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The Car Thread


MadManMike

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Virtually ;) It's Harper Adams (Agricultural uni) and im doing Off Road vehicle design, so a Polo wont fit in very well :P

Ahhhhhh cool! My friend James is on his third year (iirc) doing that course - drives a nice 2a (plate's KWD somethingsomethingsomething) and a tdi Rover P4 a friend and i built before selling it to him.

Good choice.

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Looks like I'm possibly being made homeless - and with the garage attatched to the house, I wont have garage space / a deposit for somewhere to stay. It's all up in arms atm, trying to find a way to keep the mini. Trying to sell as much other stuff as possible but it's not looking hopeful atm!

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If you get it down to Sheffield your welcome to park it up in my dads warehouse :P

I think I posted a pic of an e type many moons ago? Well this was kinda what it started out like...

B5604559-16DD-4749-9243-DD2A2229DC3B-4149-000006B49578CCE6.jpg

1078BF5F-740B-4231-893E-F4F3CE93B024-4149-000006B48D9744BB.jpg

Well it finally got finished the other day and now looks like this....

8ABCED87-0829-460B-8847-94E42B78DD92-4149-000006B47D5AA0A5.jpg

Anybody else have opinions on 147s? Seems like a lot of car for the money!

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So the whole gay shoebox thing is going ahead then...

And as for a "better example"...didn't you guys say it needed shit loads of work done to it?

Just bits of bodywork immediatly, it needs the boot respraying and a touch up on the front bumper. Otherwise it is spot on for now. Until last week she was keeping it forever and ever, she only put two new T1R's on it last week and all the birthday presents I got her are Audi related lol

Lou was looking at a 3 year cost of the car, and realistically towards the end of next three years it will be due a cambelt on time interval and a clutch which is £750 of work. It only had a cambelt and metal water pump upgrade in January last year. Factor in those two jobs and it makes the difference between a new car and running the Audi so small it is worth going for a new car.

For the price I have offered it to Rainbird it is the best one you could buy. It is less than half what you paid for your standard 5 door pre facelift...

Edited by Pashley26
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I never get those cost comparisons between new cars and old ones. Is it bassically assuming that the depreciation on a new car will be lower than the running costs on an old one? If that's the case then surely you either have to be massively lucky with the choice of new car, or you're buying the wrong old ones. Not arguing in the slightest, I just can't even begin to imagine how buying a new car can be cheaper than running an old one.

If I sold my Passat tomorrow, with the exception of diesel, all the running costs and maintenance for ~15k, including MOT and Tax and needing no work in the immediate future would come in at well under £400, if you can loose less than that through interest and depreciation on a new car I want to know how! (over 1 year and 15k). I know diesel Passats are renowned for being tough and cheap to run, but I still can't see how it works unless you're paying through your arse for labor on old stuff. Plus this is before you take into account that I could probably sell my Passat for over twice what I paid for it, completely cancelling that £400, but then that's not a normal situation, so I won't count that!

Edited by RobinJI
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My focus is still experiencing lag low down, seems like over exaggerated turbo lag.

I disconnected the MAF for a bit and went for a drive and it picked up much better low down, barely any lag and it just kicked in instantly however the top end had no boost. Is this normal when you disconnect the MAF (for it to pick up better but have no top end power).

I've suspected the MAF to be dodgy from day one as it was caked in shite like when you leave batteries in a remote for years and it goes all green. I've got another one on the way but just wanted to find out, like learning :) ha

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I never get those cost comparisons between new cars and old ones. Is it bassically assuming that the depreciation on a new car will be lower than the running costs on an old one? If that's the case then surely you either have to be massively lucky with the choice of new car, or you're buying the wrong old ones. Not arguing in the slightest, I just can't even begin to imagine how buying a new car can be cheaper than running an old one.

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me either. My car is 4 years old now and it's losing around £100 / month in value, and I still have to buy new tyres / brake pads / MOTs / Services on top of that. Add it all up and it's way more expensive than running an old car. But then it's newer (with all the added modern features) and probably more reliable. I don't mind paying extra for that, but don't kid yourself that a new car is cheaper.

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Ouch, my car cost £400, has a scrap value of ~£200 and had £100 worth of tax on it, so literally the most I could loose is £100 :P

Like you say, I completely understand that not everyone wants to drive something like my car, I'm not saying they should, and even I'll probably upgrade to something a little more image friendly sooner or later, but yeah, I can't see how it can be a financially beneficial decision.

With regards to reliability, I've got a bit of a thing that I prefer something that's tried and tested than something that's not proved its self yet. My car's covered 167000 miles so far with no major work, and because of that I can pretty much guarantee that there's no manufacturing issues waiting to rear their heads under the skin, as they'd likely have been shown up already, it's a car that will eventually die of simply wearing out, rather than catastrophic fault, and that's easy to predict, and to be honest, quite easy to prevent as it's such a simple car. BMW actually used to buy back high mileage engines to use for racing, as they knew that if the engine had managed a few hundred thousand miles, the block/heads casting was almost certainly fault free and could be trusted with the power increases.

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No, it's literally not.

I do this all day every day with people lol, the figure do add up.

We worked out that averaged over 3 years Lou pays £247 a month to drive the Audi all in. She paid £3000 on the Audi three years ago, and it is worth about £1800 now. In a further three years time it will be worth £-800 IMO.

The Fiat is costing Lou a £1250 deposit and as a company on a friends and family deal we are putting in £1750, so her total deposit is £3000 on a £12650 car, she is paying £130.47 a month over 24 months with an optional final payment of £6607.40.

In the next 24 months the car is covered under an all inclusive warranty (excluding wear and tear items), has no MOT, is £30 a year to tax and will not need tires/brake pads/other consumables because she does about 6000 miles a year.

At the end of the agreement she is left with a £6607.40 balance to either pay outright or re-finance, she can just give the car back and not pay a penny, she can sell the car private and pocket the difference or she can part exchange the car and use the equity to start a new agreement. That is where the confusion comes in and is where a lot of people get confused.

Private the car will probably sell for £8500 in two years time, only showing £4100 depreciation, which lets face it is f**king good considering the CURRENT climate. That's from looking on ebay/autotrade/pistonheads. The car will probably trade in for about £7500/8000 and RETAIL on a forecourt for about £9500 in two years time. Still showing more equity than her Audi will be worth in two years time in both instances.

During that 24 months she would save £400 for the first year and roughly £300 the second year on her CURRENT insurance premium, as well as averaging a realistic 45mpg where as currently she averages 26mpg because she drive the car like a fanny everywhere because it has a turbo. She spends roughly £160 a month, and averages about 650/660 miles a month in the Audi. The fuel saving for the 500 is over £60 and will bring her fuel bill to below £100 a month. That's a potential fuel saving of circa £700 a year. That's without the £50 a year to MOT, and without the £185 a year saving on taxing the Audi.

All in all, if you drive a modified turbo car and want something which is wooshy and fast as f**k then it costs. In maintenance and running costs. For the level of performance it offers and the quality of the car the Audi is by far one of the most cost effective and cheapest ways of having a fast car on a shoe string. That's why our entire circle of friends have hero worshiped them for years.

But it's reached a point with Lou now where we are getting old, and we want to start saving to finish out house so we can look to buying a second, and we want to be able to have more adult things in life. I wouldn't say that the Audi is so expensive it is prohibiting those things, but it is an immediate luxury which isn't necessary anymore. Seeing as Lou and I do about 7000 give or take miles a year of stop start traffic and a twice a month 50 mile round trip to see her mum.

Which is why I have taken the decision to order Lou a new 500, and will be putting my BMW into storage and entering the company car scheme.

An excellent advert for selling the Audi I know; but economy isn't the reason why you'd but the Audi. To be pimp as f**k and to have a fast car is the only reason there. :)

Edited by Pashley26
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That's all perfectly fair, and I wasn't criticizing your decision in the slightest, looks like a good bet really :)

Buuuut it's not an answer to my question, its an answer as to why driving a small city car with average performance is cheaper than driving a modified performance sports-hatch. It's also cheaper than taking the private chopper, not really a relevant comparison though ;) I'd be curious to see whether there would be any saving getting a new 500 in comparison to say, an equivalent 7 year old car. (I'd say 7 years old is still new enough to be image friendly if you're concerned about that sort of thing. I'm just curious if there's actually any benefit without downgrading your car. I know you do this for work, hence why I was asking really, as you'll know the score. (even if you might be a little biased ;))

Edited by RobinJI
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I should think your Passat is less than a third of the monthly cost of the 500; but Lou doesn't want an old car.

When it comes to a something which is "middle aged" it is a bit harder, I would say the used car would pip the new car on monthly costs. Probably be about a third cheaper from what I see.

7 year old cars had very little focus on emissions, fuel economy wasn't quite such a worry either. But the initial outlay was less because they were cheaper. Compare something like a 7 year old Fiesta to a new Fiesta and depending on the deal you got on the new car I can't see much financial benefit to it.

Cars which are less than 5 years old on average depreciate at £175 a month, after that the figure drops to around £100 from a trade in point of view. The retail market is much slower.

Edited by Pashley26
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Yeah, like I say, not questioning Jardo/Lous decision in the slightest, it seems to make sense, and like I also said, I get that what I'm doing isn't what other people want to do, really I was just curious about new cars vs cars that have already taking most of the depreciation hit.

Jardo, I'm sorry but I really wouldn't agree that 7 year old cars have no focus on emission or fuel economy, that's late 2005, a large chunk of petrol cars at that age will be direct injection and/or turbo, and virtually all diesels will be common-rail with variable vain turbos and DPF's, which are the main fuel/emission saving points to have become commonplace in the last decade. Between a 2012 Golf GTI and a 2005 one there's an 9% difference in economy and 11% in CO2, noticeable, but not exactly drastic, and that's one of the few cars that's not gained a large chunk of weight in that time.

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No need to be concerned about the ethical side of emissions due to age when buying any car really anyway, if you didn't buy it someone else would, and if no-one else did, then it being scrapped and replaced with a new car would be much more environmentally harmful than the slightly higher emissions caused by it being a little older, giving them all a longer lifespan would be pretty much the most environmentally conscious thing we could do to cars on the whole at the moment from what I've seen of LCA's, Technology's simply not moving fast enough for the small improvements in emissions to outweigh the manufacturing impact caused by the frankly pathetic/greedy 8 to 10 year design life. That and stop putting so much heavy pointless gadgetry in them (and shit hybrids like mk1 Priuses definitely fall into that 'pointless gadgetry' category.)

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