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Thanks for reply.The problem with that is once you get into thousand or more and you have a problem,the temptation is to spend more money on the car and before you know it the car owes you £2000.
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Buy the car with a year's MOT;at the end of the year,check it for obvious faults and put it in for another MOT-if it passes or can be fixed cheaply,you've got it for another year;if not,scrap.
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Three similar cars at £500 each are a better bet than a £1500 one! You have spares for life and if you choose carefully they will each be capable of 30k miles if bought with around 100k on the clock.
Pick something where you can source cheap pattern parts through GSF or Europarts. For that reason alone I would avoid all Japanese.
It all depends though on your ability to choose and maintain. I regard the £1500 car as a potentially expensive investment because you are committed to spend on maintenance in the event of a major problem rather than thro the car away. But it all depends on your finances.
By buying old you will be able to avoid the generation of cars with irreparable modules, or at least be able to fault find by substitution.
A friend who has just spent rather a lot of money on an Aston Martin was amused when I pointed to my BX and pointed out that I could have 600 (six hundred!) of them and parked nose to tail they would stretch the best part of 2.5 km.
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pmh (was peter)
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What I left out above was a link, go to
bangernomics.tripod.com/
for solid advice!
My personal choice if I was to follow my own advice would probably be a VW Jetta, with Golfs easily available for most spares.
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pmh (was peter)
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Disagree with the above, if all you want to spend is £500 for troubke-free mororing, then its Japanese you want to be looking at! My current car is a 1991 Celica which Ive had for 3 years (41k trouble free miles, only oil changes etc, cost £1500), before that a £200 Sunny, a £200 Bluebird and £110 Passat. All were trouble free and came with new MOT's (all from Leominster car auction). I could afford to spend far more on a car if I wanted, but why pay for all that depreciation and worry about parking it etc.
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Over the past twenty years,I have owned,besides my good cars,four"bangers",all bought cheaply,two as MOT failures which I fixed cheaply(look to see what the "fail" shows).No Jap.A 2CV,Fiesta(Mk1),Sierra(XR4i),Panda-each in turn served me for several years of reliable motoring at minimal cost.
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I should have added the Sierra and Panda eventually went for scrap(157,000 and 178,000mls.respectively);2cv and Fiesta were sold as going concerns.
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My top tip would be a 205 diesel, non-turbo. Loads of parts available, bodies never rust, and very economical. Good ones fetch about £500-600, but should last well.
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It largely depends on how competent you are as a DIY mechanic. If you are dependent on garages for servicing and repairs, then you need to view each car as simply a year's motoring, with another MOT being a bonus.
But if you can tackle most jobs yourself, then the way to get almost indefinite cheap motoring is to stick with a particular model you are familiar with, like, is basic and easy to work on.
Look out for cheap spare cars during your first year. If it fails the first MOT, buy another of the same kind. You are now building up experience of the kind of things that wear, so look around for other scrappies that have the bits you need still OK. The cheapest way to get, say, a gearbox, is to buy an entire car that has just failed its MOT on something else.
I'm assuming you have the space, of course.
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Absolutely CP, had 10 years of cheap entertaining motoring, nasty surprises and dirty hands with a succession of Skoda Estelles. My present Escort 16v is a move upmarket, but uses more petrol than they did and has less character...
I'm looking for a gearbox and final drive for it right now. Don't suppose anyone has or knows of one?
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Three similar cars at £500 each are a better bet than a £1500 one! You have spares for life and if you choose carefully they will each be capable of 30k miles if bought with around 100k on the clock. Pick something where you can source cheap pattern parts through GSF or Europarts. For that reason alone I would avoid all Japanese.
This view is old fashioned. As Jap cars become more popular the price of parts is coming down. Nissan in particular, we've had three in a row and, on the rare occasion they've needed any parts, they've been as cheap as any French/German/Italian car (Ford/Vauxhall are cheaper I'll grant you but older Fords seem to drop to bits once they hit 10 years old in my experience, whereas the Nissans keep going until the body drops off with minimal frustration), and as easy to come by. Not that we've needed many (the odd corroded pipe, brake disc, battery etc).
Not as if there aren't tons of parts for old Nissans in the scrapyards and on ebay anyway. Recently needed a new tailgate strut for our old Sunny, it cost £8 delivered from an ebay bloke breaking on ebay. Doesn't get much cheaper than that.
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Cavalier, change the belts, check the hoses and stat. You can actually change the headlamp bulbs if they go without a degree in electronics and hands the size of a sycamore leaf.
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I read in one of the car magazines today that TATA are importing into the UK, badged TATA rather the CityRover.
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I read in one of the car magazines today that TATA are importing into the UK, badged TATA rather the CityRover.
Perhaps they will be of impeccable quality now that the maker's name is at stake.
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X,
My neighbour has a TATA pick up and a local garage is (was?) a TATA dealer, so either they've been away and they've come back or they're entering the car market.
First call centres, now cars, grumble grumble.
JH
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