Finance repo's

[dave21478]

Interesting concept. But relies on technology, and, I assume some sort of radio signal for the tracker? I have a 3/4g mobile phone but it may as well be a tin of sardines in 75% of the areas I travel to/live in/visit.

Maybe driving it in Wales/Scotland/Cornwall could be a problem? "Bleep" "Oh for fucks sake etc"?

Although pushing the car onto the summit of a nearby mountain may restore comms.

 

I dont think they make Fronteras any more.

[FakeConcern]

When I was about  21, I borrowed £2000 to buy an MGB. I never got the car, kept my Mini & just squandered the money.

[chaseracer]

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.

 

This.

 

The poshest car I have ever owned is a (slightly broken) Mercedes that passed its quarter-century last year.

[beko1987]

Swmbo keeps mentioning brand new cars on tick.

 

I said that when her car costs half the monthly payment a month for 3 months or more ill consider it, and her car is the more unreliable one than mine...

[Bren]

It would also seem to be the case that banger prices are on the up because of a shortage of decent cars.

 

Lots of knackered old shit for sale but not many good cars with history.

 

I paid £3600 for my vectra in 2012 - in April this year I punted it on for £2450. It was low mileage and had good history.

 

Still had mouthbreathing twats on ebay offering £1500 - you can easily get a vectra for that money, how good it will be is anybody's fucking guess.

[garbaldy]

Was it not on the news yesterday that we are heading for Armageddon again with another burst bubble supposedly much worse than the last.

Never mind as the politicians say we are all in this together.

[gordonbennet]

A big part of the reason for the shortage of good cars is export, i used to deliver and collect new cars from various docks in my previous work and the sheer volume of good shite going one way was staggering, lots of prime chod went to Africa, and then there's the east europeans taking good prime stuff home with them as well and this has been going on for bloody years.

Them lads are no bloody fools when it comes to motors.

[rovamota]

That's the problem. The plethora of knackered old shit for sale drags down the price of the decent ones. According to that piece I posted from Glass's earlier, the average price for a 10 year old car is £875. Maybe I should tell the guy down the road who has his 54 plate Mini Cooper out for sale on his drive for £3750 that it's about £3000 overpriced.

[Split_Pin]

What sucked me into a new car on finance was the warranty. Payments were transparent at a flat £153 pcm at 0% so that's fine, but I was trying to cover myself against the constant unexpected bills from my old Vectra.

 

Turns out the warranty covers very little so I would have been better buying an older car with a loan or something.

[Junkman]

Some of us are old enough to have seen this bollocks at least once before, people, believing the effin shit put out by the govt of the day and endorsed by their meejia mates, that its all a bed of roses again and the economy is the envy of the world, without fail it always ends up in tears and disaster for people on lemonade money trying to live champagne lifestyles, repo follows as sure as night follows day, cars houses you name it.

 

The only thing you should ever be prepared to pay interest, for mr or mrs average that is, is the bloody house you are buying that you live in....if you're a clever bugger who knows how to manipulate markets or has a property porfolio as long as next week then such basics probably don't apply, but i for one aint a clever bugger but i was lucky enough to have been brought up by two of the most old fashioned parents of the last century and i'm bloody glad of it, SWMBO is equally devoid of any pretentions of grandeur, basically no monee no havee.

 

I have a horrible feeling that the truth of our country's finances is going to bite millions on the arse big time when interest rates have to rise from their artificially held down position, when the country cannot service its out of control debt (have a butchers at the debt clock) the ongoing roller coaster of doom will bowl many to hell and back.

No bugger's bothered either, the country is swamped in debt and credit.

 

I often seen finance snatch backs for sale, not a chance, if they can't afford the payments they sure as hell haven't been able to afford proper care/maintenance.

 

 

If there is one thing I have learned in life, then it's that everything that's good for The Economy, is bad for me.

I have also figured out, that whenever The Economy does badly, it's bad for me as well.

So since this there godforsaken The Economy thing is never good for me no matter what, I decided to shit on it.

Also, I regard economics as a pseudo-science at best, because in reality it's just a bunch of right old bollox based

on the sole assumption that everyone is a total fuckwit.

The scam is indeed so simple, that nobody wants to believe it is a scam, yet it's the biggest scam ever put upon mankind.

[Cavcraft]

Don't forget (not any of you, personally) that the main person to blame for car finance is the person you see in the bathroom mirror. People get sucked in to all this absolute bollocks about new cars being more reliable/safer and see the dickhead next door/same office/gym who's got a nice shiny car that he tells everyone about. He doesn't tell you if he's only renting it for three years and he doesn't tell you if the finance payments are killing him though. You go to a showroom, they say 'they're ONLY x amount per week' and you fall for it, mostly because you just haven't thought about it. 

 

When I worked for a company that sold/rented stuff out, their sales pitch to use was to break things down to the lowest common denominator, so instead of saying the gear was going to cost them £40 a month, you'd tell them it was only £1.35 per day (or whatever it is) and suggest that a packet of fags cost more than that. It worked most of the time, too. 

[tooSavvy]

I coughed cash for the Savv. Bank transfer from savings.  [ManMaths**]

 

The guy in the dealership was chasing us for the cash (I imagine some 'cash in hand/end of month' bonus) but I said FRO... cash when I get the car.

 

Proton had a lot of 'schmaltzz' in their showroom sales brochure... and made reference to a 'welcome pack' >>> "Where is it?" I asked. "Finance deals only, M8" >> ffinn paid for out of their [our] APR...

 

TWUNTS

 

** IF I bridged it tomorrow, it would have cost less than £1k a year   

 

TS

[rovamota]

Like a guy at work who's a bit of a gambler. He brags about how he's just won £700 or so on a bet, but that only happens several weeks or months apart. Most of the time he's losing, but never admits it.

 

By the way, I'm not perfect. I had cars on finance when I was younger, some 20 years ago. In 1996 had a 2 year old Rover 220GSi that was costing me £340 a month! Gave it back in the end.

 

I've had two 5 year old cars in the last 10 years and both cost £2400. Cash!

[MarvinsMom]

that rover v8 is proper cheap..... i do wonder what else is wrong with it apart form the a/c and cd player not working and some cosmetics on the bumper is again something i could put up with.

 

if only my fuhrer would allow another motor in i'd buy the bloody thing myself!!

 

the mark 2 looks better a an mg compared with the rover, but again i could live with it!

[cort1977]

Was at the park with kids yesterday, talking to the other parents.   One of the Dad's has just lost his well paid job (oil industry).   He has found something else but it only pays half what he was on so presumably mortgage etc. will get a bit tight.   A bit later he said something about his truck and I realized that he had a full size truck on tick and his wife also had a full size Tahoe.  

 

Didn't seem to have registered that it might be an idea to sell one of these beasts - it's like people are just brainwashed in to a whole car payment way of life, even when they really should get out of it the idea just doesn't occur.

[cort16]

Oh no not another new cars are shit car finance is for morons thread .

If you can afford to spend 600 quid a month on car because that's what makes you happy who give a fuck!

[Bren]

Car may make you happy. For a while anyway.

 

Paying for it won't.

[Hendry]

I bought a brand new car because I wanted to, I can afford it, I don't drink much (half a dozen times a year if I'm lucky) don't smoke, don't do drugs, don't spend money on other disposable shite like electrical goods, mobile phones, expensive clothes (unless the ones I have are done) I wouldve bought pre reg or used if I couldve but the model was too new, I couldve waited a few months but I'd had my old car 3 years and was just about paid off and I fancied a new one, I changed early because I had £1000 left to pay on it, it was due to be taxed, needed an MOT, timing belt kit, water pump, aux belt kit, 2 tyres, a service, pads and discs and track rod ends/droplinks, so I wouldve paid the Grand to pay it off, however much all the repairs/service/MOT/tax were going to cost and I would still have got the same amount for it as a p/ex so I wouldve been down money.

 

I don't get pcp however, the salesman and sales manager kept trying to talk me into it and asked why I wasn't going for it, but no chance I was paying £170 a month for a car then handing it back with nothing to show for it, or paying £170 for 4 years and then still having to find another £4k to keep it, so instead I got £2700 for my old car, finance still to pay on it was £1050 so the other £1650 went as a deposit on the new car, and £235 a month for 48months, the PCP was £169 deposit, £169 a month over 48months and then an optional final payment of £4500

 

So yeah, you probably think I'm off my rocker, I probably am but i can afford the repayments and I'm doing it cos I want to, not cos I've convinced myself no mots for 3 years, a warranty, and tax that's £30 a year as opposed to £210 is going to save me money despite finance payments every month, like is the justification of so many. I worked with someone who got rid of her car because it was due an MOT and went and forked out thousands for another car, and she was a car salesperson!

[nigel bickle]

Last brand new car I had was in 1986 when I bought my ( first) Abarth Strada on finance. I didn't have the money and it was the only way I could secure it.

 

Lunatic level expenses had it all paid off in 9 months, albeit with 40k the on the clock.

 

Nearly had a Ginetta G33 as a Company car, but that's another story....

[Pillock]

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?

[Bear]

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.

[MrBiscuits]

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

[outlaw118]

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.

[sierraman]

The thought of paying out £300 a month for a car terrifies me. I heard a chap going on the other day saying he got a Hyundai on finance as his old car kept going wrong. I thought surely it didn't go wrong every month to the tune of £300. Same goes for people that get sucked into a finance deal on the basis the old car cost £200 a year to tax and the new one costs (for now...lol) £30. On that basis you would have to keep the new one 20 years before you broke even.

 

I like the idea of saving up for the next car before you need it. I decided to do this a few months back hoping to save £800 for the occasion. Hopefully before the years out I'll be 60-70% there.

[lincolndanny]

The bank gave me a loan - I have never had a car on finance and never will.

 

Do you not class a loan as finance then? Jeez.....

[Alexg]

We've a new Fiesta 5 door Diesel on PCP. I say 'we', it's actually for the Missus who spends time on the road for her job. Before this she drove a second hand Aygo and before that an old Corsa which were punted on when they started giving her trouble and MOT's became more expensive. 

 

The Fiesta costs us £212 per month on a PCP, so at the end I'll hand it back if there's no equity. As with most customers we just looked at monthly payment, and with the £500 deposit we had it was the most affordable way of doing thing.

 

It wasn't an emotional purchase it just makes sense for us - Ã‚£106 per month each gets her in a safe (well safer than an Aygo/Corsa , reliable car that is actually averaging 56mpg and costs £0 to tax with nothing falling off generating unlikely bills and grief for me (worth it for me in itself). That's why people do it.

[scaryoldcortina]

Finance is the biggest scam going. Even spreading insurance monthly would cost me about 15% where my savings are making a whopping 0.25% - I pay all premiums in full and then put the "monthly" amount back into savings.

 

Problem is that means actually having some savings and not blowing every penny every month.

[rovamota]

This isn't a 'finance is for morons' thread. It's about people getting caught out by finance when they can't really afford it. It's people spending their money on new cars who keep people in the industry in work. Nothing wrong with that.

[gordonbennet]

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.

[lincolndanny]

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.

1) natural selection-eat or get eaten

 

2) fair enough, I couldn't justify spending money per month on a new Insignia, Audi, Kia etc but a 500 Abarth, fiesta ST etc floats my boat as a driving experience. Again all part of being human and having different preferences. I couldn't drive a rotten barely legal Austin princess on 4 different re moulds but still appreciate reading the threads of the guys that do.

 

3) life insurance/critical illness cover?

 

4) I'm a salesman, I'll gladly take the shirt off your back to put it on my back. Again, natural selection that one...