9th January 2011, 12:54 PM
Just not being unemployed several months a year pays for a cheap second hand motor and the insurance? :face-stir:
We did a bit of a study around here a few years back of what people had been spending on cars and came to the conclusion that buying new or low-mileage nearly-new small cars, even on finance, actually worked out cheaper in the long run than buying a succession of cheap scrappers, unless you're a real mechanical wizz (and if you are, what you doing earning sweet FA as an archaeologist?), one person had got through 6 motors in 12 months at a cost of around ?8k which would have more than paid for a shiny new one which would have run for 4 or 5 years with no bother - remember to cost in all those lost work/leave-days taking your heap of junk to the garage yet again. Every time I have to rectify the results of yet another drunk student kicking my wing-mirror off the cost's doubled due to lost earnings....I worked out that my current car's saving me ?500 over its lifetime compared to the previous one just because it's from a handier garage 5 minutes walk from the house so no time wasted on it. Cars require a long-term perspective....maybe we should have a Car-Buyers Guide for Hard-Up Diggers?...cost, reliability, how good they are off-road in a muddy field (the old-style Fiat Punto was brilliant! - and they're cheap and mechanically bulletproof), how much gear they can be crammed with, how many years they take to de-ice at 6am on a frosty January morning when you should still be in bed (the Nissan Navarra I'm using currently is unbelievably c**p, for some reason the hot air vents don't extend under the bit of the windscreen you actually use! - but then the 4WD and chunky tyres are brilliant on snow), whether you can drive them in boots, will they take a 1m x1m planning frame, do ranging-rods fit etc etc
.......But this is all getting a little away from :face-topic:
We did a bit of a study around here a few years back of what people had been spending on cars and came to the conclusion that buying new or low-mileage nearly-new small cars, even on finance, actually worked out cheaper in the long run than buying a succession of cheap scrappers, unless you're a real mechanical wizz (and if you are, what you doing earning sweet FA as an archaeologist?), one person had got through 6 motors in 12 months at a cost of around ?8k which would have more than paid for a shiny new one which would have run for 4 or 5 years with no bother - remember to cost in all those lost work/leave-days taking your heap of junk to the garage yet again. Every time I have to rectify the results of yet another drunk student kicking my wing-mirror off the cost's doubled due to lost earnings....I worked out that my current car's saving me ?500 over its lifetime compared to the previous one just because it's from a handier garage 5 minutes walk from the house so no time wasted on it. Cars require a long-term perspective....maybe we should have a Car-Buyers Guide for Hard-Up Diggers?...cost, reliability, how good they are off-road in a muddy field (the old-style Fiat Punto was brilliant! - and they're cheap and mechanically bulletproof), how much gear they can be crammed with, how many years they take to de-ice at 6am on a frosty January morning when you should still be in bed (the Nissan Navarra I'm using currently is unbelievably c**p, for some reason the hot air vents don't extend under the bit of the windscreen you actually use! - but then the 4WD and chunky tyres are brilliant on snow), whether you can drive them in boots, will they take a 1m x1m planning frame, do ranging-rods fit etc etc
.......But this is all getting a little away from :face-topic: