As detailed elsewhere - I broke my lower left (important bit) leg back in Jan.
Saw the surgeon last week and he's said I'm now OK to drive an auto. (obviously declare to insurance). Both the cars I have access to are manual.
It'll make a big difference to both mine and my SOs life for me to be more self reliant - weekly physio trips, gym, and just being able to get up the hill to the Peaks, sit on a rock and watch the sunset.
As I'm only going to have it for 3months or so, I want the whole ownership proposition to cost as little as possible. Its not going to do mega miles so fuel consumption is pretty irrelevant; tax and insurance need to be "OK" as that's sunk costs, but the big thing is resale. I figure it needs to have a years MOT on it to make it sellable with 9 months left.
Looking on Autotrader, there's very little under £1k that I'd even consider. Lots of spares/repair or non-runner; plenty of rusty Mercs with a few days of MOT and some absolute sheds that need sanitising with fire before you'd touch them with bare skin. The days of being able to buy a big old wafty Jag for £200 to smoke around in seem to be well gone...
So the question is - is it worth spending more - If I spend £3k, do I stand a good chance of getting, say, £2.8k back, compared to a £1k skip that I end up weighing in for £200...
I've got a mate in the motor trade who I'm planning to tap up, but I want to understand my budget first.
(Doesn't help I'm a bit pedantic about cars - hate, hate, HATE, driving things with scratches, dents, kerbed wheels - makes me out to be a careless driver)
Thanks all...
I thought long and hard about this before buying my car for 3 months in Aus. I came to the conclusion that £4000 - 5000 was the sweet spot where depreciation had all happened but the car would not be a worn out wreck that might let me down and that I would get most or all of my money back.
I( would say at least £3000 particularly if you want / need decent tyres and the like.
I see a honda Jazz in your future - horrid things but typical honda in that they just work ( my parents have one)
hate, hate, HATE, driving things with scratches, dents, kerbed wheels
£5k
£5k is a bit OOFT...!
Daft thing is, 2 years ago I ended up needing some expensive work on my own car - then 18 years old and just over 200k miles. Toss up of keep or sell - all the WBAC type sites either weren't interested or offered a couple of hundered. I thing the highest offer was £375. I decided to keep as it was worth couple of £k to me as a trusted working vehicle - ploughed £1200 for a replacement rear subframe. Now its past 2 decades, 217k, from 6' away it looks pretty damn good (1' away you can tell its had some use); interior is immaculate and everything works. Yet its basically worth scrap value??
@tjagain - that's exactly the kind of thing, but best part of £4k feels punchy to me...?
Its just my thoughts from when I needed a car for 3 months. I have no idea of the relative value of that particular car but there were lots of Auto Jazzs on autotrader. dull car, pensioners special
You won't find £1k cars on Autotrader any more. You need to look on Gumtree or Facebook marketplace if that's your sort of budget.
This may be no help - but when my daughter was looking for a picanto sized car the really cheap ones were all auto's. I didn't explore why - perhaps there's an issue with them, perhaps just not the market for first time car owners etc. If you can live with something as small as that you could do it cheaply.
Obviously, anyone buying might have alarm bells ringing if you are chopping it in so quick - your explanation will work with some but others will not like a car being sold so quickly as it hints at something wrong. You should be able to stick the details in We Buy Any Car or similar and see what you can get for it.
My friend recently sold a Renault Scenic for £400. Nine months MOT left but it was going to fail the next one (roadworthy, but a warning light on which was going to be many, many pounds to sort) Another sold a Skoda Fabia for £200, again roadworthy but with a short MOT and big bill looming, lots of rust to sort.
Maybe something like that if you can find one, just knowing that it's going to be scrap in a few months, the depreciation on a £200 car is going to be, at the very most, £200 regardless
Both of the above are sold so not much actual help
(Doesn't help I'm a bit pedantic about cars - hate, hate, HATE, driving things with scratches, dents, kerbed wheels - makes me out to be a careless driver)
I think you're going to have to get over this. If you were buying a keeper then I'd agree with you, but given the rest of your criteria I'd say just suck it up because after three months you won't care.
Otherwise,
I fell a bit lucky last year. Was looking for a new auto van but managed to break my pelvic. didn't know, so bought the auto, then struggled to drop my 22 year old car off at WBAC (worth scrap unfortunately despite it looking great). Roll on a few weeks and we found out I had extensively broken my pelvis. Had to WFH for a few weeks.
Anything Japanese I'd say. Any cheap Aygo auto's about ?
Just sell one of your cars and get a decent auto.
Then wonder why you took so long ro make the switch.
However my opinion might not line up with your. Because i will happyily pay bottom doller for a scratched car.
Its
A
Car
To put it bluntly, you want the moon on a stick. It's not 1985
Finding a car for a grand it is is hard enough. Adding in requirements about aesthetics is taking the piss. Buy the cheapest car you can find with a fresh MOT that looks like it's been looked after (at this price, go by gut and assessment), run it, and hope for the best.
It maybe best to just use a cab for 3 months if your mileage/ trips is low.
£3000 is a lot of cab journeys and no risk.
You may buy a real dog of a car and it will cost you a fortune.
It's all a gamble.
Subaru autos are cheap to buy and less trendy to buy right now.
Gears are so 90's, no one needs gears in their life anymore. Sell your car and buy a nice one without gears and more room for your left leg.
Something like this?
3l Scobby for £900
Down south so less salt on the winter roads? and looks well looked after. Could be tempted myself....
This will not be for sale long me thinks.
Great cars. Reliability should help cover the fuel costs.
Just sell one of your cars and get a decent auto.
Then wonder why you took so long ro make the switch.
I literally just reopened this thread to make this exact comment. Why not trade in an existing motor for an automatic?
However my opinion might not line up with your. Because i will happyily pay bottom doller for a scratched car.
Its
A
Car
Presumably you have bare brick walls at home, rather than plaster and paint and wallpaper? No pictures on the walls or photographs of the kids?
It's
A
House.
It maybe best to just use a cab for 3 months if your mileage/ trips is low.
£3000 is a lot of cab journeys and no risk.
The point being that after 3 months he could and maybe should get his 3 grand back. I actually made a profit on the car I bought for 3 months
Maybe look into short term lease or long term hire costs for 3 months?
would get you your good condition vehicle and any problems are someone else's worry.
That Scooby for £900 looks good!
For those saying "sell my car and just buy a new auto". a) my car wouldn't actually make enough money to be worth selling when for me its still got a couple of year's life left. b) I've never driven an auto that wouldn't have been better as a manual - that includes some fairly exotic machinery. I can see the appeal if all your driving is sat in stop-start traffic, but if I needed to do that, I'd either find a different transport solution or change my life so I didn't need to do that journey.
That Scooby looks fun. If it was (much!) closer to home I'd be all over that!
However my opinion might not line up with your. Because i will happyily pay bottom doller for a scratched car.
Its
A
Car
Presumably you have bare brick walls at home, rather than plaster and paint and wallpaper? No pictures on the walls or photographs of the kids?
It's
A
House.
Firstly find me a pristine second hand house for sale. I mean absolutely immaculate. And way below market value.
Then tell me you are going to buy that house because its a single story and you have a broken ankle. And three months sell it and hope to get your money back.
Then move your house about on british roads and park it in tescos etc.
The point was (admittedly not very clearly) no body will think anything about someone of it has a few scratches etc.
No one except for an absolute plonker give a shit about someone's car condition*
* Unless its evidently properly messed up from bad driving when you kight avoid going near it.
Dp you have a car club near enough to you? could be an option
Porsche GT3 RS. Its automatic and without doubt you will be able to sell it for a profit after 3 months
How much would 3 month hire cost ?
a) my car wouldn't actually make enough money to be worth selling when for me its still got a couple of year's life left.
Yet you're looking at buying an end-of-life car. Have you run the maths?
b) I've never driven an auto that wouldn't have been better as a manual
This may be the problem. How old was the last auto you drove?
Firstly find me a pristine second hand house for sale. I mean absolutely immaculate. And way below market value.
Then tell me you are going to buy that house because its a single story and you have a broken ankle. And three months sell it and hope to get your money back.
Then move your house about on british roads and park it in tescos etc.
The point was (admittedly not very clearly) no body will think anything about someone of it has a few scratches etc.
No one except for an absolute plonker give a shit about someone's car condition*
* Unless its evidently properly messed up from bad driving when you kight avoid going near it.
You didn't answer my question. Do you buy paint for the house? Do you walk around B&Q agonising over Cormorant Blue vs Incoming Storm? Why?
Do you park your house on a British road and just shrug when the external paint peels off? My point was "can you see how ****ing stupid this sounds?" Who cares what the outside of your house looks like?
A car, like a house, is a place where people spend time so it shouldn't be a wild notion to want to make it a pleasant environment, as budget allows.
This may be the problem. How old was the last auto you drove?
ive driven modern autos. still much inferior to a manual imo.
I disagree TJ. After a few years with DSG and now in a Polestar, I’d happily never need to use a manual gearbox again!
Random suggestion…….Porsche Cayenne, pre March 2006 registered with the 3.2 petrol engine.
Lots of incorrect influencers online bemoaning that band K road fund licence is being scrapped come April budget (it isn’t) so a few more have come into the market.
Early Cayenne values are climbing - mine was rock bottom depreciation curve at £500. Good ones are out there but need careful scrutiny.
Wonderful interior, auto/tiptronic gearboxes.
Otherwise - as Edukator said, early Nissan Leaf, if oil prices keep increasing then people will turn their attention to EV. Early Leaf’s are great for short range commuting.
Let’s be clear there are significant differences in automatic gearboxes and the engines they’re attached to. Most small engines with an auto box are pretty rubbish (but then again, this can also be true of manual boxes), but anything with decent torque across the rev range should have a good auto box attached to it and should spend less time shuffling gears and making noise but not speed.
Modern auto boxes attached to a decent engine that doesn’t need the nuts revved off it to make power will be superior.
I drive a lot of hire cars and always try to get an auto. Only those with teeny engines are really bad. The exception was a Mercedes A class which must’ve had a broken turbo. Dire.
That Scooby for £900 looks good!
The car tax on that car is more than half the asking price.
our neighbour had one. Lovely thing but 25 mpg if you are lucky on short journeys
I disagree TJ. After a few years with DSG and now in a Polestar, I’d happily never need to use a manual gearbox again!
Its just an opinion 🙂 I dislike the lack of control over rev range, I dislike the way its harder to hold it in one gear, I dislike having to bury the throttle to get it to shift down on acceleration, I dislike having it shift up when I don't want it to
Firstly find me a pristine second hand house for sale. I mean absolutely immaculate. And way below market value.
Then tell me you are going to buy that house because its a single story and you have a broken ankle. And three months sell it and hope to get your money back.
Then move your house about on british roads and park it in tescos etc.
The point was (admittedly not very clearly) no body will think anything about someone of it has a few scratches etc.
No one except for an absolute plonker give a shit about someone's car condition*
* Unless its evidently properly messed up from bad driving when you kight avoid going near it.
You didn't answer my question. Do you buy paint for the house? Do you walk around B&Q agonising over Cormorant Blue vs Incoming Storm? Why?
Do you park your house on a British road and just shrug when the external paint peels off? My point was "can you see how ****ing stupid this sounds?" Who cares what the outside of your house looks like?
A car, like a house, is a place where people spend time so it shouldn't be a wild notion to want to make it a pleasant environment, as budget allows.
Hang on a second. At what point did i say not to look after the car and treat it like shit?
I'm saying some scratches for a saving when there is nothing wrong with the scratches other than cosmetics. ESPECIALLY for the use case described. The OP suggested it will make hime look like a careless driver and i am saying no one will give a shit. What people will see is
A
Normal
Car
Why are you getting carried away?
I'd either buy a £1000 car that I'd flog for £500 at the end. That's cheap enough that if it totally failed it won't be a disaster and would be easy to 'firesale' at £500. If I wanted to spend more, I'd use Cabs/hire or short term lease. £5k cars are a huge risk, too much money to loose, likely to have a hidden fault and hard to sell. People don't really want to buy £5k cars privately, so it'll be much harder to sell at the end. It's easier to privately sell a £15k car than a £5k car.
The last time I had a short term car (1 year) I bought at £700, spent £400 on repairs and sold for £700.
Its just an opinion 🙂 I dislike the lack of control over rev range, I dislike the way its harder to hold it in one gear, I dislike having to bury the throttle to get it to shift down on acceleration, I dislike having it shift up when I don't want it to
I've only driven a couple of auto's and nearly all of that is our 1.4 petrol Caddy Maxi (DSG 7 speed) but I don't see why you'd need to do any of that in normal driving. The Caddy has two modes - D is 'eco' and keeps the revs very low which means pulling away can be a bit slow but it's fine in traffic and keeps the car quiet. S holds enough revs that the turbo kicks in straight away. How soon it shifts depends on how much you push the accelerator.
We're in the city, so probably spend a lot more of our trips in stop start traffic than some but I'd never go back to a manual.
but I don't see why you'd need to do any of that in normal driving.
twisty rural roads - hold it in an intermediate gear for better control and anticipating overtakes. In an auto you accelerate out of a corner and it holds an intermediate gear, Lift off for the next corner it shifts into a higher gear. I want to stay in that intermediate gear
but I don't see why you'd need to do any of that in normal driving.
twisty rural roads - hold it in an intermediate gear for better control and anticipating overtakes. In an auto you accelerate out of a corner and it holds an intermediate gear, Lift off for the next corner it shifts into a higher gear. I want to stay in that intermediate gear
in the past, yes. In a modern auto where you can override with controls (paddles/knocking the stick) eg DSG boxes, they often hold it on 'manual' mode for a while, and I'm pretty sure some look at various external inputs too avoid changing mod corner. There are a lot of preconceptions about autos that just don't apply with modern ones. We've had 4 in the house, and each chronologically newer one was better than the previous. Granted my wife's current one is definitely more of a sports car, but it's still only a 2011 and the box is great. I'd not go back to my 1999 auto 200sx in a hurry though!
I know the OP states he's never driven a car that would be better as an auto, but imho large lazy torque beasts are. My v70D5 absolutely suits the auto, and the E39 530D i had would have been waaaay better without the 6 speed manual. These sorts of things hold value well too.
£5k cars are a huge risk, too much money to loose, likely to have a hidden fault and hard to sell. People don't really want to buy £5k cars privately, so it'll be much harder to sell at the end. It's easier to privately sell a £15k car than a £5k car.
Completely disagree with this. Almost every car I've ever bought had been in the 5kish bracket, no major issues with any of them, and I've moved them all on pretty easily, often at a profit. Quite a few friends with similar experiences.
submarined - then you are driving it like a manual using the paddles. Perhaps greater familiarity would help but I have driven modern 7 and 8 speed autos with paddles and still prefer a manual box. You just get greater control IMO
My DSG has a manual mode and flappy paddles so you can hold on to the gears through corners.
Overall, it's not perfect admittedly, but for 95% of my driving it's absolutely fine.
Not sure I'd ever want to ride an automatic motorbike, though 🤨
Why are you getting carried away?
Because you're arguing that it's weird to want things looking nice (or at least, you appear to be). It's a common sentiment on car threads and it is frustrating. Apologies if that's not what you meant.
In the OP's specific use case I agree with you that he shouldn't be worrying about it, and said as much earlier on.
Always amusing reading the thoughts of the driving gods on here about why auto's are bad. Modern boxes are so good, unless you spend 75%+ of your time gunning it round twisty roads then an auto is the best option by a mile. Yes, there is the odd occasion you'll wish you had a manual (use the DSG/paddles) but those cases are so rare an auto is just better.
