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General Car Chat / Re: Can I buy one?
« on: 27 February 2024, 15:00:36 »
This is exactly right. It's all very well saying you should run an older XYorZ but when any kind of minor repair at a garage, or even routine items like suspension bushes runs well into three figures it makes much less sense to buy cheaper older cars.
For a lot of people a £500 bill (easily achieved these days) will quickly become £6-700 by the time the credit card company has had its due.
Economics like these are why large and expensive cars always depreciated quickly, before their value dropped through the floor for the third or fourth owner. The problem now is that all cars have the complicated, expensive and unreliable 'extras' that was only fitted on the high-end stuff. Which makes the margins extra thin for an ordinary car, so even a car less than ten years old can easily need a couple of four figure jobs(£1000 clutches, £1500 timing belts, water damaged electrics etc, etc) that previous owners wouldn't pay for. Just consider what we used to recommend for a 15 year old £1000 Omega, but triple the cost and time involved to do the work at £75/hour.