Just had a flick through Autotrader and it looks likes bottom-end 2nd cars are way more expensive than they used to be – has anyone else noticed this?

18 months ago I picked up a 9-year-old 307 2.0 petrol estate for £1100 with full service history. Only had 75k on the clock.

I’ve put 20k + of miles on it since and was just sanity checking whether it was worth paying for a service and repairs, or if i should leave it at the side of the road.

I couldn’t get close to the same sort of deal on autotrader, and when i bought last time there were loads to choose from.

Just me?

You dont pay to sell cheap cars in autotrader these days,people got smart,

Ah, right. Gumtree? Ebay?

To some extent. Cheap cars are a bit rarer but I think you can widen your range a bit. No need to go for low mileage. Its easy to get lots of miles out of a car. Also look at eBay,gumtree and local ads.

Yep those and facebook. My last car came off facebook always seeing cheap motors on there locally.

Cheap stuff is on Gumtree or outside of auction on ebay.

People get hung up on mileage, but makes the high mileage stuff cheaper for people like me who are less fussed.

It’s bangernomics, you’re taking a cheap risk of not being too far from a failure.

They’re definitely more expensive than what they were say 5 or 10 years ago. I used to blame the scrappage scheme, which maybe played some part, but really it’s so easy to sell a car now. Most places will advertise them for nothing, and you can happily list for months…

Maybe though….and this is something I’ve been thinking about lately….maybe cars are just better quality now and last longer? I know a lot of people would disagree with that, and say that quality is going down the pan (they don’t make them like they used to, etc), but when was the last time you seen a proper rusty motor? I remember a time when every other car on the road had holes in it. Some of them were barely 5 years old, I’m sure. Mine’s 15 years old and not a spot of rust in sight. Has the odd mechanical quirk, but nothing serious.

I doubt prices have changed that much in the past 18 months though. Just depends what you’re looking for.

Gumtree worked for me, got a 2.0l Mondeo estate, 1 owner from new, 9 years old, FMDSH, 66k on the clock for 2 grand, got a few love kisses on it but it does what I want it to do, i’ll use Gumtree next time.

Having drifted away from a period of having newer cars, I think people don’t sell working ones so cheap as they have probably had a big bill to keep it so, DMF, DPF, turbo and egr issues or electrical gremlins. More inclined to keep them after a big spend out.

I think one thing, from my perspective is the complexity of modern cars and all the electronic governance. My first car was a Toyota Hilux straight diesel, no ecu, very little electronic in it. No sensors to speak of. I was happy to work on it, and was comfortable ripping large bits out of the engine bay.

Modern cars are perhaps not acually any more complicated but they do seem more intimidating to the enthusiast spannerer.

SOTW on Pistonheads. Last weeks was a Legacy GT something or other twin turbo with sub 100k miles for under a grand.

DaveyBoyWonder – Member

SOTW on Pistonheads. Last weeks was a Legacy GT something or other twin turbo with sub 100k miles for under a grand.

A decent one is worth five or six times that so I’d suspect some issues. If you spend less than a grand on a Legacy GT you better budget about another £3000 to sort it out.