This is a subject where the enthusiast for all things motorised comes into conflict with the bean-counter in me!
Really, there's no "best" decision if you consider running a car to be a hobby. Buy what suits your pocket and interest, and enjoy it!
But the original question here was what approach to buying and running makes most sense for either low- or high- mileage drivers. That's a decision nobody else can make for you: for example, by my count Roger's current car has been off the road maybe 6 times in two years. For him, that's perfectly acceptable - whereas I live in the country and need my car for daily transport, so if mine was off the road every 4 months it would be time to consider a change. And if you were driving for work, the cost to your business of having the car off the road at all - bar scheduled service - makes for an entirely different case again.
(Come to think of it, both cars chez Gromit have been off the road every four months for the past year, so maybe it is time for a change...)
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>>Roger's current car has been off the road maybe 6 times in two years
Clutch change and first service included a loan car from main dealership (now closed).
All servicing now at a local garage about half a mile from work. All work planned in advance so I have never been without a car when I needed it. The car is mainly used to drive to and from work. In an extreme emergency I could walk home, if my wife could not pick me up, a taxi was not available or the wait for the infrequent bus was too long.
The car has never let me down on the road and left me stranded. I have AA cover for that eventuality.
In 35 years driving I have only been left stranded miles from home a few times. The first was a broken electrical part some 10 miles from home in Kent, so was towed to a garage. The second was a shattered 3rd gear in a van at 1am near Dunstable, this involved having all the contents of the van transferred and leaving it for a gearbox rebuild. The third was a blown headgasket in Wakefield and the fourth was a cross threaded spark plug that blew out near Edinburgh. There were a few limp home times as well, like shearing two wheel studs due to rusting in out of five when changing a wheel.
By comparison my wife's old Renault Clio regularly broke down and left her stranded far more times than I ever have been.
My advice is buy a reasonably good quality car and have it sensibly maintained. The only difference is whether you buy new and can afford the depreciation, or not.
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Roger
I read frequently, but only post when I have something useful to say.
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I think the market value of the car has no relevance to the question of how much it is worth spending on it. The relevant comparison is between what you want the car to do for you, and how much it is worth spending in order to achieve that. That is the basis of all investment decisions invoving a revenue return.
Obviously there are different considerations if you are making a capital investment - eg restoring a car with a view to resale.
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I've had two Nissans and only ever had one reliability problem - my first car once refused to start, but it was parked outside my house at the time, so didn't leave me stranded. My girlfriend has only had French diesels, and also never had a major reliability problem.
If I were buying a car to cover 10k a year, I'd look at the make of car, the known reliability issues, and the service history. Mileage is totally irrelevant IMO. A correctly maintained quality car should cover 200k on one engine, many cover over 400k! I'm one of the "bangernomics" people - drive it till it won't drive anymore, and a repair would be uneconomical. Change your oil every 5k, full service every 10k, coolant change every 20k, cambelt every 40k and the engine will last forever!
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Greg, I agree with you. My thoughts were that if you need your car to be reliable as oyu use it for work, surely buying from new, looking after as you describe, and running well past when the car is 'worthless' makes financial sense.
I can't afford to risk having a car that's already been abused, hence I bought new, but I can't currently see why it shouldn't be possible to keep it running for a lot longer than 3 or 4 years.
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"I can't currently see why it shouldn't be possible to keep it running for a lot longer than 3 or 4 years."
Much of Europe and the US agrees with you, judging by the mileages they clock up and how long people keep their cars. I know from personal experience that its not uncommon to encounter French, German or Italian-owned cars bought new and run to the grave by the same owner.
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That is certainly the most cost-effective thing to do. Or perhaps buying at one or two years old. But choose a well-engineered make.
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I've gone completely the other way....Bangernomics is the way to go...I got hacked off with watching my cars depreciate like a stone and I therefore went out and tested the market with an old Merc with full service history and 150,000 miles on the clock.
7 months down the line all I've put in is petrol and and I'm upto 165,000 miles. OK I've done an oil change +filter a couple of times, but thats it.
If she comes to a grinding halt and its costs more than £250 to repair well then its curtains for the old girl and I'll start all over again. Goodbye to depreciation and hello cast iron build quality of an older Merc.
Its given me faith when I see an old W124 300D Merc down at my local MOT station that has 498,000 miles on the clock and its just breezed through its MOT.
To cap it all I've grown seriously attached to this very un-cool white Merc which my kids hate, however they do like the extra holidays that the lack of depreciation pays for.
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I paid £370 for my 1990 Nissan Sunny 3 years ago, which I recently traded in, and got £300 p/x!! Pretty good depreciation when you only lose £70 in 3 years! The car was very reliable too, most expensive repair was a new alternator. I never intend paying over £5k for a car, if you do your homework there's plenty of bargains out there - however as Vlad2 suggests, bangernomics isn't for the image-conscious.
Plus, if your car's only worth a few hundred quid, it's much less tempting to take it to a garage for maintenence - give a bit of DIY a go, even if you're not 100% sure! A full service is easy stuff, things like brakes are also fairly straight-forward for the self-taught mechanic. Buy a car with a cam-chain and you won't even have to shell out money for belt changes!
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I have a perhaps odd opinion on mileage and that is that whilst I am in the situation whereby resale value is of no importance to me (I am aware that it is number one priority for most), I would rather buy a car as new as possible but with as high mileage as possible to reduce its value.
It is my thinking that the following factors are independant of mileage:
a) Exterior condition - with the exception of stonechips, you don't get dents, scrapes, dinks and people ramming a trolley into your car in the outside lane of the M6. Infact, if anything, the opposite applies. If your car spends most of its daytime hours actually driving, it's not sitting in a carpark or at the side of the road being exposed to muppets.
b) Interior condition - within reason. I see no reason why the dashboard will begin to look any more scabby after 5 years of use on the Motorway than it would with 5 years use around town. Infact, again, if anything, it will be better - people doing enormous mileage are invariably driving for business and thus not carting kids around in the back. Generally, cars doing smaller mileages tend to do perhaps more frequent but much shorter trips - more use of the doors, clutch, gearbox...
c) Electrical Systems - The air conditioning, for example, isn't suddenly going to pack in any quicker becuase you spent 3 hours driving 250 miles rather than 3 hours in town doing just 100 miles.
So, I guess my ideal car is 3-5 years old, 100-150k and in immaculate condition aside from a marginally worn steering wheel and some damage on the drivers side seat bolster. Why would I pay up to twice as much for a car the same age with 3 times less mileage on it? What am I actually getting for my double-the-cash?
Mechanical components can be replaced yet you try making an interior look mint after 5 years and 50,000 miles of being Mums taxi.
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Damn the lack of an edit button. In summary, then, I believe it is age and not mileage which is the biggest killer/degrader of cars. Which is why I'd always pick newer/higher mileage over older/lower mileage.
My Mondeo has picked up more scratches in its 2.5 years of low mileage around town that it ever did in its 3 years of doing 30k a year before I bought it.
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I'm on the other side of the fence. I had, owned and driven quite a few 10 - 15 year old Japanese imports with small mileages and as long as they were maintained properly they were the sweetest, best behaving, most reliable machines on earth for me. On the other hand almost every approach to high milage car would lead to domino effect of mechanical failures. For the last decade or so you don't expect cars to rust, structural rot is pretty much thing of a past, bodypanels are very easy to replace. What kills cars in my eyes is start and stop traffic and lowered maintenance. And that's what, in my eyes, high milers do. I don't imagine them on a lonesome highway clocking miles towards sunset - I see them in what our motorways excel - start and stop mode around M25 all day every day. Noone will make me believe a car that does 35,000 miles a hear goes through three services a year, with every third being major service etc. It will be Kwik Fit slap on filter and oil change and an odd tyre replacement, you can almost bet most of the high milers never seen proper full service with all liquids and all consumables replaced throughout their life. That's just me. I will rather have older car, from private hands, with low miles and full genuine history than almost new car, with high miles and service history signed by bob, fleet manager.
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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v0n, couldn't agree more with you about not believing a high mileage fleet maintenance record. That's why I decided to buy new and keep long -- I know that I'm looking after it properly from the outset.
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I should have said in my previous post regarding my Saab 9-5 that I'm still covering somewhere about 22,000 niles a year, so depreciation and reliability are significant factors in my equation. I've got comfort, reliability and power on my side at the moment!
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"Noone will make me believe a car that does 35,000 miles a year goes through three services a year, with every third being major service etc."
My other half's Honda Accord diesel was new in March and is just about to get it's third service at 33k. So at that rate I'd like you to believe it's going to go through six services this year! I think it's a condition of many leases that you get the car serviced on time, certainly is with mine.
I'm in two minds about whether a high milage fleet car is a good buy though. All the Accord does is motorway stop start, and it's starting to look and feel like a three/four year old car now despite being only six months old (especially the paint quality, which is shocking). It's a workhorse - carries a lot of kit, and it's driven very hard. However, it doesn't want for anything - it just gets booked in and seen to, cost no barrier as it's all picked up by the leasing company. Other half has no complaints about it really... at least he didn't until he was introduced to my Golf!
I'd never had a brand new car before I got the Golf, and it is kind of reassuring to know that I'm going to get rid of it before it becomes an old and potentially less reliable car (also like all the toys of course!)... but when I was buying my own cars, I looked to buy ones that had already taken the depreciation hit but were still reliable enough not to cost me the earth in repairs. Polo had 110,000 miles on him when he went, and despite the cosmetic damage he had sufferred, he was still mechanically sound for a good few miles yet.
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Early/mid 90's Cavalier TD's needed an oil change every 4500 miles, I had colleagues doing 60,000 miles a year, on first name terms with the local Vauxhall dealer.
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Early/mid 90's Cavalier TD's needed an oil change every 4500 miles, I had colleagues doing 60,000 miles a year, on first name terms with the local Vauxhall dealer.
That's monthly oil changes!!! How times have changed...
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Indeed - although at that time, the recommended oil change interval for Vauxhall petrol engines under normal duty was only 9000 miles.
Number_Cruncher
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