What was the cheapest car

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

In 1978 me and my mate bought a Ford Popular upright gland for £1. There was an advert in the local paper advertising for one. I phoned the buyer with a desciption of the car and the asking price of £5. It ran and drove, was in good condition inside and out apart from the front wings where poor. The buyer arrived had a look round it and said he had been offered a better one for £10 and walked off.

[lesapandre]

I bought a MoT'd Hillman Minx in the 1980's for £35  - drove ok and I used it for  about year before selling it on - not sure what I got - I think £75. Was the cheapest car I've ever had.

[95 quid Peugeot]

Mine is the one in my profile/pic name, I got the Peugeot 406 for 95quid at Newark car auction, ran it for 2 years and 40k miles without an issue until a lorry drove into it

[beko1987]

Mr @Kiltox gave me a free £0 Laguna Initiale Paris several years ago and for the year and a bit it remained alive it was a brilliant car 👌 

Otherwise actual money wise my £150 Xsara estate then £250 for the silver gooner2 from ruffgeezer (which replaced the blue one and I spent a weekend swapping tons of shit from the blue one to the silver one where I could 😂) 

[sierraman]

A free Rover 214 SLi. G reg I think it was, my brother gave it me. 

[Somerset Suffolk]

£100 MR2 bought in Cardiff in 2003 ish- I MOT'd patched the sills (TBF is was quite solid) mint interior, hand book pack and tools - sold for £650 

£100 C3 bought from a mate last year - needed a new clutch - put in new clutch and used by nephew - he got nearly a years motoring out of it but as  newly qualified VW mechanic changed it for Ford C max.......

[UltraWomble]

For me it was a Mk 2 Fiesta with no MOT for £40.
Would be about 1997
Repaired the exhaust with best bodgery, put an MOT on it, drove around for 3 weeks, sold it on for £200 to a window cleaner

Much cheaper than a hire car when the missus mangled the Mk3 we had at the time

[myglaren]

£40 for an Opel Kadett.  Was supposed to be £80 but when we got there the clutch had failed.  We were going to tow it home but I had a quick look underneath and the clutch cable had come off.  Reattached it and drove it away, drove it for a couple of years.

[Fat_Pirate]

Somebody gave me a Fiat Tipo DGT for replacing the CMOS battery in their PC, once  - the following day I discovered the rear brakes consisted of a bent-over brake pipe with a molegrip attached, so back it went.

[barefoot]

I paid £30 for a 1963 VW Beetle in about 1985. It was the last year of the small rear windows and probably quite interesting but it was 6volt and a total bastard to start. I sold it to a local lad for about £50 who in a slightly dodgy fashion even then, swapped its numberplate 425 JUY, onto his '71 Beach Buggy. I was a little irritated at the time.

[Eyersey1234]

I was given a M reg Fiesta by my gran when she gave up driving in 2006

[Volksy]

I bought one of these:

for one of these:

 

 

It had MOT and the signs of OMGHGF, but I ran it for a good few months until the head gasket got that bad that it used to piss out between the head and block. 

[abir246]

My first car (02 corolla T2) was free off my aunt who owned it from 2006 to 2020 (and for some reason was owner no.1, NI reg car), and replaced it with a 2014 A6 she bought around 3 years before. That A6 was stolen around 1 month into lockdown too...

The rest of them I bought, unfortunately none of them were below a grand

The cheapest car I bought was the Astra J I had, think it was 1800 quid, C280 was 3.3k, 1 Series set me back around 3.7K I think

 

[Lord Sterling]

I've had a few £free cars;

• F-reg Sierra Sapphire Ghia

• S-reg Passat 1.9 TDi

• M-reg Rover 820i

• 03-reg BMW 316i SE

• 02-reg Jaguar S-Type 

Cheapest car I've ever bought would be a K-reg Vauxhall Astra Cesaro which we boight for £70. It had been kitted up Max Power-style. Unfortunately, there was so much wrong with it at the time, a clutch burnt to crisp, needed an MoT, etc... Me and my mate were absolutely penniless at the time.

Cheapest car on the road (legal with MoT) might have been the blue Peugeot 406 I bought just as lockdown was starting to lift. £150 if I recall correctly. 

[Tommyboy12]

I have had several free cars. A 1992 Citroen ZX TD (which I threw into a ditch), a 2001 Peugeot 406 estate (which I blew the turbo on), and a 2000 MGF which I hated. I also won a roffle for the communal bike Rover 25 GTI (which I melted a piston on) for £12.

Cheapest functional and roadworthy car I actually bought was a 1991 VW Polo Mk2F breadvan which I paid £100 back in about 2006. I did a few thousand miles on it before I sold it on

[groovylee]

cheapest was a free BMW E30 convertible on a private plate - B6 PRO.  god i wish i'd kept that car. and the plate!

cheapest for actual money was a 1972 Mini 1275GT. i paid £50. it was rotten as anything, and i ended up *scrapping it (it still exists, well, the logbook does anyway...)

[castros_bro]

Friends gave me a Free slightly dented Panda 4x4 - Swiss registered on winter tyres which had been used to move sheep in some hilly parts, was insured etc. so just drove it to Surrey through the EU snow. Swapped it for a UK diesel 205 so it then moved to the French Pyrenees and got registered there.  Same friends drove their Dacia to UK for hollibobs  and left it with me and flew home. 

[adw1977]

2 hours ago, The Old Bloke Next Door said:

upright gland

😳

[busmansholiday]

£30 for a taxed and tested Acclaim from my office mate who wanted shut of it. Ran it as a "dog" car for a few years until jet washing the engine bay killed it.

Went to eye up a C3 from a dealer in Sheffield that had non functioning windscreen wipers. "Pay full price and you can have that one as well for £100". This just happened to be what he'd offered me for my extremely rotten Fiat Sceicento to, so it was effectively free (scrap price was high then).

Fixed the C3 which my Mrs drove for a few years before selling for almost what I paid for it and ended up selling the other one for £295. Technically the cars paid me.

 

[Datsuncog]

On purchase price alone, the cheapest cars I owned are a tie between these two, at £50 each. Both were bought as spares cars to swap bits onto cars I already owned, though - and neither ever saw the road again.

B11 Sunny Coupe was a one-owner from new car, but was also rough as guts and had been sitting rotting behind a dealership for years. However, thanks to some bell-ends smashing out the windows on my maroon B11 one night in spring 2000, I didn't have many options for some NLA glass, beyond buying a breaker.

It was overpriced on the face of it, but worth the £50 asking to me since I was getting a bit tired of driving around with clear plastic sheeting gaffer-taped to where my windows ought to have been.

I pulled anything else that looked like it might be useful (SPOILER: none of it turned out to be useful) then once I had the logbook I rang the breaker to come and pick it up.

Scrap prices were on their arse around Y2K so they didn't pay me. I don't blame them.

 

£50 for an MOT'd Phase 1 Laguna RT Sport seems pretty good value, especially in 2015. It had, however, been used for years by a guy running a gardening business and the interior was absolutely howling:

He'd already flogged the original numberplate (something like SAZ1550) and got a goodly sum back, so wanted to just get rid of the rest quickly before the MOT expired in like a week's time.

I'd hoped to take the towbar off and swap it onto my own silver Phase 1 RN bASe, but on closer inspection the Fiji Green car had been thumped up the arse at some point and inexpertly wobbed up - and since everything underneath was merrily twisted out of shape, including the towbar mounting brackets, that was a no-go.

Nearside wing was in rather poor shape, and this literally came back to bite me when I walked into it in the dark one night while putting the recycling tubs out.

Ow. Yes, it shredded my jeans and the flesh beneath equally enthusiastically.

That was sore.

In the end, I pulled a few bits of trim off and swapped the remains for a bottle of decent Rioja to a fellow-shiter who wanted the (very sweetly running) 2.0 engine to swap into a Renault 11... not sure if that ever happened.

 

Cheapest actual runner was this Mk2 Fiesta Ghia - £120 with no MOT in May 2001 and, as it excitingly* transpired on the test drive, not much in the way of brakes either.

 

Originally registered in Guernsey in 1986, then in Manchester, and finally in Belfast, it had got about a bit and received a cheap blowover in Mistral Blue - yet still only had 22k on the clock, backed up by a sheaf of old MOTs.

Some new discs, pads and brake fluid, plus fresh oil, filters and plugs (thanks to my Halfords staff discount card) and it passed its MOT first time.

I doubled its mileage taking it all round England, Ireland and Wales for two years before it failed its MOT on rampant corrosion (the fail sheet ran to two pages), and was regrettably sold as spares or repairs in Hove for £60 in December 2003.

During that time it munched through a set of front tyres every three or four months, as there was some sort of unresolvable problem with the front suspension alignment (so the garage told me) causing the outside edges to wear down extremely quickly. It also needed a water pump, but all these things were ludicrously cheap to source.

 

Honourable mention for cheapest car needs to go to my 1988 Volvo 240 GL:

Bought for £360 in 2011, used to haul plasterboard and timber for a house renovation, and then sold back to its previous owner 18 months later for £320 in late 2012, so effectively the car only cost me £40.

During my ownership it only required a sidelight bulb and a washer jet, both costing me less than a quid. Nothing more was spent, beyond tax/ insurance/ petrol/ MOT.

I didn't even service the poor thing.

But you can't argue with an average cost of £2.22 a month to waft about in blue velour sumptuousness...

 

Technical win for cheapest car goes to a 1976 Mini Clubman I was nominally given for free in 1997 by a distant family member who needed shot of it from his back yard:

However I was already juggling two ambitious restorations* in the form of a ropey Cortina Mk5 and Viva HC before actually having my driving licence, so I offered it, gratis, to a schoolmate who was Mini-mad - and the only time I ever saw it was when we went up with his father to collect it on a trailer from the Donegall Rd area of Belfast.

I checked in with my chum periodically over the years, and work was ongoing with a huge amount of welding, new panels, and trim obtained. His dream was to have it in sky blue with twin white racing stripes over the bonnet and roof.

Sadly, after university he ended up finding work in the US and so passed the project Mini on to his cousin, who did a bit of work on cars.

The dozy prat pulled the A-series engine out to sell separately and scrapped the shell and all the new bits. We were both quite cross when we found out. 

[Talbot]

Have had numerous free cars over the years in various states of useability, from MOTd to utter heaps.

Cheapest I ever actually bought was a £60 BX diesel that had about £80 of tax still on it, a full tank of fuel and a new timing belt and water pump in the boot.  So I'd say that was about -£150.

[Dave_Q]

£40 for a Renault 5 in about 2001

£80 for a VW Scirocco in about 2002

Piece of chewing gum for a Montego countryman diesel in about 2000

[neil72]

Me and my brother bought a white Mk1 Escort Estate from an underground estate car park in Hackney for £15 quid in about 1987, needless to say is was pure shite, but we flipped it for £25😂😂

My brother bought various Mini's in the early 80s, the cheapest i remember was a fella selling a Mini for £20, but it wouldn't start so he offered him a fiver but the bloke said he'd take a tenner but accepted £8 (in cash😂😂)

The best one was my mate Dave bought a mint 4 door Mk1 Escort for £35 off a lady who had bought it brand new, he sold it about a year later for £65 to a bloke who 'did-up' Fords and Vauxhalls locally by filling them with chicken wire and crap who fucked around with the engine and ended up scrapping it because he didn't have a clue.

 

[Macscrooge]

My cheapest purchase was in 2003.  A 1986 Volvo 340 DL. With a few months MOT.  £195!   Wife no.1 ran it for a year, during which it cost about £300  - mostly welding for the MOT - and then we sold it for £250. 
 

I think the next cheapest was the Volvo 940 GLE wagon purchased for £350 from our very own Lankytim. Put a couple of tyres on, ran it as a hack for a year or so and then sold to my then father in law for £350.  Fun fact: this remains the only car I’ve owned with overdrive. 

[Spiny Norman]

Back in my college days a mate once turned up with a ratty Ford Cortina, purchased for the princely sum of 10 Kensitas Club fags and a bowl of soup. 

[St.Jude]

I bought a blue Subaru Legacy saloon from a guy at work for £35. Well, actually, I bought it for a bottle of Tyrconnell whiskey as he wouldn’t take money for it. Loved it but the clutch was so heavy/stiff it aggravated my Achilles so had to sell it for £400.

For actual money, my old E11 Corolla which cost me £250. Still one of the best cars I’ve ever owned.

[timolloyd]

I bought a mk2 Escort, manual 1.3, with a week’s MOT for £50, in 2000.

My brother bought a very solid 1980 Mini for £50, around the same time.

In 2014 I won a turbo XUD 205 with 6 months test on eBay, for £400.

 

 

[mk2_craig]

Had a few £free. Best was a 740GL auto estate from a friend whose parents had owned it since almost new. (This was 2009 so the car would've been about 20 years old)  Expenditure totalled one scrapyard battery at £10 plus a £4 Haynes Manual, but swapped it shortly afterwards for a 94 Cavalier auto that had been a taxi and featured clicky CV joints. 

I stuck a For Sale ad in the back of the Cavalier and almost immediately got flagged down by a bloke wanting it for his wife to use.  I think I got about £250 for it, so technically the Volvo cost me minus £236 .

[Datsuncog]

2 hours ago, Dave_Q said:

Piece of chewing gum for a Montego countryman diesel in about 2000

You were robbed.

[motorpunk]

I swapped my Metro for a cup of coffee with a Moroccan waiter.

Otherwise, ROFL win aside, I must sound like billy big bollocks by saying I paid a whopping £225 for a Vauxhall Chevette (CFP284T) in about 1990.