to 20 mpg . Apart from fuel and tyres it costs bugger all . In 10 years I've worked on it it has needed front pads and one caliper. And that's it. Apart from servicing obv. And parts are dirt cheap too.

[forddeliveryboy]

Taking all spending into account, the cheapest cars to run I have experienced have been the 2cv/Dyane and Mercedes 124. Provided you buy when un-rotten, keep on top of corrosion and service correctly, they don't cause bother. Over-engineering and clever, simple design avoids wear - I tend to use cars hard and many other cheap cars start failing quickly. Even if either of these two do show wear, they keep on going even when worked hard. Added to which, they rarely bore the driver and are comfy for passengers.

 

Having a rotten spare car to hand is the ultimate in cheap parts as we all know. Keeping the number of spares vehicles below five or six is always a good idea.

[HMC]

Depreciation, or the lack of it. Any car that can be sold for pretty much what you paid for it would be my definition. Similar to dollywobbler, I can't resist improving this supposed depreciation proof motoring, so all told its never quite as cheap as it first appears! Still beats a showroom visit and finance deal on all levels for me though.

[Cavcraft]

If you really want cheap motoring then depreciation should never be a factor. The vehicle ought to be so shit it has no perceived value at all, especially after you've finished with it.

[eddyramrod]

Buy at or near the bottom of the price curve. If you do any work on it, even routine servicing, hang on to it for a few months after, then sell for as near purchase price as possible. Having said that, if you spend money on it then flog it off quick, you're going to take a hit but it can never be as bad as buying new.

 

 

Tax and insurance aren't that big an issue. if you're lucky you can get classic insurance which should come fairly cheap, and if you're really lucky, it'll be old enough for free road tax. Job done.

 

Fuel consumption? If you're fretting about that, you don't need a car, the bus stop is that way... Buy the car you like, if you find it too thirsty don't use it for silly stuff like nipping out for the milk.

[forddeliveryboy]

Fuel consumption? If you're fretting about that, you don't need a car, the bus stop is that way... Buy the car you like, if you find it too thirsty don't use it for silly stuff like nipping out for the milk.

 

Or buy something which drinks veg, if you don't find diesels offensive. Used can still be had for free, just let time and gravity do 99% of the filtering. Buying a car according to whether or not it will consume veg is good in other ways - there'll be none of the electronic Chinese whispers which can plague moderns, no common rail or fragile injectors to self-destruct and no pumps whirring their last in the tank.

[oldford]

I've got a different approach.  In 2008 I bought a £500 Sierra 1.8LX, over nearly 6 years excluding fuel, road tax and insurance I've spent £3000 on it (including purchase price) to get it up to a standard that I want, which is near to bodily and mechanically good as is practical to do so.

 

£3000 on a run of the mill car which went out of production 20 years ago?, it seems a lot of money.  If I gave it away now, it would have only cost me £500 a year, the car is also my hobby so that's not alot of money.  I've got most of the expenditure out of the way on it now, so I should get another few years out of it, which may bring the annual cost down to £400 a year, and the way that old Ford values seem to go it may have a value higher than £500 when I've finished with it.

 

Unfortunately I don't think that this approach would work with something more modern due to the complexity, more expensive parts and that they aren't DIY friendly.

[mercrocker]

Ultimate economy comes from not having to change the vehicle because A) its borked, or B you have grown to hate it.   To fulfil "A" it has to be of sufficient initial quality and maintenance ease and to meet criterion "B" is a matter of taste and whether you get bored easily I suppose.   I do sometimes  reach the "enough is enough" stage as  I recently have with one of my vehicles.   If your car can double as hobby, holiday home, commuting tool or lifestyle addition as mine do in varying degrees it is possible to offset some of the expense by gaining value in other ways.   Economy is not simply counting the pennies, its also about gaining value for money spent.

[forddeliveryboy]

Too right, all cars cost so you may as well enjoy as much as poss, without having to sell your wife/gf to finance them.

[Guest Breadvan72]

You say "sell your wife/gf" as though that were a bad thing.

[plasticvandan]

cheapest for me was allways the Reliant 3 wheeler, 65mpg,£65 tax,mot cheaper than a 4 wheeler,only 3 tyres to wear out,and no rust.

problem is now they are getting on a bit the cost of replacing parts is eating into that saving in fuel.

[forddeliveryboy]

You say "sell your wife/gf" as though that were a bad thing.

 

It ranks as low as buying a car made after 2000.

[Guest Breadvan72]

2000?  Dangerous modernist!  1990, shureley.

[Guest Breadvan72]

PS:- 

 

Guilty plea.  I own a car made in 2001.  

 

Plea in mitigation:  It was designed in the 1990s and kinda comes from there.  Fuck, you can even see out of the fucker.

[derskine]

I only seem to buy cars if they come up for £300 or less.

My 2 polos and 18 cost £700 in total to buy.

Yet to drive polo #2 but the 18 and Polo GT return reasonable miles to the gallon.

 

However - I always seem to invest quite a lot of money and especially time in them.

I would never own anything post 1995 though.