[Closed] 1.25 cars

What about a car club?

Octavia estate.

Octavia estate.

Genuine LOL

Car Club?

What?

Ahhh I see, I think my rental requirements my be a little too long for that to work effectively. Looks like a good option for super short rentals.

Happy to be wrong.

Ahhh, I thought you meant 1.25 litre engines.

Sorry I have nothing useful to say except that it probably will be cheaper to have one car, but may be more hassle.

A friend of mine used to do this. Worked well for him. If you can find a local depot which does home drop-off & pick-up it should be ideal, and a LOT cheaper than having a second car sitting around (unless you go bangernomics)

Bangernomics, I struggle to open the bonnet to top up the screen wash. Let alone eek many budget miles out of an elderly Corrola.

There's a Thrifty across the road from work, but then I guess that just adds to the rental duration.

Speak to friends about sharing?

Our Yaris was insured for 5 folk for a few years - it saved a number of colleagues and friends from buying / renting / hours and hours and hours on non-existent Highland public transport. They all just contributed to costs by more than filling the tank from what they used.

I have occasionally thought about Zip Car - there's a van just down the road from us.

BUT - it's £11 an hour plus the annual fee (£60?) so that would be somewhere in the region of £50 for an afternoon out.

Co-Wheels is a bit cheaper - http://www.co-wheels.org.uk/pricing

a full day, once a month would be £350ish /year (which is about a third of what i spend on tax, insurance and MOT...)

BUT - it's £11 an hour plus the annual fee (£60?) so that would be somewhere in the region of £50 for an afternoon out.

a full day, once a month would be £350ish /year (which is about a third of what i spend on tax, insurance and MOT...)

For this to work you need to have the second attitude, not the first. It's easy to do the sums up front but we tend to view cars as a sunk cost rather than the cost per mile of using the car.

This skews our attitude to using them because if you actually look at the cost it suddenly seems horibly expensive. £50 for a day out, £150 to go and visit the in laws etc. So if your attitude to money is frugal enough to want to dispense of the second car will you be able to trade this saving off in a years time when you need to go visit someone but the hire car is going to cost £60.

Also don't underestimate the convienence of your own personal transport. Do you every just need to nip out when the other car is busy? You can't hire a car for that.

I used to use a mix of car club and rentals depending how long I needed it for/what car I needed. No car of my own. I could switch between a c1, a van and a people carrier depending what I was doing. My main problem was picking it up/dropping it off if I had to get to an out of the way depot. OK when hiring a van as I could cycle out there but less easy with smaller stuff. I reckon it worked out cheaper than owning based on my usage at the time.

Speak to friends about sharing?

I can already see a major problem with this 😳

Also don't underestimate the convienence of your own personal transport.

Agreed, that's why it's 1.25 cars.

What about just keeping a bigger one? Needn't be a huge gas guzzler to do long journeys full of gear.

living in Melbourne, down under and been running 1 car plus hiring when need for a couple of years - we either cycle or use public transport a lot of the time and having 2 cars sat doing nothing (except depreciating) makes no financial sense plus makes the kids walk a bit - hire a car for a weekend about once a month if kids sport stuff clashes or one of us is going to an event somewhere, convenient pick up/drop off is a factor...and use an annual excess policy

Now a non car owner, hire what I need when I need it. (work from home, everything in walking distance in the week and lots of work travel)

When I was back in the UK I ended up with a VW Caddy for £185/week have additional excess cover on that but it's just fuel after that.
http://www.jollygoodvanhire.co.uk/jolly-good-bookings/?type=1
The deals kick in at a week normally so shorter hires are more per day

If you can do a years motoring for under £1k with car, maintenance, insurance, tax etc. then you are doing well. So 4-5 weeks at under £200/week for exactly what you want for that trip works well.

Got two friends who do this for their main car. They live in Nottingham, he works a 5 minute bike ride away and she works tow streets away so they have no use for one on a day-to-day basis. Food is delivered and their social life is all close by. They just rent whatever is cheapest for weekends away roughly once a month. Works well for them.
The added bonus is that they always turn up with a new, valeted car and they're a good source of info on what's good and bad out of what they've driven.

Just remember that you might end up with something like the bright yellow Clio they 'lucked in' on for a posh wedding (think chavtastic) or luck in with them getting a BMW 5-Series after the rental place ran out of city cars for the same price 🙂

Savings for them were huge, enough to help them save for a deposit on their house.

When hiring in the UK specify an auto

I've had loads of free upgrades over the years, they often mess up and end up giving you the next band up for the same price

I do this as I now get the train to work which left my old car sat on the drive for weeks on end. My wife has a car that she uses for work and we rent a car when we both need one or we're doing long journey's (her car is a Micra). It has saved us LOADS. When we sold my car we worked out that even if we hired a car once per month we'd break even, any less and it was money in the back pocket, we've so far rented once in 10 months. Standard car hire places do brilliant weekend rates. I joined the Enterprise rental club and can hire a small car for about £35 for a weekend, a Focus size one is £45 ish for pick up Friday, drop off Monday, vans aren't much more.

The keys thing I think is you have to embrace other transport. I now cycle or get the train everywhere. Since I like cycling and I like trains this is fine, my wife hates both but that's OK as she owns the car so has first refusal. I also occasionally (maybe twice a year) have to get a cab when I'd normally have driven, that's fine too.

I really can't recommend it enough, it's worked brilliantly for us/me.