I bought a fairly mint condition mk4 GTI 1.8t off a friend for 800 quid at 180k miles which he’d owned from 19k. Took it to 205k in 1.5 years. In that time it needed a steering rack (£400 all in at local vw specialist indie).

Did about 50mpg (pump measured) on long runs eg herts>Portsmouth. Was pretty quiet and refined too I suspect because it was a GTI so better specced suspension, and had big sidewalls for comfort / quiet.

It started having alarm issues after a while but I didn’t really care and stopped locking it – Who’s going to nick an old golf!

Scrapped it for £300 due to needing a repair at a time I also needed a significantly larger car

Another Avensis here – this time a 2011 plate tourer with a 1.8 petrol engine. Picked it up for the princely sum of £1000. Needed a real good clean but otherwise fine.

It’s not very exciting but it’s a fantastic car – excellent cruiser, plenty big for swallowing kit, just manages 40mpg with the bike on the roof.

Sitting at 132k and you wouldn’t know it – I can see why all the taxi drivers use them. Unbelievably reliable!

Crucially for me – I can fire straight through the zero emissions zones without any bother!

Maybe not a banger per se…..

Mk5 golf r32. 5 door in blue.

Bought in 2013 for 10k with 35k on the clock. FSH

9 years later with FSH and 85k on the clock.

Only major thing was rear diff went and had to be replaced for 1500.

Don’t think I’ll ever sell it so genuinely owes me nothing now. Not as sprightly as a gti but doubt they’ll ever go beyond 4 pot turbos now so unless it gets written off I’ll never get less than I paid for it.

2001 mk4 golf estate which I bought for £180. I’ve spent £500-600 to get through an mot tyres and a couple of other things on it. It has 176000 miles on it and I do 400 miles a week in it. The sills need doing and a service but it pays for itself in saved fuel and depreciation on my Vito! It’s brilliant! There you go, it’s going to blow up tomorrow!

I’m about to put my 2006 Astra Estate 1.9 CDTI up for sale – it’s done 165,000 miles and has MOT until the end of January 2023

It recently had an issue with the throttle position sensor and went into limp mode as a result. It’s been ‘fixed’ by a local car electrics specialist, but I’ve been advised the problem will return eventually (cost for a proper fix will be well north of £1k) which is why I’m selling. I’ve done a couple of hundred miles in it since.

I’ve had it 7 years, it’s been serviced pretty much every year, tyres are all good and it’s got just under half a tank of diesel in it. It’s pretty clean inside and it only gets driven longer distances as I rarely drive locally. I’m looking for £900 for it, based in Milton Keynes.

We’ve been running a £300 2004 1.6 8v Astra estate for around 7 years.
It’s been a great thing. It costs very little each year, just consumables, it’s not used as a commuter, just big trips and the weekly shop if we can’t get a delivery slot.

Not sure it’s Bangernomics but it’s very cheap motoring.

I’m tempted to jump on the bangernomics train next time I replace my daily driver, sick of spending a fortune on a fairly average Seat that will be ready to send to the glue factory by the time I’ve paid off the loan I used to purchase it.

I’ve saw the common ones are clearly Toyota avensis and mid 2000s Vauxhall’s/ford focus/fiesta, what else are the go-to cars for this?

Three years ago tried to sell Merc E class estate, 3.2, V6, full leather, never towed or carried heavy loads; 220k miles, 2003.
Mechanically rock solid; fsh.
No takers at £500.
£300 from local scrapper; wheels and tyres were worth more than that!
Posted about it on here; many unhelpful comments.

@airvent – Japanese and simple would be my vote. I’d avoid complex turbocharged inter cooled diesels as there’s more to go wrong and more expensive when it does (mind my Avensis diesel has bucked that trend so far).

I’d personally not go total bangernonics at the sub 2k but spend enough to get something that’s been looked after and will be more likely to run a long time.

Putting the two together gives something like a 6-7 year old petrol Avensis / Civic etc. likey to be dull but buy cheap and run.

My dad gave me a renault 5 once that someone else had given him. Did 20,000 miles in it, a set of new windscreen wipers, fuel, tax and insurance were the only costs. It was shit but cheap…

Weighed it in for £100 I seem to remember.

2004 berlingo hdi- want something like an avensis- or Audi/Merc estate, Id like a bit more comfort
Fixed a lot on it, just sensors playing up now

I bought a fairly mint condition mk4 GTI 1.8t off a friend for 800 quid at 180k miles which he’d owned from 19k. Took it to 205k in 1.5 years. In that time it needed a steering rack (£400 all in at local vw specialist indie)

I bought a Mk 4 Golf GTI for 700 quid, lowered on Koni struts with BBS monzas with 130,000 on the clock. It’d been sat in a mechanics lock up for years as a ‘project’ he never got round to finishing. It only needed a couple of odds and sods doing. Nowt major

Ran it for years and for a grin factor per pound, takes some beating. I bloody loved that car!

I’ve had alsorts

70 quid cavilear did about 26k in that

250 quid vectra did 45k in that. Very comfortable

Free pug 106 diesel. Mum bought it new in 1995 I had twice sold it bought it back.
Did a headgasket on it and that was it for breakdowns it’s entire life wad still on its OE battery at the end….

I’m on a mazda 6 currently.

I’m not looking forward to the future as I think bangernomics will struggle with the influx of EVs.

Governments want new cars on the road to get the VAT

Used to be great getting runners at auction, this was before the swappage/scrappage deals on new cars. Could easily pick up runners with >6 months MoT for around £200. Run them till they die or the MoT runs out. Start again

Best one i ever had was a 1999 Ford Mondeo 1.8 diesel estate. Picked it up for £400 and had it for 3 years with minimal spend.

I find Gumtree is best place now to pick up runners. But getting more difficult. Need to wait it out and something will turn up. Lots of Citroen C1s seem to turn up in my area for around £600-700 generally for 2005-2008 models.

Just starting getting my £500 Polo ready for MoT in the next few months (new brake discs/pads, anti roll bar bushes and service)…….

I’ve saw the common ones are clearly Toyota avensis and mid 2000s Vauxhall’s/ford focus/fiesta, what else are the go-to cars for this?

I guess it depends on if you want true Bangernomics, buy it and bin if it needs tyres.

Or cheap motoring, maintaining it yourself

Id idealy go for simple and hopefully with cheap parts.
Stuff like half the exhaust system for £30.

Not bangernomics by STW standards but we bought a 11 year old BMW X1 with 107k earlier this year as we were trying to cut back on unnecessary cost. Wife’s car, before that she’d always had new.

It’s currently sat in Paris having shat it’s clutch on the way to Disney. Meant to be fixed yesterday in time for us to catch the re-arranged Eurostar but told at 4pm that the parts hadn’t arrived (again) so took the decision to fly back (2 adults, 2 kids under 10) as didn’t have any confidence in it being ready today. Good call as it’s not and the bill have increased to 2300 euro! I ‘think’ I’ve managed to stop any work and get it sent back here (Which RAC were reluctant to do) but it could take 6 weeks. Been stressed all holiday but the kids seemed to enjoy it.

Driving holidays can get to f, as can old cars.

I’m running about in a sort of free Golf- changed jobs 2 years ago and went from a fully expensed company car to having to run my own.

A friend was selling a Golf Match so bought that. Old work cocked up my redundancy date so I got a bit more than I expected so that covered the car cost.

It’s standard VW grey- only flash thing is a PO added the Monza wheels as per Binners’ GTi. The cambelt was done just before I bought it and at 12years old when I got it, had done just under 70k miles.

Was supposed to be a stop gap but tax, insurance & service for a year cost less than 2-3 months of loan/ lease if I got something else. As I only use it for the commute and odd trips out I just cba’d to change.

I also tried the DSG in “S” mode after having 18 months- changes the car’s throttle response & my liking for it!

I ran a £400 Golf GT Tdi with the legendary PD130 engine and a six speed gearbox for a year. I absolutely loved it proper little grunty rapid thing. Spent £100 on a few small bits, I sold it to a bloke at work for the same I bought it for. cheapest and must enjoyable motoring I’ve done!

Shown parked at work next to colleagues £700 a month Jaaaaag!

2002 Nissan Elgrand, bought 7 years ago when my £35k new transporter went back to the dealer for a 7th time. Paid £5k and I still have it and reckon it’s still £5k. Now 20 years old and 130k miles and still used regularly as a family/mtb/motorbike bus 😃

Paid £5k

STOP GETTING BANGERNOMICS WRONG

It doesn’t really qualify, but, I bought this for just over a grand, with a rattle… Wanted something as a runaround so I can take my daily off the road, get the paint fixed and do some other work (bigger turbo, manual gearbox swap). And then thinking, if I enjoy it I might keep it, otherwise I’d fix it and flip it. Good sensible bangernomics, right?

https://imgur.com/wEopHJu

Drove it from Reading to Edinburgh, drove it around for a few weeks, rattle rattle. Did a trackday in it, by the end of which it was a bit rattlier and also smoking. obviously the plan was for the rattle to be a loose heatshield or a bad aux belt tensioner or something, but, I always knew it was most likely to be the engine, these have a rep for it. And when I was investigating that, I noticed something weird… It’s not rusty. A couple of panels have a little rust, and the subframes and shocks look like they’ve been in the sea, but the actual body is ridiculously rust free. So now it’s not bangernomics any more, it’s become a Project.

So now, I have a new banger, a Mazda 6 of the same vintage with a bashed in nose and tail and possibly no airbags but with nice new tyres on decent wheels, a good interior, still has its cats and, the 2.5 L5VE engine out of these bolts almost perfectly into a mk3 MX5. So its life will be short but it’ll end up being cheaper than buying even a decent warrantied 2 litre.

and, the 2.5 L5VE engine out of these bolts almost perfectly into a mk3 MX5

Of course engine swaps are not in any way Bangernomics. There will be at least one part required which costs more than an entire shitbox.

Worthy use of (s)crap cars with decent engine though.

I’m currently driving a £900 Mk1 TT 225, it’s pretty clean and drives nicely 😁 Also in the fleet is a Mk5 Golf GT TDi, returning a steady 58mpg.

I’ve just sold my bangernomics Boxster 3.2S as it was knocking on £100 just to change the oil and filters myself and the cost of parts was crazy. I bought it cheap from my mates Dad who’d left it out in his garden for nearly 5 years. Fixed it up and got an MoT and enjoyed the crisp winter mornings with the roof down, a beautiful drive 😁

Since I left Rolls Royce motor cars and access to the BMW group car scheme I’ve had 3 bangers of varying quality.

First was a 2005 VW Passat estate Highliner 1.9tdi auto for £500 with about 200,000 miles on it.
Great car but had a clogged up turbo that would occasionally cause it to go into limp mode, then the key fob packed up so I couldn’t lock it as didn’t have a spare key and alarm would go off until it was started up if I unlocked by putting the key in the lock.
Ended up selling it when the driveshaft sheered off and sold it for £350 for parts to a couple of Polish guys who turned up 3 days later and replaced the driveshaft in about 20mins and drove it off.
Then bought a 2003 Toyota avensis estate for £700 it was a 2l petrol with only 60k miles but pretty much every panel had a dent in it but that thing lasted 2 years of carefree driving. It flew through the 1st MOT with no issues at all, but the next MOT it needed about £900 worth of work doing to it. Needed 2 new headlights, new brake discs and the clutch was on the way out so I stuck it on Facebook as spares/repairs for £300 and ended up getting £350 for it as my phone blew up with a bidding war.
I’ve now gone really upmarket and spent £1500 on a Mk2 Honda CRV with about 120k miles on it. It’s a 2l v-tech auto so it does about 25mpg but it’s solid and has a cool box and picnic table so what more could you want.

Amazed that people can consider a 10 year old car a banger. The newest car i’ve ever owned was 2006…

Categorically does not count as bangernomics since it was over £1k, but got my ’03 mx-5 for £1400 have spent maybe £500 on consumables/services including doing the timing belt myself, put nearly 20k miles into it and by the current market could sell it for £2k. Free motoring tastes pretty sweet!

54 plate ford focus 1.6ti. Just nudged it over 100k miles this year. Bought it in 2015 (i think) for £3k.

I only got rid of my mk1 focus (is yours a mk1? on the cusp possibly!) a couple of years ago as it was a 2nd car that I just didn’t need any more. Absolutely brilliant, had it about 14 years almost from new but it too had only just crept over 100k. Central locking was playing up but everything else including air con still worked! Stuff had broken over the years but everything was so easy (and crucially, cheap, to fix). Great, dependable car, nice to drive also. Think those days will soon be over though, certainly no modern car can compete in the cheapness/reliability stakes!

It’s a MK2, something about being registered in 2004, but being a 2005 car. So far I’ve had to fix the fan blower resistor pack, splice in some wiring around the power pack, had the cam belt and crank seal changed.

It’s currently making some worrying grumbling noises, which i think is the passenger side CV joint on the way out. Bit out of my league to fix, so I’ll be dropping it to the garage for that.

When it’s not making scary noises it’s dependable and swallows cargo considering its size, currently use it cart around bikes, smelly dogs and things deemed to grotty to go in my missus’s car.

Suzuki Ignis

Hmm… what’s the back like for chucking bikes in?

The average STW’er has so much money they have no idea what a banger is.

jamesoz
Full Member

Of course engine swaps are not in any way Bangernomics. There will be at least one part required which costs more than an entire shitbox.

Nah, in proper orky teknology, it doesn’t need any new bits, you remove some parts to make it go fasta- balancers come out, sump swaps over, ta-da, it’s now an MX5 engine. Doesn’t even need mapped (though it’ll benefit) since it mostly adds midrange, and the top end’s still limited by the crappy intake side. Most expensive parts will be the oil and filter.

Don’t think I’ll break even on selling bits of the donor but I’ll get a good chunk back. Almost a shame as it’s not a bad car, but it’s high tax and has some Bad History.

rsl1
Free Member

Amazed that people can consider a 10 year old car a banger. The newest car i’ve ever owned was 2006…

Depends doesn’t it? My daily is an 04, and definitely not a banger. My old daily, was a battered rusty 05 mondeo, it was definitely a banger, as much as I enjoyed it. The 55 plate Subaru I have sinking slowly into the ground outside is 100% certified banger- came with a brand new MOT, but the exhaust’s made mostly of booger welds, the subframes are like steel spiderwebs, even the actual floor’s rusted through on the passenger side. On condition it’s like something from the 70s.

Didn’t OP go from a GR Yaris to his Ignis banger? That’s the most bizarre thing on the thread!

I had an 89 nova that was a proper banger. Still loved it as a first car. Total rustbucket but it lasted me a couple of years.

then the key fob packed up so I couldn’t lock it as didn’t have a spare key and alarm would go off until it was started up if I unlocked by putting the key in the lock.

Electric and/or locking issues? Yep – that’ll be a VW! Haha. I’ve owned 4, and of them 3 have had electrical issues. I borderline find it funny now.

I’ve now received a deposit for my Astra mentioned above, so it’s sold pending payment/collection

I reckon it’s not REALLY Bangernomics if it’s a 2nd car.

My last car was a 2002 Mondeo Mk3 estate which I bought for £150. The rear bumper was held on with about an acre of gaffa tape, the air con was broken, it steamed up constantly and had about 135k miles on the clock, but my FIL was convinced it had been clocked. It would still happily do 85mph all day long on the motorway, had a boot the size of Wales and got surprisingly good economy. I took it up to about 185k miles before scrapping it.

I now enjoy the luxury of a 2009 Mazda 3 with working air con and an aux input on the stereo. I am quietly confident it will make it to 2029. Especially if I continue only doing 4k miles a year. It started making a strange noise last year, but it stopped after a few months. So fingers crossed.

 It started making a strange noise last year, but it stopped after a few months.

Ah yes, the phantom ailment, I was driven insane by my old VW, they have an extra annoyance light, similar to check engine called ‘EPC’. If this comes on and you google it, it can literally be anything. Mine would come on intermittently. Off for a couple of miles, On for a couple of miles, Off for a road-trip, On for return of road-trip. It made no sense and was distracting as I was always looking at the dash, really happy I’d not seen it for a while before being plunged into despondency after it’s inevitable and immediate presence. I was always thinking perhaps it’s fixed itself? But no.

Electric and/or locking issues? Yep – that’ll be a VW! Haha. I’ve owned 4, and of them 3 have had electrical issues. I borderline find it funny now.

Yeah tried getting a new key but it was way too expensive so just didn’t bother locking the car anymore as my wife made it clear that if the alarm kept going off in the morning, then I’d need to find somewhere else to live 😀

Great car with a fantastic engine, about 220k miles on it and still had some decent torque.

2005 Ford Focus, bought in 2014, 120k on the clock, just passed its MOT, ULEZ compliant, 48mpg, drives just great. Air con doesn’t work but the windows still open….

Picked up a mk1 18tdci focus estate in November 2019 for £550 with 100k on the clock. It had done 13000 in the previous 7 years and was growing moss in places. Two years on and I’ve only just changed the front tyres after 20k miles. Last two MOTs have cost me less than £400 each. Runs buttery smooth, carries boat loads of stuff and does 60mpg ish on a motorway if I don’t get bored. Proper bangernomics.

I reckon it’s not REALLY Bangernomics if it’s a 2nd car

We’re a two car household. One is the £300 18yr old Astra, the other is a sheddy 36yr old 944t.

My last car was a 2002 Mondeo Mk3 estate which I bought for £150. The rear bumper was held on with about an acre of gaffa tape

The Gaffer tape was a dealer fitment on Mondeo rear bumpers.
That or there was a roll with the spare wheel.

My Fabia (2014, 1.2 12v, 151k) would have qualified as a bangernomics car pre-pandemic but prices have shot up to make it go from being worth 1k to 3k+! It’ll get there though as I plan to run it until it dies. It’ll never truly qualify though as I am quite festidious with maintenance and happy to spend more than the car is worth on stuff if it means I get a few more years out of it. I plan for it to be my last IC engined daily so it needs to keep going until decent electric ones become affordable secondhand.

Wow. I need to move out of the city. Cheapest I ever got to was about £300 on a 1L Polo. Up to about £600 now for a Golf GTI 🙁

The above Davis costs me £230 a year living on the edge of a bad bit of Cardiff and doing 25k a year. Seems a bargain really.

2002 Ford Focus. Bought for £350 4 years ago and still in daily use .It did a 300 mile round trip last weekend. Still decent to drive.