The Celtic tiger is a distant memory here in Ireland......after a succession of newish and new cars I asked myself did I really need to be held to ransom by the bank/finance company?
Anyway while still driving an 06 car decided to look for a cheap runabout....looked at a few and spotted a Nisan micra '93 1 litre jobbie that looked promising. After a bit of haggling bought the car for 250 euro which is about 180 sterling.
I fully serviced the car and put on one new driveshaft boot and a rear torsion bar , total cost 40 euro..passed the mot with flying colours.I am paying 200 euro insurance and 165 road tax for the year...car is returning 48-55 mpg.
While I wont be going on any track days and wont be breaking any land speed records it gets me from a to be and is cheap and economical.......is this what they mean by "Bangernomics"?
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Yep, that's what they're talking about.
Fortunately I've managed to fend it off for now, however, not much longer, with an impending tightening of my budgets I'm going to be sticking an LPG conversion into my old Mondeo V6 and using that, equivalent consumption of about 40mpg and about £190 to tax for the year. I'm clinging onto those good times for as long as physically possible!
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Whats the conversion going to cost p?
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Iam guessing if the price of conversion is expensive it might defeat the whole purpose.(of cheap motoring)
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Telecaster - Sounds like I'm not the only one who's bought micra as a second car for runaround. I bought a 94/M plate Nissan Micra for £200, its got 160k+ miles on the clock but its in very good condition for the age. My friend who I bought it for had it for past 4 years and apart from usual wear/tear, he only got new waterpump in it and he covered 82k miles, all local round town driving (he's full time pizza delivery driver).
The insurance has cost me £180, road tax £66 and servicing which wasn't expensive at all. If that's what they mean by "Bangernomics" then I wonder why was I ignorant for so long? :-)
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Just to share a personal view and experience. I now have an aversion to borrowing money against anything which is certain to depreciate, even if the cost of that borrowing is cheap. Like many people to whom cars are interesting or even inportant, I used to take out finance deals to enable me to have a "better" or more desirable model. Now, my circumstances are such that my income is entirely self generated and I really have no idea from year to year how much I will earn. Some years are very good, others less so. I reached the conclusion that I wanted to rid myself of as many regular payments as possible and a major one of those, as with many people, was the car one. The way I achieved this ( quite a long time ago now ) was to keep my car well beyond the time when it was paid for but to keep saving the equivalent of the payment I had been making in a seperate "car fund" bank account. Eventually I had enough money in the account which when combined with the remaining value of my car, to buy my next one for "cash". It was clearly not as upmarket as the sort of cars I had previously been used to but was more than adequate, and what's more, was mine. I have since continued with this system and put away a percentage of my income as it comes in, into the car fund. The beauty of this arrangement from my point of view, is that if I have my sums right and all goes to plan there will be more than enough money for the next car when the time comes, or if required, an emergency fund for any purpose. Not exactly bangernomics but maybe self-preservation-onomics.
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A friend of mine is a handyman.
He had a Renault diesel van that was constantly breaking down/costing him a fortune. Anyway, the cam belt went and he was forced to use the early 90s Micra he had bought for his wife to learn to drive it for a few hundred quid.
Result, he loves the Micra and uses it as his work car - much better fuel consumption that the diesel, starts every time and hasn't cost him a penny.
MVP
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It's amazing how many tradespeople use vehicles bigger than they need, or drive 4x4s when all they really need is an escort van.
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You are so right Nick. That is why I use an estate car. It's a van in the week and a car at the weekend. Otherwise I would need two vehicles.
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Nissan micra.....very underestimated little car!
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