I'd be very tempted by a scooter - 125cc means it'll do 60mph+ and you can carry a laptop and a few things in your rucksack without the same pain as having to pedal every extra ounce.
Car parking at my local station is £4 a day (I think) so it's cycling for me, 2½ miles each way. But if I've got something to carry, an engine is very useful!
If you really want a car I'd go for an early 1990s Nissan. Condition is more important than spec for this money but a late Nissan Sunny or something equally unloved but very reliable is where I'd be. Micras are desirable(ish) but the slightly bigger cars aren't.
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So if you cycle to the station and the train has been cancelled or heavily delayed (which from my experience
with trains is more often than not), you're pretty stuck. At least in the car you can carry on and complete the journey.
Not all stations have safe places to park bikes either.
I use SWMBO's car as a 2nd car and that is a 1.1 petrol 205. Cost peanuts, and has been reliable over the past couple
of years. Dead easy to maintain, nothing much on there to go wrong. Even the dreaded cam-belt change only took me
an hour.
This the sort of job for an electric car. Short distance, not much grunt needed. Pity they are so rare and expensive,
or nick a milk float.
Or, how about a tuk-tuk? Little engine, keeps you dry, storage space, no need to balance!
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If you want to go car route, how about a Volvo 440?
Get a nice one for £400 - £500.
Desperately unfashionable so not nickable and cheap to insure.
Decent toys and good reliability.
HTH,
Alex.
--
Dr Alex Mears
MG BGT 1971
If you are in a hole stop digging...unless
you are a miner.
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"...the train has been cancelled or heavily delayed (which from my experience with trains is more often than not)..."
Really? More than 50% of trains are either cancelled or heavily delayed? What line are you on?
V
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I don't have a particular usual line, as my train journeys tend to be pretty much one-off trips and often to
and from somewhere new. But I reckon on 25% of the times the train has turned up within 5 minutes
of when it is due; and 50% of the time over 40 minutes late. Maybe I'm just unlucky and pick rubbish
routes, or the bad times of the week. Most of them have been in the SE of England.
On the rare occasions I've had to take a commuter train (which usually involves dumping my annual
salary into the ticket machine) the punctuality has been better, but I've sometimes not been able
to physically get on the train due to it being overcrowded (and I can get pretty assertive when it
comes to getting people to budge in).
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My experience of trains since I moved out of the big smoke is 100% failure, based on the one attempt I've made to go into work by train. Broken down engine at Ascot meant no service from Martins Heron. Not a great introduction to our nation's great railways.
At some point in the future I might give it another go - see if the train company can reduce their failure rate to 50%.
Back on topic - there are two routes you can take car-wise. Something looked-after and Japanese will hopefully not need much maintenance. My 93 Micra never missed a beat, for example. Alternatively, something from Ford or Vauxhall may require a bit more work, but parts should be easily obtainable and cheap.
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"Something looked-after and Japanese will hopefully not need much maintenance..."
This is exactly what you're after. A car that "may require a bit more work" is likely to announce the need for work by not getting you to the station of a morning. You have to take into account the cost and inconvenience of not getting to work due to the breakdown, plus getting the car to and from the garage for repair afterwards.
Which brings us back to buying on condition, and then getting shut as soon as trouble looms on the horizon. And, at £1000, you'll probably make most of that back come resale time.
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I used to try and get the train to work, even though it was quicker and cheaper to drive. My nearest station is 2 miles, and so I cycled.
The problems came when it would be tipping it down with rain in the morning (surprisingly often when you need to cycle) and so I would have to drive to the station. The £3.50 it would cost to park would be the final financial nail in the coffin of going by train. Bus not an option (1 every hour!).
Parking at train stations should be free (they could give you a free parking permit with your train ticket to match the days on your ticket whether daily or season, so that would stop shoppers filling the car park). Less stick, more carrot.
Anyway, back to the thread, my station car was a 2CV. It seems to have appreciated in value, never fails to start, has never been nicked, is cheap to run and fun to drive. 50mph easy. I now drive to work for the reasons outlined above, but keep the 2CV for the odd station run.
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">Parking at train stations should be free (they could give you a free parking permit with your train ticket to match the days on your ticket whether daily or season, so that would stop shoppers filling the car park). Less stick, more carrot.<"
Absolutely, but that would need joined up thinking. I moved in the early 1990s to be within walking distance of a train station with a reliable, frequent and cost effective train service to the various Temples of Mammon. And for two years it was. I now drive most of the way in, the very thing I was trying to avoid. Words fail me. Oddly enough, the suburban rail service that I use for the last bit is very reliable, within one minute of advertised departure time all this year with the exception of the day-that-it-was-windy.
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my wifes season ticket costs £2,500 and her annual parking ticket is £675, but i end up dropping her off at the station most days. Madness......
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Thanks all who actually suggested cars. Old Petrol Pug's and Japanese cars seems a good start, which confirms my first thoughts
I did a couple of replies that got lost in the traffic, pointing out that the journey is in fact three miles, not two. I also pointed out that I am not concerned by the health benefits of cycling, given that my other vehicle is a Concept 2 rowing machine and I probably do more miles on that than I will in the car!
Pre-thread, I also discounted a moped given what I have to carry and also the fact that after costs of getting helmet, protective clothing, factoring increased risk to me yet zero carrying ability, an old car would be far more useful.
I am at least encouraged by the fact that no-one suggested a Mondeo TDCi as the solution.
Cheers all
p.s. Thought the mods knocked off troll-like / irrelevant posts here. Maybe that's just for non regular Backroomers.
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oh - a Mondeo TDCi would be totally ideal ! :-)
Sorry the thread seemed incomplete without it.
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Sings: "Are you Cheddar in disguise?"
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">Sings: "Are you Cheddar in disguise?"<"
Two Cheddars? :-0
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">is in fact three miles, not two.<"
Excuses. Can you not row to the station then? I could never see point of Concept2, all that effort and you remain in the same place.
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Oh that'll happen as global warming kicks in......(joke!)
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......p.s. Thought the mods knocked off troll-like / irrelevant posts here. Maybe that's just for non regular Backroomers......
Looking back through the thread, I don´t think anyone has been ´trolling´ or being unusually irrelevant. Sorry if you´re disappointed with the free advice you´ve asked for and received :-)
Regards
Barchettaman
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Jase, don't worry about it. You get lots of advice, but as everyone has their own drum to thump, you have to filter it a little!
Some years ago, when I posted that we needed a car for the school run, I had loads of replies telling me that the kids should walk to school. They completely ignored the fact that the school was 5 miles away in rural countryside.
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Old tractor.
£500. No tax, no MOT, insurance £26 pa, no depreciation. Totally reliable.
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"p.s. Thought the mods knocked off troll-like / irrelevant posts here. Maybe that's just for non regular Backroomers."
Is this a pop at the people who suggested bikes, because that answer didn't fit in with your preconceived notion that a car was the answer? If you consider it troll-like or irrelevant to suggest a way to save you £1,700 or so a year, then don't bother asking next time; it's clearly a waste of anyone's time to try to craft a response.
Ingrate.
V
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Barchettaman suggested a bike, reasonably enough, and Jase, equally reasonably, explained (third post) why that wasn't an option. You can't blame him for being irritated when people went on and on suggesting a bike after that..
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"You can't blame him for being irritated when people went on and on suggesting a bike after that.."
And some of us, very reasonably suggested reasons that might outweigh his stated ones (like saving £1,700 very conservatively). Hardly enough to be accused of trolling. To be blunt. if anyone trolled, it was Jase with an accusation that we were trolling.
From Wikipedia: "In Internet terminology, a troll is someone who intentionally posts derogatory or otherwise inflammatory messages about sensitive topics in an established online community such as an online discussion forum to bait users into responding"
Derogatory - where? Inflammatory - where? Sensitive topics - where? To bait users into responding - no, some fairly reasoned arguments, I thought, largely factually based and to some extent based on personal experience.
Anyways, he'll know where to look for help next time he wants advice.
V
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">Old tractor. <"
Red diesel?
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nsu moped
on mucky fat
only kidding ;-}
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Not wanting to sound like a salesman but,
I'm selling my 1993 Nissan Sunny 1.6 SLX for £395,
cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item...4
MoT till October, Tax til end of month and Sony face-off CD player.
Chris
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nice looking old car but
a-------dear insurance for what it is
b........£180 a year road tax
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Thanks for the offer Chris White. Backroomers selling cars (local to Poole) I'll be looking out for - but it needs to be under 1.5ish litres to get £115 a year tax as pointed out by Bell Boy!
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You know, I've never had a such a nightmare selling a car before this one (but then I've never sold a car that's worth so little.....)
I think Bell Boy's hit the nail on the head that with it being over 1.5 litres (the road tax) and the insurance costs the value of the car is probably less than £395.......
Good luck with your search Jase
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Old tractor. £500. No tax, no MOT, insurance £26 pa, no depreciation. Totally reliable.
Yes, but I thnk it would have trouble reaching the 50 mph that the OP required
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p.s. Thought the mods knocked off troll-like / irrelevant posts here. Maybe that's just for non regular Backroomers.
IMO the Mods have enough on their hands without editing out threads that drift off the subject.
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Nissan Micra. If it's already been mentioned and discounted I apologise, but I didn't see on a skim. Seems the ideal car to do this - 1.0 engine would be fine too. Cheap to run, if it goes wrong there's loads in the scrapyards, and would almost definately last 2 years in an economical manner.
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move nearer to the station , or even better move nearer to work and walk!
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There is always a difficulty in responding to threads that ask for advice but stipulating a list of apparently or probably incompatible pre-conditions. One suspects that some of them are not actually entirely serious;
For example, "Performance, image, refinement, glamour, toys all utterly irrelevant" is not true. I suspect the OP would draw the line at a rusty wreck with bits of door seal trailing on the ground, even though the car might meet all the other criteria. Supposing I offered him a classic heap for £100, exempt from road tax, recent MOT, £75 insurance, reliable, just capable of 50 mph. Would he consider it suitable? No, because despite what we all pretend to ourselves, image is important.
So once you reconsider the question in the light that not all the pre-requisites are necessarily quite as stated, it becomes fair to offer suggestions that fall short in one or two ways, but overall might be worthy of consideration in the broad spirit of the original enquiry.
Thus a bike might not be ideal in bad weather, and can't do 50 mph, but more than meets all the other criteria.
A cheap car might meet these criteria, but not be sufficiently reliable.
A tractor (offered tongue in cheek btw) meets all the criteria apart from speed (only 25 mph).
But we all know what the final choice will be regardless of any advice offered. Any car, bought from a presumed reliable source such as a friend, costing £750.
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In response to Cliff Pope - rusty wreck no, classic heap no probs conceptually, but I would be nervous about it's ability to start in the rain / winter so maybe no on that front. I have no requirement for image whatsoever. We have a CMax as our proper family car to manage 99.9% of our automotive family requirements except get to station and back.
A friend has managed 3yrs in a 1985 Tercel. The other poster I think 6 yrs in a Fiat Cinq Sporting. These are my heroes in this instance.
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