End of shite?

[HMC]

Lately it seems there are few bargains about. In 2006 when this forum started I was picking up roadlegal vehicles like e34 BMWs and Volvo 240s that were about 15 years old for £300 or less (the Volvo was £105(!)) 

15 years used to be the shite zone as they were not “classics “ but of interest and about the average age that cars were scrapped.

15 year old cars (2008 ish) are up at silly money, and most are generally pretty unremarkable dirge. Not even “bad” cars as by then even the cheapest vehicles were dynamically ok aka lacking in character.

older stuff what has something about it is now quite expensive. 

I guess I’m writing this as genuinely interesting shite , or at least of interest to me and what the forum was originated for no longer exists., anything worthwhile is £££ and what’s cheaper is utter characterless dirge. 
 

TL:DR- is the golden age of shite (which to my mind has to mean above all things low budget ) over?

 

[Matty]

Maybe for the time being due to wierd economic circumstances but I doubt it'll last

[Schaefft]

I mean buying a running and driving car for 300 quid would be pretty much unheard of anywhere else in the world. Maybe globalization (scrap prices) just has caught up at this point, or people at least realize the true value of their vehicle a little more now. Also inflation.

[SRi05]

Definitely a lot less bargains in the £750-£1500 range, mainly buys you a pile of tat these days. Still some good ones out there but definitely harder to find.

2017-2020 was a personal golden era for shite 

 

[hairnet]

shite were when you could buy something for 2-300 and it would last you 2-3 years maybe longer

now if you did that lucky if it didnt expire after few miles - cos you might as well ring frag merchant

[HMC]

19 minutes ago, SRi05 said:

Definitely a lot less bargains in the £750-£1500 range, mainly buys you a pile of tat these days. Still some good ones out there but definitely harder to find.

2017-2020 was a personal golden era for shite 

 

Same too, 2019 I got an mot’d 1997 Astra 1.6 estate for £150 and a £450 2000 e320 petrol estate. No wierd mates deals, just from e bay and gumtree. Both were the asking price and both are now totally unthinkable.

 

[grogee]

I will attempt to prove @HMC wrong, not because I disagree, and not because I'm being obstinate, but purely for the purposes of prolonging the argument. 

But yeah, the cheap as chips car era is behind us I fear. I can remember a mk1 Fiesta I paid either £200 or £400 for with a ticket. A Favorit for £700ish with ticket and I got a good couple of years out of it.

(The cars below might be utter bilge, I just did a quick scan of Toilet Trader)

[MrGTI6]

The rapid rise in scrap value over the last few years hasn't helped.

As recently as 2016, I bought a running car for £25. That same car is still showing as taxed and tested! 

I've just put that car's reg into the CarTakeBack website. They offered to come and collect it from my house for £450.

[Talbot]

It's the lack of supply of new vehicles that has done it.  Covid shutdowns and now supply issues due to Putin's war means that there are limited new vehicles and have been for a few years now.  As soon as the supply of new is restricted, second-hand becomes far more valuable.  It means that older vehicles are now being kept on the road as the cost to buy a newer one is so much higher.  The flipside is that an older car is now worth so much more.  Which I see as a good thing TBH, as it means older cars are valued more.  A huge amount of interesting stuff from the 70s and 80s was baled in the early 2000s, as it was absolutely valueless.  If it had been worth a grand and anything newer was even more expensive, it might have been kept on the road longer.

It will take about 10-15 years of supply of new vehicles for the shite end of the market to get back to being able to buy a car for howevermuch cash you can get out of the hole-in-the-wall or one month's payment on a new car.  But I do think it will happen.

The prime years for shite IMO were the early/mid 2000s.  A late-80's / early 90's car with history and MOT could be had for nearly free.  I did this several times.

[brownnova]

The age of temptingly cheap bargains just for the hell of it seem to have gone. Interesting stuff from the 80s/90s is really climbing in value now.

The 900 floppy top I got for £300 from Anglesey about 3 years ago was my last proper bargain. 

[somewhatfoolish]

Bear in mind £1500 now is probably the equivalent of £500 a few years ago thanks to ZOMGPLAGUE, inflation etc. 

[Jessicus]

Replies to this have been interesting - I certainly think that the sub-grand cars are becoming fewer and further between, I think that this is mostly due to a combination of inflation and scrap values have meant that if someone has a car that has say failed an MOT, they would rather get rid to a scrap man than spend time trying to sell it on to the public - plenty of horror stories online about selling stuff on Facebook etc.

Demographics won't be helping either - I grew up in the 80/90's when cars were mostly reliable, but it was understood that cars needed maintenance.  The fact that quite a lot of people don't know the difference between a service and an MOT will man that fewer older cars will be serviceable at 15-20 years old.

On the positive side, this does mean that this is probably the best chance that we are going to get to mess about with older cars, so we should make the most of it!

[Nullzwei]

Still appears to be some cheap old cars on ebay, as long as the zero feedback wankers do not bid them up.

This 1992 s124 230e with Oct 23 mot just went for £411 on ebay less than an hour ago.

 

[HMC]

2008 - a 1988 216 vdp efi for £90. Went on a trip to Brighton in it for work and the mileage allowance paid for the fuel AND the car outright.

Them were the days.

[HMC]

I think it’s the price being so low you could do it all on a whim and go to an ATM that did it for me. This was widely possible right up to 2020. So much fun and essentially disposable. A £1500 (these days “cheap” ) car just isn’t disposable in the same way.

As has been said, it does work both ways as a £1500 car is worth fixing and looking after; better as a longer term ownership prospect but for a car addict browsing over classified it’s bad news.

Actually maybe it’s good news As I find I’m doing a lot less browsing than I used to.

[HMC]

Another one- a £100 2000 megane 5 door 1.6 that needed an ignition coil pack. (2020, gumtree)

[Talbot]

22 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Bear in mind £1500 now is probably the equivalent of £500 a few years ago thanks to ZOMGPLAGUE, inflation etc. 

yes and no.  Yes there has been inflation, but not quite that much.  £900 in 2000 is about £1500 now.  £500 was worth what £1500 is now back in 1983, which is a bit longer ago than most people are looking.

Most cheap shite that I actually bought was in the £300 to £500 range.  That is now £450 - £750.  The difference is that what I used to buy were good working cars with MOT and tax.  Now that £450-£750 gets you something that needs work.

 

[83C]

Thinking back, one of my first purchases after I joined the beige was the £75 Rover 75, with plenty of test and only in need of a couple of tyres. That was 2015 though, haven’t seen anything even vaguely roadworthy for less than £4-500 (and even then only occasionally) - most tat is starting at £800-£1000 as a minimum.

@Nullzwei if that S124 runs and drives ok then someone has just got a stonking bargain. 

 

[HMC]

That was 2018 and had a long mot, perfectly usable. 

[Jenson Velcro]

Agree that the plague seems to have reset prices for a lot of things in life, thanks to knock on effect of shortage of supplies etc etc. One thing that concerns me more about older, cheaper cars is whether we’ll even be able to use them freely, as more and more areas seem to be introducing clean air zones.

[davidfowler2000]

My observations of the lack of shite is that it's drying up because cars have all became so homologous and, dare I say it... good. Good at being AN CAR anyways.

15 years ago, a 15 year old car would have been from the early 90s which itself would have probably been an evolution of a 1980s or potentially 1970s design. It made them more interesting but not up to par with modern stuff for handling, economy, safety etc etc etc.

Nowadays a 15 year old car is from 2008 and let's face it, there are still some cars being made today that were in production in 2008 and have barely changed. Also cars today are all just the same. Styling is dictated by regulations, handling and performance for every day cars has pretty much reached it's pinnacle. There's not going to be any major innovation or leap forward for a while so a car of today is just as good as a car of 15 years ago (bar all the annoying electronic toys). Plus with the current automotive production climate with fuck all being manufactured either because of covid or other world events, people are holding on to their cars for longer. I heard on the news recently that the proportion of cars on the road today over 10 years old has never been higher and perhaps the lack of supply of new stuff for anything less than silly money is making people realise the worth of their current car or even better, making them realise that a new car isn't going to do anything more or better than their current steed.

Add in other factors like the rise of dealer focused serviceability, the lack of old specialist computers to diagnose faults, soaring scrap prices, LEZs, scrappage schemes, general awareness of environmental concerns blah blah blah... etc.

I reckon there will always be a supply of autoshite but it's becoming scarce.

[New POD]

2 hours ago, Schaefft said:

I mean buying a running and driving car for 300 quid would be pretty much unheard of anywhere else in the world. Maybe globalization (scrap prices) just has caught up at this point, or people at least realize the true value of their vehicle a little more now. Also inflation.

Inflation  ? 300 quid in 2006 is worth 456 quid now.  Definately accounts for some of it. 

Then the scrappage scheme which paid out 2000 quid on anything with an MOT took loads of shite off the road. 

I honestly think that since the mid 90s you couldn't get a decent car easily for under £500.   

 

[barrett]

My £400 Renault 19 last year had loads of ticket on it, and defnitely felt like a return to old-school Shite buying. The £800 one-lady-owner low miles 206 which replaced it two days later may be incredibly boring, but it was a cheap reliable car with 9 months test and no major issues (so far - touch wood).

The issue for me is that incredibly dull cars made in the last 20 years are the same price as something actually interesting (well, still dull, but old) made 40-50 years ago, so why would anyone chose to take the boring option? My Rover P6 cost less than your average 15-yr-old BMW or Honda Civic or whatever. A Skoda Fabia is more expensive than a Triumph Herald, which suggests to me we should all be revelling in buying Proper Shite with all the danger/thrill of galloping rot, shit electrics and mechanical frailty, just like we used to years ago. If anything, it's a golden age where boring cars are expensive and interesting cars are worthless!

[barrett]

7 minutes ago, New POD said:

I honestly think that since the mid 90s you couldn't get a decent car easily for under £500.

In the 10 years I've been driving, of the perhaps 15 cars I've had as boring daily drivers, which range from Austin Allegro to BMW E39, only I reckon two of them cost more than £500. Even most of my 'interesting' stuff has been around a grand. I won't claim I've had a 100 per cent success rate but I've had some great motors from shallow-end buying, and expect I'll have many more to come.

[gadgetgricey]

There are still bargains out there but a lot harder too find.
Normally to be found on the single make owners forum. Rover 75, UK saabs, Merc etc
Managed to get a C900 Convertible with very short MOT for £100 off UK Saabs a few months back. (Just in garage at moment)
Was such a bargain was concerned it was a con somehow
Missed a £500 one owner R75 Diesel Estate on the R75 forum by about 10 mins a few months ago.

Just looked on the R75 forum to find one above, and there is a 2.0v6 with 12 months ticket for £800. So not mega cheap, but half decent.
https://the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=322730

 

[eddyramrod]

5 minutes ago, davidfowler2000 said:

. Also cars today are all just the same. Styling is eliminated by regulations,

EFA

From where I stand, the future looks gloomy at best.  I've spent decades buying cars for as little as possible.  £500 is still an expensive car to me!  But I know it's not, in the bigger picture.  It already wasn't before the world went crazy in 2020.  It was more bare-minimum territory, where if you could put what you bought into service for little further expense, you were doing pretty well.  I did very well indeed picking up a Rover 820 in that bracket in 2017; hard on the heels of an epic fail of a 213 in the same bracket.  Now, with the raging inflation and soaring scrap prices, I'd be doing bloody well to get the same 820 for a grand.  I just haven't got that kind of money to fling about.  To gamble, even, because that's what old cars were: you'd gamble £50 or so on some old shed because if it failed MoT a month later, you could get your money back.  Now, if your £1500 "old banger" fails, you might get £400 from a scrappy, or you're going to be handing a garage various body parts to cover their work.  The stakes are too high.  The prices one has to stump up now for dreary, scruffy modern dross are just not sustainable.  £1500 is not an old banger!  I look at the prices of 10-15 year old cars around me with mounting horror.

I daren't continue this train of thought, it's too depressing.

[Nullzwei]

1 hour ago, 83C said:

Thinking back, one of my first purchases after I joined the beige was the £75 Rover 75, with plenty of test and only in need of a couple of tyres. That was 2015 though, haven’t seen anything even vaguely roadworthy for less than £4-500 (and even then only occasionally) - most tat is starting at £800-£1000 as a minimum.

@Nullzwei if that S124 runs and drives ok then someone has just got a stonking bargain. 

 

The cheap s124 needed a bit of work. Here is the ad...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1992-Mercedes-230te-Auto-7-seater-/285117984079?hash=item42625b2d4f%3Ag%3AbUEAAOSw61JjzT9g&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoHI055b%2B5mccgQB%2FwcRgMMtiXnVO1GCaAwOHGRgYTDHS4UixVbtnypvoXMxQ%2Bl7tw2ZINfQKp0uAngaLzFSPKuuDjv%2BA4OYh1seJF54GCmeL0DisjSNMvR8iju2xaN3IZzALDabZBlyHVJcuoZDZkRY28aVxQZa1ZgjvdxCIrWPuC2arahYGxY52WepuQA7MZOMJbsdnN%2Fx7SljDd2pPa4M%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR5yXv-W_YQ&nma=true&si=0Ase2EugTyWbHAUrMfXrxDXelcY%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

This one currently listed could also be a steal...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/285123910422?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D1110006%26algo%3DHOMESPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D20220920135554%26meid%3Dfe47ef85c3c242cf941f1e7e684515bf%26pid%3D101197%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D285117984079%26itm%3D285123910422%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675%26algv%3DDefaultOrganicWeb&_trksid=p2047675.c101197.m1850

 

[riek]

I've been wondering if clean air zones will contribute to a collapse in values for pre-2014 diesels. The pre 2006 petrols are all pretty much bottomed out.

[Matty]

Like @Talbotsaid, early to mid 2000s. When me and her were 21 and just starting out with a house and that it was 2002, I was a trainee linesman and we were skint as fuck. I bought a Cav 1.8 ls for £250 and it was brilliant (they are anyway). Unfortunately 18months in it seized it's water pump and stripped the belt while having its MOT. I bought an identical 1.8 ls in much better condition with a broken steering rack and robbed the rack off mine before I scrapped it. That second car cost me a Presidents Of The United States Of America CD and a going out shirt!! And it was mint. Happy days them

[Jerzy Woking]

No such thing as cheap secondhand cars here in Spain. It seems that it has never been the case.

My only out is to look on the local internet forums for UK registered cars that have been driven here, and are no longer wanted, are too expensive to put on Spanish plates, or would never be allowed to be driven on the roads (for instance, RHD vans).

And there are too many traders are looking too. I was lucky enough to get in first for a UK registered Lexus GS300 that the owner drove here, before finding out he had 30 days to register it or scrap it.