1997 Mondeo purchased Aug 2003 for £950 with 73k on the clock still using today with 249k should reach 250k next week.

My uncle had that model. Absolute pleasure to travel in. Quiet, smooth and comfortable.

Edited by SLO76 on 18/12/2018 at 12:03

What did surprise me though, when wasting time waiting for the MOT to be done was how expensive 5+ year old cars have become. Most up for sale in the used dealers near the garage where I was getting the MOT done were well above £5k for fairly ordinary cars. The gap between what they are advertised for and what you can pick up a 'nearly new' equivalent for seems to have closed dramatically.

All that means is that demand matches supply or thereabouts. The price of a car approaches zero when everyone who still wants one has got one. After that, some get written off from time to time so demand never stops completely.

What did surprise me though, when wasting time waiting for the MOT to be done was how expensive 5+ year old cars have become.

You are quite right and this fits in with my observations. Do not want to go off on a wild rant although I travel long haul quite often and in all other parts of the world I have been cars have been much cheaper than the UK certainly new and nearly new as well as used to some degree. In GCC tax free countries in some examples 50% cheaper new when doing currency conversations and those countries typically have higher average salaries than the UK.

I think it tells an interesting picture when people often do not consider the purchase price and only want to know how much it costs per month to have access to the latest and greatest vehicles.

Cars in the UK are way way overpriced in my opinion, new and nearly new and of late even mid life vehicles. When I finally replace the 21 year old Ford it will be for a vehicle of around 10 years old or perhaps even a little older and will be expecting it to last another 10 years and cover another 150k miles before expecting to replace.

Missus got a new panda diesel for 6,200 and got 4,000 for it part ex on its 3rd birthday.

Brilliant car and unbeatable depreciation.

Best i ever did was a y reg 2001 Toyota avensis 1.8 vvti Vermont lift back.

It was given to me by my father in perfect mechanical order in 2013 and i owned it 18 months. In that time I had to put on a new midsection and back box (came as 1 unit) that cost £100. I sold it for £900 making a profit of £800.

I tend to own cars untill they die as I don't see the point in a new car every three years it's just throwing money down the drain. The suzuki we have owns since new for 8 years isnt showing any signs of diying yet so will keep soldering on untill it dies or legislation kills it same with the 3 year old Nissan we brought this year.

"The suzuki we have owns since new for 8 years isnt showing any signs of diying yet so will keep soldering on untill it dies or legislation kills it same with the 3 year old Nissan we brought this year."

I wouldn't normally draw attention to typos - I make enough of them myself - but the two in the above sentence are delightful !

That would be auto correct and typing on a phone

That truck was in very good condition, though it suffered a seized wheel cylinder while I had it due to lack of use. I wasn't really competent to drive something that big (I believe I'd have needed an HGV license but for the motor-caravan conversion loophole).and so didn't much, though people did tend to get out of the way.

A co-worker who had worked for BT (probably pre-privatisation) said they didn't skimp on maintenance and would often put new engines in rather than fix them.

The bloke that MOT'd it said they often went to Africa, so maybe its still driving around down there. Hope so.

Spam alert! Don’t click on those links folks.

Deleted - thanks.

Edited by Avant on 29/12/2018 at 12:06