What was the cheapest car

[junkyarddog]

In 1992 paid IR£90.00  for a 1979 Vauxhall Viva HC  1300L from a scrapyard.

Still own it!

[Talbot]

oooh of course, a scrapyard buy.

While I was in a local breakers yard in about 1998, someone drove a minty-looking Talbot Horizon SX auto in with a view to scrapping it.  I stopped him and asked what he'd been offered by the scrappie for it.  £25 was the answer.

So I parked up the car I was in out of the way, offered him £30 for it (which he gladly accepted) and drove it home. It needed one small welded plate just under where your right foot sits on the accelerator.  other than that, straight through an MOT and I used it to get in an out of university for a year.

Irritatingly it threw it's alternator just when the MOT was about to expire, so I broke it for spares.

[Kevin-TIB]

Back around 1987 a friend and I bought a Vauxhall Chevette - paid 20 Silk Cut purple and a promise of a £5 at the weekend. 

This was while we were in 2nd year at school and had fun with it for a few days. Then we sold it on for £20 to another kid who crashed it on his first drive. 

Rural Ireland was a great place to grow up in the 80s 😅

[MAF260]

Morris Marina 1.8 coupe £50 when I was 16

Fiat 127 Sport free from a former colleague with a very wealthy famous actor father who just bought her a new car!

Mk2 Cavalier saloon in rust colour £120. Needed a £10 second hand cam to sort and punted on for £400

B2 VW Passat TD estate £150. Needed £50 spending on it. Ran it for a year and sold for £1k to somebody who used it as a mini cab.

[bangernomics]

£3.76 for an ax base that was a px written in at £5. Found the difference whilst cleaning it out. Scraped a test on it and within a week the bastard shit the bottom end.

[GeordieInExile]

My first car was a green Ford Puma 1.7 with loads of tax and test and no major issues. I bought it on eBay while pissed for the grand sum of £300. (This was 2013.) It was a cracking little car, so much fun to drive. I got another, identical one a few years later because I missed it and wanted to relive the experience.

[Eyersey1234]

24 minutes ago, GeordieInExile said:

My first car was a green Ford Puma 1.7 with loads of tax and test and no major issues. I bought it on eBay while pissed for the grand sum of £300. (This was 2013.) It was a cracking little car, so much fun to drive. I got another, identical one a few years later because I missed it and wanted to relive the experience.

I'd love a Puma 1.7

[Zelandeth]

4 hours ago, Talbot said:

oooh of course, a scrapyard buy.

While I was in a local breakers yard in about 1998, someone drove a minty-looking Talbot Horizon SX auto in with a view to scrapping it.  I stopped him and asked what he'd been offered by the scrappie for it.  £25 was the answer.

So I parked up the car I was in out of the way, offered him £30 for it (which he gladly accepted) and drove it home. It needed one small welded plate just under where your right foot sits on the accelerator.  other than that, straight through an MOT and I used it to get in an out of university for a year.

Irritatingly it threw it's alternator just when the MOT was about to expire, so I broke it for spares.

Talking of scrap yards - I still kick myself for not getting one from back around the time I had the Metro.  While I was there grabbing some bits for something, they had a mint - and I mean concourse levels of mint - C plate Nissan Cherry 1.3 SGL with something daft like 10K miles on the clock, it still had the dealer paper mats in the foot wells.  Came from an estate clearance.  £20 to drive away.  Still taxed and tested, V5 was sitting on the passenger seat.

I was worried about the cost of insuring it, so said I'd go investigate and report back.

Went back the next day and it had been baled.  I was gutted.

[MantaGTE85]

My college lecturer paid £400 for an XJ40 3.6 Sovereign back in 1998. It was a rich metallic maroon with the black bootlid only fitted to the very earliest XJ40 Sovs.

I felt that this was a lot of posh car with private plate for the money - PUT 6R. 

Even in those days that 40 was rotting underneath and riddled with electronic dashboard issues and he took it off the road when its next MOT ran out.

[AnnoyingPentium]

Had a couple of free cars that aren't really worth using bandwidth over. Cheapest was the Nexia (the second time around) where it ended up being £80 for a car with a year's test. Was great until my neighbour insisted on helping me change the wheels and put the jack through the floor...

It's still about, and looking better for itself.

[Somerset Suffolk]

4 hours ago, MAF260 said:

Morris Marina 1.8 coupe £50 when I was 16

Fiat 127 Sport free from a former colleague with a very wealthy famous actor father who just bought her a new car!

Mk2 Cavalier saloon in rust colour £120. Needed a £10 second hand cam to sort and punted on for £400

B2 VW Passat TD estate £150. Needed £50 spending on it. Ran it for a year and sold for £1k to somebody who used it as a mini cab.

Erm Roger Moore ?  go on, do tell ! 

[catsinthewelder]

Had a few freebies and a couple of Roffle wins but the cheapest car I've bought was an F reg Fiat Panda for £30 from a scrapyard that wanted £35 for a gearbox part from the same car (and I'd be buying the whole gearbox).  The part didn't fit my mates Uno, moving the thing nearly got me arrested and it cost me £20 to have it collected by a different scrapyard.

[Wibble]

Probably doesn’t count but in about 2005/6 my Dad sold me his 1998 Honda Accord 2.0 Executive auto for £1. Flew up to get it and felt like a thief, as I left their house at 5am with a full tank of fuel. Full service history, one previous owner, Cardinal Winning.

[MAF260]

10 hours ago, Somerset Suffolk said:

Erm Roger Moore ?  go on, do tell ! 

Robert Hardy

[EightMegs]

Annoyed I don't have a better picture, but this was €125 and I never got it through a test, I had no idea how to weld on a car back then and it was rotten behind the dashboard and in the rear chassis legs.

[Brigsy]

Paid £80 for my orange clio dci, gumtree spares or repair. Done a load of basic repairs and its still here almost 11 years later

[Somerset Suffolk]

8 hours ago, MAF260 said:

Robert Hardy

Legend ! all creatures etc  and was in a brilliant war film about a US submarine "torpedo run" !! (hope the 127 was one of the orange ones !) 

[MAF260]

3 hours ago, Somerset Suffolk said:

Legend ! all creatures etc  and was in a brilliant war film about a US submarine "torpedo run" !! (hope the 127 was one of the orange ones !) 

It was silver. Beggars can't be choosers and all that! Great fun little car with 70bhp from a 1050cc engine.

[GeordieInExile]

On 17/09/2026 at 21:04, Eyersey1234 said:

I'd love a Puma 1.7

You aren't gonna get much of one for 300 quid these days...!

There's an absolutely lovely one exactly like my two living round the corner from me. Same green, also 1.7. A woman uses it to drop her kid at the Metro every morning.

[Three Speed]

My cheapest car was a bright yellow Victor FE "acquired" in about 1982 for nothing and sold later that same day for £5 which, split between 3 of us was blown on 3 pints and a packet of B+H in the Catherine Wheel, Croydon.

The original plan was that one workmate (Stuart*) who was not allowed to drive any more and needed to be rid of his Victor, would give it to another workmate (Gary*) who wanted somewhere to meet his girlfriend where his wife would not find them. What would be better than the backseat of a Victor FE. But Gary did not have a drivers license either - never learnt. So another workmate (Phil*) was going to drive it from Stuart's place (A) to wherever Gary wanted it (B). My role was to get Phil and Gary to Stuart's place, check the car worked and then go home. Stuart left the keys in the car and was elsewhere. 

The route from A to B was via a road in New Addington which was a big, steep dip through a housing estate - down one side and up the other. I followed the yellow Victor down one side and up the other almost to the top - but it didn't make it. The clutch was fried. So we turned it round to go back and have a better run up. Nope - whichever way we tried to get out, we could not get the car to reach the top of either hill. We went backwards and forwards about 5 times before we gave up. Near the bottom of the dip was a man polishing his maroon FE Victor who had watched us passing back and forth. So - we asked him if he would like to take this one off our hands for a fiver and he said yes (fool, we would have given it to him for nothing) and off we went in my car back to Croydon to share the spoils. £1.67 for each of us. Phil and I were quite happy, Gary less so. 

(* names may have been changed - but weren't).

I did get a "free" BX Estate a few years ago - provided I got it off the island of Jersey. So, not quite free...

[barefoot]

Not as funny as that. But I bought a W reg Cortina 1.6L estate for £150. It was beige, manual and adequate in every respect. It cruised ok at 60-70, its gearbox, clutch and steering were light and easy. It did not set the world alight and I sold it about a year later with a new MOT. It is the only Ford I have ever owned. 

[garbaldy]

I regularly get offered cheep cars plus some freebies infact I bet I've had close on 40 free motors since my very first 71 viva which was given to me at 14 years old,   I've also bought some cars for the cost of remaining tax when the tax used to stay with the car. 

Infact I picked this up on Sunday for free

The reason two snapped springs 🙄

[MVX11V]

Name redacted got a MK1 metro auto in white* with orange* interior for £20 down the pub, must have been late 90's, the bloke was not handing it over unless the log book was signed there and then. The metro made it 2 miles and then refused to go up the slightest incline. 

2 weeks later the old bill called name redacted and asked if name redacted knew about a metro that has been parked by a roundabout and left with the keys in it. Name redacted told them it was fucked and they could have it, so they said Ok, and hung up.

[artdjones]

On 17/09/2026 at 17:42, Talbot said:

oooh of course, a scrapyard buy.

While I was in a local breakers yard in about 1998, someone drove a minty-looking Talbot Horizon SX auto in with a view to scrapping it.  I stopped him and asked what he'd been offered by the scrappie for it.  £25 was the answer.

So I parked up the car I was in out of the way, offered him £30 for it (which he gladly accepted) and drove it home. It needed one small welded plate just under where your right foot sits on the accelerator.  other than that, straight through an MOT and I used it to get in an out of university for a year.

Irritatingly it threw it's alternator just when the MOT was about to expire, so I broke it for spares.

Those Horizon autos were very comfortable, but felt like they were driven by an elastic band.

[Markeh]

I was *technically* given the Corsa by mum, although it was given back to my dad after I was finished with it.

Next would be the Sedici (mate's old car), as it was technically £150, then I offered to pay for the tyre it needed between us agreeing that and me taking ownership, and then it ended up being swapped for a new laptop.

The Meriva was £250 (mate's late mum's car), as was the 206 SW (Facebook marketplace)

The ex-ambulance Skoda was £500 (friend who was in the blood bikes at the time)

The Megane was £850 (Facebook I think?)

I don't want to talk about how much the Nissans have cost.

[Talbot]

12 minutes ago, artdjones said:

Those Horizon autos were very comfortable, but felt like they were driven by an elastic band.

1442 cc of raw powah, with rattly valve gear, poor economy and incorrectly labelled up as a 1.5  It did have a working fuel computer though, which confirmed my fears of 30mpg.

What a pile it was

Also the only car I have ever had complete brake failure on.  The brake fluid boiled on me during a particularly enthusiastic back-road-blast.   When I got home 20 mins later, the front brake calipers bled black fluid with steam coming off of it.   Probably never changed in 20 years.

[artdjones]

I bought my brother's 1973 Mini1000 for £30 and got it through a test. I hated it and sold for £170 it to a guy we knew who rollered it Ford Daytona Yellow and put cheap wheel arches on without bothering to  get wider wheels. Apart from being tasteless, he later turned out to be a nonce.

In about 2008 I got a panicked phone call from a Sierra Leonan friend who had broken down in Cork in his 1989 405 diesel estate. Luckily for him, I was in Cork working (I live 30 miles away), and I knew exactly what to do. One of the gear change rod ball joints had popped off. I reassembled it, and it never happened again.

A few months later he had a total brake failure when the servo split in half, luckily with no accident ensuing. He couldn't find a new servo, so asked for my help. I found a servo, fitted it, and got him mobile. Not long after, he bought a Zafira, and gave me the 405 to sell for scrap in token of his gratitude for getting him out of trouble twice. I gave it a once-over, did a few minor repairs, then sold it for €850. I should really have kept it for myself.

[catsinthewelder]

I did the same repair on my free BX.  I'd passed it at the entrance to our housing estate while cycling home after a bad day at work.  On getting home I enquired why it was there and left the house in a worse mood holding a hammer.  The Former Miss C was quite surprised when I came back driving it.