Those people have, largely, used it as an excuse to move up in car. The Omega used to be a £2-3k purchase. It is now a sub £500 way to avoid walking.
if you set a budget of sub £500 ,you'd expect maybe 12 months motoring at best then scrap what ever you buy ,recovering £100 in scrap value ,so 400/12 months =£33 a month , if your budget was that tight, you'd have to be insane to buy a car that does 25 MPG
Replacing an Omega is now a £3-500 decision. Buying a 5 year old Jag or Merc or Passat is a lifestyle choice pure and simple.
Driving an omega is a lifestyle choice , some of us are happy to pay and do work on an omega because we like RWD comfy vauxhall barges.
If it was all down to cost alone, no one would drive big thirsty cars, some want a nice shiny car to impress everyone, I don't care what others think about the car i drive, some will think "nice old vauxhall, wish i still had mine," lost count of how many times i heard that over the years
, some will look at the reg plate and think I'm a pauper .
I used to work for a large car lease company ,drove everything going at the time,from ford to merc to porche ,even older PX cars at the time, the car i chose was a vauxhall carlton, drove them for 18 years as a daily drive ,also went to meets and shows. due to health reasons (not rust because i cared for my carlton) i had to move to an auto, i found an omega . i will spend time and money way beyond economic sense to keep said omega as a daily, because i like it.
a few members of this forum have had omegas ,they went rusty or required expensive repairs and chose to move on to other cars which better suite their budget and needs, fair enough,but why slagging off omegas as worthless rot boxes ?
There are also enthusiasts with omegas that have them because they like them.
this thread is about rust, if you spend time and money on rust prevention, you can extend the life of a car you like . if it was an e type jag with rust and not an omega ,would you say it's worthless
because it needs a bit of welding and rust treatment ? probably not
would i want to swap driving an omega for driving an e type jag , if money where no object , good god no !
but if money was no object , i'd nip down to asda and buy myself a new leg ,so i can drive a manual again