Buying a car

Octafish

Snap said:

Emp_Fab said:

Snap said:

Emp_Fab said:

@steveledzep ; For a moment there I thought you'd found my car.  It's lovely.  Unfortunately, it's also thirsty at 31mpg and out of my budget at 8 grand.  Because I'm not certain an auto convertible is likely to be my 'keeper' car, I've put a limit of 4K on the budget.

MPG figures are a load of nonsense mate, you know that. We've got one that's supposed to do about 70mpg. It does more like 45. Does MPG on a 1 or 2 grand car really matter? If you are doing enough mileage to make MPG matter, if the car is a cheapo, it will pack up before your notice the cost of fuel in your pocket, due to the high mileage.

In reality, I don't think differences of 10 of 15 MPG make enough difference in running costs to the average motorist. I honestly believe its a marketing ploy that we have been coerced into believing is important, by years of advertising. the difference in real world MPG between most cars is not that big in real terms IMHO

I'm talking about real mpg figures, not the nonsense claimed by the manufacturers. https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/real-mpg/

It does make a difference, irrespective of the value of the car.  A motor that only does 30mpg is going to cost me twice as much in go juice as one that does 60mpg. 

Yes, but your real world MPG difference won't be 30mg, not between the sort of cars you are talking about. It might be 10 or so. The difference you save in your pocket could be very little depending on your mileage. Say you do 5000 miles a year. One car does 30 mpg, another does 40. One costs you 166 gallons, one cost you 125. 41 gallons difference a year. That's 3.4 gallons a month, just over 19 quid a month. Fiver a week. A pint and a bit of beer.

Really worth bothering about?

So true, reminds me of when supermarkets were regularly giving out 5p off a litre to shoppers spending over £40 or so on shopping. These goons (who often appeared to be low-mileage pensionsers) would then queue up, engine running, clogging the petrol station forecourt to fill up with 50 or so litres to save themselves a grand total £2.50 .

crunchman

LordOxygen said:

10000 miles a year...

40mpg in a petrol car at £1.285 a ltr 
=£1460 a year

55mpg in a diesel car at £1.33 a ltr
=£1100

Diesel saves £30 a month.

Factor in higher purchase price, higher servicing costs, potential for spendy repairs, and the fact all 4 pot diesels are shit to drive (i drive hire cars for work quite often), they stink, rattle when cold and get your hands sticky when filling up and that £30 a month doesn't look so tempting. Certianly not to me anyway.
Not to mention the antisocial nature of diesel emissions in urban areas.

25000+ miles on the motoway is where it starts to make sense, (and even then id pay more not to drive an oil burner.)

Good stuff but you left out a couple of things.

The big one is depreciation.  There is a big risk of yor diesel being worth very little when you come to sell it.  Older second hand diesels are getting very hard to shift.

A more minor thing is that, where I live, you also have to pay extra for the resident's parking on a diesel.  It's £50 a year extra over a petrol.  Electric/hybrid are cheaper than petrol.  Most London boroughs are going down that route now.

Unless you are doing very big miles on the motorway, so that the savings will outweigh the potential depreciation, you would have to be mental to buy a diesel.

LordOxygen

All regular combustion engine cars have massive depreciation curves and are only set to get worse.
If you're spending £5k on what will be an old banger in another 3-5 yrs anyway depreciation is a given and a moot point imo.

Nitefly

Octafish said:

So true, reminds me of when supermarkets were regularly giving out 5p off a litre to shoppers spending over £40 or so on shopping. These goons (who often appeared to be low-mileage pensionsers) would then queue up, engine running, clogging the petrol station forecourt to fill up with 50 or so litres to save themselves a grand total £2.50 .

@Octafish so "low-mileage pensioners" are "goons", are we?  Keep that up pal, and I'm going to start flagging you.

Apply Drew's rule to that, and change "pensioners" to "black people".

Octafish

Nitefly said:

Octafish said:

So true, reminds me of when supermarkets were regularly giving out 5p off a litre to shoppers spending over £40 or so on shopping. These goons (who often appeared to be low-mileage pensionsers) would then queue up, engine running, clogging the petrol station forecourt to fill up with 50 or so litres to save themselves a grand total £2.50 .

@Octafish so "low-mileage pensioners" are "goons", are we?  Keep that up pal, and I'm going to start flagging you.

Apply Drew's rule to that, and change "pensioners" to "black people".

Errr no, did I say low mileage pensioners are goons? Try reading it again . Besides goon is hardly the most offensive of terms and was used with a pinch of jest, but feel free to flag me or put me on ignore.....

celentium

Low mileage black people? What? 

strtdv

Depends what you want. I wanted a nicely specced Golf so the options were GTi, R and GTD.

I wanted an estate so that narrowed it down to the R or the GTD. 

I do 15k miles per year.
Real world MPG on the R is about 32.
Real world MPG on the GTD is 57.
That's £1580 on fuel for the GTD and £2750 in the R

Over 3 years that's £3.5k

As far as "expensive servicing" goes, the R has an expensive Haldex 4WD system, and my GTD has inclusive servicing for the next 2 years (4wd system is excluded from servicing packs)

Depreciation is a consideration, but honestly who wants to buy a 65k mile R? On the GTD the higher mileage is expected. If you're doing reasonable miles the depreciation on a petrol is higher than for diesel.

As well as that I want the ability to occasionally tow a trailer. Diesels generally have much higher towing capacity than petrols, and in the case of the R it actually isn't allowed to tow at all.

Diesel isn't right for everyone, but it has plenty of plus points

LordOxygen

strtdv said:

Depends what you want. I wanted a nicely specced Golf so the options were GTi, R and GTD.

I wanted an estate so that narrowed it down to the R or the GTD. 

I do 15k miles per year.
Real world MPG on the R is about 32.
Real world MPG on the GTD is 57.
That's £1580 on fuel for the GTD and £2750 in the R

Over 3 years that's £3.5k

As far as "expensive servicing" goes, the R has an expensive Haldex 4WD system, and my GTD has inclusive servicing for the next 2 years (4wd system is excluded from servicing packs)

Depreciation is a consideration, but honestly who wants to buy a 65k mile R? On the GTD the higher mileage is expected. If you're doing reasonable miles the depreciation on a petrol is higher than for diesel.

As well as that I want the ability to occasionally tow a trailer. Diesels generally have much higher towing capacity than petrols, and in the case of the R it actually isn't allowed to tow at all.

Diesel isn't right for everyone, but it has plenty of plus points

Lols, golf R is a 320 bhp car. The diesel gt makes nearly half that power. Hardly a fair comparison when it comes to fuel consumption is it?

RaymondLin

Somebody buy this !

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201905027539783?onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly New&onesearchad=New&make=TOYOTA&radius=1500&sort=sponsored&postcode=hr11hb&price-from=500&model=SUPRA&advertising-location=at_cars&body-type=Coupe&page=1

Emp_Fab

Hang on.... how the hell did we end up in Racism Alley from relative fuel consumption? LOL

strtdv

Lols, golf R is a 320 bhp car. The diesel gt makes nearly half that power. Hardly a fair comparison when it comes to fuel consumption is it?

Show me another nicely specced Golf estate for around £20k used. Post WLTP the R makes 290. There's no denying it's quicker, but in terms of spec and interior the cars are virtually identical.

Plenty of other similar comparisons you could make. Do you want an S4 doing real world 28mpg or an A6 biturbo diesel doing 47mpg. Do you want a 440i or a faster 435d for the same money and much lower running costs?

Basically anyone who wants a "nice" car but doesn't want high running costs should probably consider a diesel.

Ok, if you're shopping for a bargain basement car and doing less than 10k miles a year it doesn't make sense to buy a more expensive brand new diesel and hope to claw back your expenses in fuel costs, but then any new car doesn't make sense in that situation.

Diesels continue to outsell petrols and likely will continue to do so for the next 5-7 years, by which stage electric will probably have replaced internal combustion anyway.
There's still plenty of new diesels being developed by manufacturers (Audi in particular) so I don't see them going anywhere in the near future

iseverynamegone

I have a superb 280 which has the same engine and AWD as the R (slight de-tuned) and is heavier - I’m getting 37mpg.  The performance of the petrol 280 isn’t comparable to any diesel from VAG imho - closest is the BiTD which doesn’t do anymore more mpg in the real world (and is still slower)

Not sure any of this helps EMP but as far as this thread goes I think he is beyond help. 

SouthpawMark

I was speaking to a chap in the local Audi dealership a few days ago, and he said that all of the Audi “S” cars are going to be switching to diesel. So far it has been confirmed for the S4, S5 and S6, and the SQ5 is also going back to diesel, having been petrol for a couple of years. Only a few years ago these cars were running NA 4.2 V8s, and the S6 even had a 5.0 V10 which was a detuned version of the Lambo Gallardo engine. 

Diesel has its place. Mrs SPM’s RR is an oil burner, and that’s fine, but diesel in a performance car is plain wrong (yes I know Audi won Le Mans numerous times with diesel cars). Cars that redline at 5,000 rpm aren’t sporty.

Tin hat put on.

Electro_Ham

Saw one of these yesterday and thought it would be right up Emp's back alley. Wind.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201904297434665?price-from=3500&advertising-location=at_cars&sort=sponsored&postcode=ml119fn&radius=1500&model=WIND&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly New&onesearchad=New&make=RENAULT&colour=Blue&page=1

Octafish

Electro_Ham said:

Saw one of these yesterday and thought it would be right up Emp's back alley. Wind.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201904297434665?price-from=3500&advertising-location=at_cars&sort=sponsored&postcode=ml119fn&radius=1500&model=WIND&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly New&onesearchad=New&make=RENAULT&colour=Blue&page=1

Nice, but don't you need two - one for each foot?

crunchman

strtdv said:

Depreciation is a consideration, but honestly who wants to buy a 65k mile R? On the GTD the higher mileage is expected. If you're doing reasonable miles the depreciation on a petrol is higher than for diesel.

When you can't drive the diesel into a lot of major cities, believe me depreciation will be a huge issue.

At the moment, it's only a small part of London, but it will be expanded to cover most of London in 2 years time.  Euro 6 diesels are currently ok, but there is a high likelihood of an announcement sometime in the next 3 or 4 years of the rules being tightened and more vehicles being affected.  That might include some older petrols, but it will almost certainly include Euro 6 diesels.

Other cities with air pollution problems will follow.

I'm not certain of the exact timescales, but it will happen.  You are taking a big gamble if you buy a diesel at this point in time.  If these things aren't announced for 5 years, you might get away with it, but if they are announced in 2 years time, it will be all but unsellable second hand.

ronnyb

Electro_Ham said:

Saw one of these yesterday and thought it would be right up Emp's back alley. Wind.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201904297434665?price-from=3500&advertising-location=at_cars&sort=sponsored&postcode=ml119fn&radius=1500&model=WIND&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly New&onesearchad=New&make=RENAULT&colour=Blue&page=1

That gives me wind just looking at it.

p90fool

Emp_Fab said:

Hang on.... how the hell did we end up in Racism Alley from relative fuel consumption? LOL

Someone said that some goons were low mileage pensioners, which someone else deliberately reversed into "low mileage pensioners are goons" in order to get offended, then cleverly misread "goons" as "coons" in order to labour a point which wasn't there to start with. 

Anyone for tenuous? 

EricTheWeary

Just on the radio about the reduction in new car sales. Diesels down 18%, although that seems to suggest people are still buying new diesels. For better or for worse.

Snap

If I lived in a major city, I wouldn't be buying a diesel that wasn't latest standard (6).

I've got a diesel, big 4wd performance car, revs past 5000, hits 60 in 5 secs, does about 30 mpg, vs quoted average of 40 odd. Coming up 3 years old, and I will hang on to it for at least another year until there is a decent "proper" hybrid or all electric with a good range, that I like. I don't want another diesel really.

By proper hybrid, I mean one that actually recharges the battery without having to plug in overnight. I don't see the point at all of something like the R Rover hybrid, where once the battery is dead, you have a 2 ton plus car being hefted round by a weedy 2 litre petrol engine that will be flogging itself and no doubt pumping out dry ice by the kilo.

If in the market for a cheap second hand car, I think the MPG will be least of your worries. On going repair bills are probably the main factor. Depends on age I suppose.