17 and mobile

Tiny points? You said it was cheap. It isn't.

I suppose this points up that bangernomics is essentially subjective. I've always assumed it means the price you're prepared to pay in the hope that you'll get at least a year out of the car, while accepting the risk that you might have to scrap it. I'd put that at about £1,000, but some of you might be willing to go higher than that.

I guess I look at it as a bit more of a formula, if you buy a car for £1500 that was originally £15000 when new, and if it costs you another £1500 in repairs and maintenance over the next three years, then that's sort of ok by me. If you buy a car for £5000 that was originally £50000 and it costs another £5000 to keep on the road for a few years, then that's ok too.

Where people fall down is expecting the originally 50 grand car to be as cheap to maintain as the 15 grand one.

I've always bought cars that I could easily afford at the time, in the knowledge that if they did cost me something more in the future I'd not be too caught out financially by that. 

I wouldn’t call it denial. And I think you’re applying the concept of inflation wrongly here. Cars now are cheaper in real terms than they’ve ever been. My Escort was £6,600 new in November 1989 and used to cost me £173.86 a month in repayments. (I didn’t have to look that up; it’s engraved on my memory.) There were cheaper options, but not many and not by much.

Today I could buy a Dacia Sandero, with airbags, two more doors and air conditioning, for £8,995 — £3,600 in 1989 money. And rock-bottom interest rates make the repayments even more affordable. The same is true right up the scale; there’s no way somebody at my modest corporate level in 1989 would have an upper-range Mercedes, even an ageing one, but I have one and it’s because all cars are cheap nowadays.

And when new cars are cheap, old cars need to be cheap too. So the £500 rock-bottom that most usable cars settle at has barely moved for 20 years, while dealers of all kinds make their money from add-on warranties and commissions from finance providers. And they do have to hedge against buyers’ comeback under Consumer Rights. So yes, you can argue that that Civic is at the low end of the price range for a car from a dealer, but most of what you’re paying isn’t for the car and will evaporate once it turns out to be sound. It’s still three times the price of a minimally usable car, so I still don’t think it’s cheap.

There are 93 private adverts, nationwide, on autotrader for all cars up to £500, non-Cat S etc, and there isn't a filter to remove those with no or little MOT. 93. It's very difficult to find a useable £500 car now. The market is pricing used cars higher than it was a year ago even, particularly at thebottom end of the market. But sure, I don't understand inflation.

Now filter to "Below group 10 insurance", as we're talking spcifically about cars for kids here, and the number goes down to 48.

Buy your lad a decent car for £500, quickly and easily (i.e. not flying to Aberdeen to collect it) and you have my unending admiration. Untermenschen such as myself may consider raising the budget a little to find more options and make life a bit easier.

Hard to hate it at that price. If someone just needed a car to do a job for a while that would be a wee cracker. Sort of thing that would ideal for a student, or to leave at one's holiday home in the south of France...
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