Defender 90. Bought Feb 07 for £3350, spent £50 on CD player, sold August 07 for £5000. Only other costs were fuel and insurance. Profit paid for August & Sept in sunny California, AND the month of Feb 08 skiing in California.
Worst was an H reg Saab 9000 2.3 Turbo top o't range. Bought as ex lease at 3 years old for £10k. Sold 4 years later for only £6500....but the fuel costs, even in those days, didn't bear thinking about.
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Circa 1977. Bought a Triumph Spitfire for £250. Ran it for a year. Sold it for £350. Been trying to repeat the exercise in percentage or even actual terms ever since. To no avail :-(
One day I'm going to add up or at least guesstimate what being a "motorist" has cost me so far. Or maybe I won't. Suspect it could trigger deep depression! Better to take the view that most of it was money well spent on something I have had much pleasure from.
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>Triumph Spitfire
It wasn't yellow, was it?
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Best: Peugeot 406 2.0 HDi - bought for £1,650 and sold on for £1,650 after six months and 12k miles. Zero depreciation but a fair bit on servicing.
In reverse order then
98 BMW 523i - bought for £2,000 - sold for £1,260 after 8k in 10 months. 9.25ppm.
96 406 1.9 TD - bought for £1,800 - sold for £1,200 after 30k in 18 months. 2ppm.
89 Renault R19 - bought for £475 - sold for £345 after 14k in 14 months. 1ppm.
94 Peugeot 306 DT sedan - bought for £495 - sold for £450 after 9k in 10 months. 0.5ppm.
All, with the possible exception of the BMW, were in better condition when sold on and had a fair bit spent on maintenance - and the BMW was cosmetically nicer but had too many minor faults ever to be fixed at any realistic price (i.e., less than twice the cost to change into a mint example).
Current Clio I estimate to be about 9.4ppm over the life of the four year finance deal but hopefully little or nothing in unscheduled maintenance or cosmetic improvement.
Edited by DavidHM on 15/04/2008 at 00:41
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I bought a Morris 1000 for £150 and sold it on for £500 , not bad profit percentage wise.
My dad did well though, some years ago he bought a Plymouth Barracuda for £700, sold the number plate off it for £2000 , used some of this money to pay for a respray then sold it on for £3500.
Of course we have both lost fortunes on every other car deal ever done.
Losing a couple of grand over a year on a Fiat Bravo is the worst I remember, if you don't count writing off a car that was only insured 3rd party.
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No, it was navy blue. Bought and sold in Edinburgh.
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>spitfire
I bought my first car (a yellow Spitfire) for £350 at the tender age of 18. It was the first car I looked at and I paid full asking price! Unsurprisingly, it was a nail and failed the MOT terminally 4 months later. However, over the next couple of years, in my uni holidays, I stripped all the good bits off and sold off the very rotten body tub for £25. Then I bought an abandoned restoration project (red body) for £90 which had all the bits I wanted. I cobbled it all together, sprayed up the remaining yellow bits with tins of red paint from Halfords, brush painted the inside and the underneath with Hammerite and set off with a fresh MOT for a month camping round Europe with my girlfriend.
The smile has still not faded and I still have the car 20 years later!
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Knowledge I gathered from this thread
Lowest loss/gain - buy oldest cars as possible
Worst loss - buy as new-ish cars as possible
In the limiting case, buying a brand new car means best guaranteed loss.
:)
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You've hit the nail on the head!
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I've had two good ones, both with bangers and both in the early days of my driving career.
Acquired a running, but badly misfiring Rover 216 EFi VDP for "what the scrapman offered" -£25
Towed it home.
Cleaned up the throttle pot which cured the misfire.
Fixed the blowing exhaust with a beer can and two clamps.
Sanded and filled the rust spots on the bottom of both front doors and resprayed them from the rubbing strip down (looked quite good actually)
Got a new window motor and regulator from a scrappie for £30 to fix the non functioning drivers side window.
Spent hours cleaning and treating the leather (came up A1) and detailing the car.
Put her in for MOT and she sailed it.
Thought about keeping it, but decided it just wasn't me.
Sold in Autotrader in 2 days to the first guy that came to see it for £800.
The other was when one of my sisters friends' dad had an old Sierra that had just failed its MOT on terminal rot, plus the engine was knocking badly. It had just had four new Goodyears put on it, plus a load of other new parts, so I asked him how much for the bits I wanted, as I was running an identical one at the time. He said, take the whole car for the £30 he was being offered by the scrappie.
Deal done, I had the wheels and tyres, and several hundred quids worth of other spares out of it (half filled an 8'x10' shed) Stripped off all the engine ancillaries, switchgear, light clusters, trim, mirrors etc. Even took the 2 gallons of fuel that were in the tank.
Neighbour approaches and asks what's the gearbox like? "Fine" I say. "Will you take £150 for it?" "If you take it out, no problem." We shake on it. Next day he turns up with a couple of mates, hands over £150 in notes and they set to work.
This done, I call the local breakers. One happens to be doing a couple of collections in the area at the time, and after a little negotiation they swing by 20 minutes later, and hoist what's left onto the back of the truck, and off it goes. Four new tyres, enough spares to keep mine going for years, 2 gallons of petrol and £120 in cash profit.
I was smiling for weeks.
Cheers
DP
Edited by DP on 15/04/2008 at 14:17
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1965 Lotus Elan Series 2.
Bought for £550 in 1974.
Sold (dismantled) for £4300 in 1994. With new Lotus chassis and re-built engine.
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