Best cheap car you ever had

aka “Best banger for your buck”

The luxury car thread with all these 30-40k cars got me thinking. My own car (a 2011 Renault Grand Scenic) cost me £1800, granted it needed new tyres and a little work but for less than 2.5k altogether it’s been remarkably good and I have no complaints. Built-in sat-nav as well, for extra fanciness.

It also amuses me that my mtb is worth more than my car.

Tell me stories of the cheapest car you ever had that surprised you (or not) by how good it was.

Two options. My first car was a 13 year old Saab 900 GLS. Bought for £600, ran it for 7 years, spent about £200 on parts in that time and had my better half’s dad telling me where to stick spanners and hammers on it to service it.

Second option (and my favourite ever car), a Renault Kangoo van that I bought off a mate who owned a bike shop. I did have to buy a new drives haft just after buying it, but I ran it for about 8 years and spent not much more on it for servicing. Added a kicking stereo and it was the perfect vehicle for fulfilling exactly what it was needed for. I still miss that little fella.

MK2 Mondeo, bought for £500 from a friend’s mum. Drove for five years, the only non consumable fix was a broken suspension coil (my fault). Sold for £300

Vauxhall cavalier which cost nothing from a builder i was working for. Passed its MOT – no idea how and looked so battered people would not park near me. It was fun going down narrow roads as i always got the right of way.

Worst first, I had a £300 1.3l pale brown, bog basic Vauxhall Cavalier as a stop-gap while waiting for a company car once. That was bloody awful, there was something wrong with the gearbox or driveshafts that caused a scarily violent vibration when it got hot on a long run. First time it happened was in the fast lane on the M6 Thelwall Viaduct at Friday rush hour. It was very nearly brown on the inside too that afternoon.

Conversely we also had a 160,000 mile 1.6 ‘nice’ Cavalier of the same vintage which was lovely. Eventually that got scrapped due to MOT rust, but the contrast between the two ostensibly similar cars in terms of the owner experience was amazing.

1985 Fiat Uno 70S .Very lightly built, but nice to drive, quite peppy motor and as it was the original model, the interior with the dash paddles for lights and wipers, good  ergonomics. I can’t remember what I paid for it but it wasn’t much and it was completely reliable.

Fiat panda with a 750 fire engine.

Hammock instead of a dash, **** syncro on third.

Scary on the motorway… But… Epic for carting party stuff across fields when all the astras and polos were stuck. The perfect car for a 17 year old

I had a mitsubishi colt 3door as a hire car for an extended period of time. It was the *base* model with no extras and felt like a biscuit tin. However – when the time came to give it back I missed it. There was nothing wrong with that car at all. It was “essence of car” nothing more and nothing less. Probably the cheapest thing I have driven and the most unexpectedly good car I have driven (for the RRP)

Mk2 Peugeot 106 1.0. Rear seats folded down, two mountain bikes in the back (with all wheels off), mate in the front, iPod with FM adapter, off for a Cwm Carn night ride. Surprisingly nippy and reliable. Had remote central locking that would work 100 metres away, useful for finding it in car parks.

I might win this thread!

Best car. Porsche Cayenne bought last year for £500. I absolutely love this thing, has its own thread on here. Bought a £16k caravan to tow behind so have completed Man Maths. Has done Skye/NC500, comfortable, long distance cruiser that can drop into low range and rock crawl.

A year before I bought a ’13 plate XC90 for £500 that I’m giving a mid life suspension/subframe makeover

Before that I paid £300 for a Mk4 GT TDI (pd130 engine) that had been tweaked. Was a rapid little thing, drove for a year and sold for £400

Funniest car was my old Nissan Prairie. I had a Brooklyn Machine Works Racelink with Avalanche forks at the time and my mate had #13 (of 15) Brooklyn FQ so some serious expensive bikes and we hauled them about in a £300 shed that we ripped the interior out of so we could chuck mucky bikes in.

I’ve had other ‘normal’ priced cars as well but they were my cheapest / best cars.

My everyday car is a £2500 Peugeot Partner that is equally absolutely amazingly useful and equally embarrassing. 50+ mpg, cheap parts and easy to work on are why I still have it. And I have an understanding wife!

1989 nova merit £150. Best and worst. We got a couple of years out of it before it died in 2007.

1997 Ford Mondeo Estate diesel. Think i paid £700 for it. Ran it for 2 full years. Sailed through its MOT while i had it.

Never even changed the oil/serviced it, or put new tyres on it. A cheap run into the ground disposable car. It was also great to get a bike in it flat without taking the wheels off.

I have a 2006 VW Polo just now. Cost £400 three years ago. Been taking £300 to get through each years MOT. Its a great little thing.

Focus ST (with the Volvo 5 pot).

Bought for about £2k to tie me over while waiting for an insurance to payout from a van writing off my car.  Only planned on keeping it for a couple of months but ended up having for about 2 years.

Made a very addictive noise, about 300bhp on tap and surprisingly practical. Certainly lowered the tone locally but you’d struggle to get better bang for your buck… even made a £500 profit selling it!

Saab 9-5 vector, 3l. Bought for a grand in car park about 8 years ago. Lasted me 4 years until it blew up on motorway after attempting an ‘Italian tune up’

The comfiest car I ever owned, quick, and I remember getting 6 bikes in back on way to the alps (yes it made it all way down there and back in one piece)

Negatives, it looked a bit like the ghost busters hearse, the electrics were a bit ‘niggly’, i wasn’t ever truly confident it would not breakdown every time I drove it (it didnt)’ , and it was clearly a health hazard to all mankind due to spewing black soot everywhere. Also, it had blood splatters all over the roof, which apparently came from ‘2 dogs fighting in the back’ which I could never remove…

Loved that old saab..

The Mazda2 we still have – bought for £3k in 2012, still running fine nearly 13 years later. In all that time it’s just had regular servicing. Nippy little thing to drive too, great for urban stuff, fine for motorway stuff.

The latest MOT showed some rust in the subframe, so it may not make another year, but it’s been an absolute star.

Proton Persona 1.6XLi

Bought it for £200. Only got 12k miles out of it before the head gasket blew but for £200 I can’t complain. Surprisingly quick as it weighed nothing. Independent rear suspension and disc brakes at the rear too, which even contemporary 3 Series didn’t have.

Also, a diesel Mondeo bought for £750. I got well over 40k miles out of that before a local garage ****ed up and killed it. Decent boot, comfy, economical.

It also amuses me that my mtb is worth more than my car

Isn’t that normal though? Admittedly I’m older and a little bit wealthier now and so have a newer van. My race bike is therefore now the only one which cost more than that, rather then every single bike. Back when I had the Proton my front brake cost more than my car. And I remember going down in the Mondeo to pick up a new bike, the rear wheel of which was more than the car

My 2005 Skoda Octavia vRS estate was bought for £1500 six years ago and is still going strong with 170,000 on the clock. It’s just needed routine maintenance apart from a new front subframe last year which didn’t cost much as parts are cheap as chips and I have a great local garage for any spannering needs

There’s no rust on it so see absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t click over 200,000 miles in a few years. I have zero interest in replacing it with anything more modern. It’s still quite fun to drive with just under 200bhp and the boot is massive for chucking bikes in

Toyota Celica GT4 that I bought for £236 with a blown engine. Fitted the spare engine and exhaust I had from a previous GT4 track Car and thoroughly enjoyed not caring about the tatty piece of crap for several years.

The 325D that succeeded it was better in every way but less fun to own.

I’ve had loads of good cheap motors but the best bang for buck was probably a 1996 Rover 416 (the Honda version). Bought it for £500 with 50k miles and it was about 7 years old at the time (it was one of the last of that shape and falling out of favour on the selling market). Just a good, practical car with Japanese reliability, that felt like it was barely run in. You’d need to add an extra zero to the price these days, and then some. Times have changed.

The worst were early Fiestas. Made of cheese.

An old Datsun 1600. My brother owed me some money but offered a shitty old Datsun to pay it off. It had been backed into a post so the boot leaked, the front dampers leaked and needed topping up with oil every weekend, and it leaked so much oil that the engine caught fire once when the starter motor solenoid jammed on and overheated. But Jesus that thing drove well, it would wind out to 100 mph on the flat and handled pretty well on sweeping roads, a bit tail happy if you lifted off mid corner but really quick if you rowed it along through the gears. Nasty in the wet though. I loaned it back to my brother to go visit some mates but he got drunk and crashed it off the road at 3 A.M. into some farmer’s field and took the plates off and abandoned it there. (He swapped me a racing kart to pay off that debt). It was totally knackered but still went like shit off a shiny shovel, I’ve always wanted to get one in decent condition and hot rod it a bit. The survivors are way out of my price range now though, I think most of them probably ended up like mine, thrashed and trashed by idiot teenagers. You can keep your old Escorts, the Datsun 1600 was a much better car.

Peugeot 206 SW (estate).

2L HDi.

comfortable, torquey, Room for 3 bikes and 3 people on the inside.

never broke down, and when stuff wore out it was cheap as chips.

I had two, but only cause, I crashed one.

I would love a Panda 4×4 as a toy car.

Bought a Mini Convertible (1st gen BMW) for £1300 about 3.5 years ago. Since then I’ve done my own oil changes and tidied up a few bits and bobs on it, but nothing major.

It’s a fun little thing and was costing me very little until my Daughter learned to drive and I added her to the insurance!

Mine was a Renault 5 1.1L paid £500. I had just bought a 20k sportscar but wanted a runabout as we were doing our house up so on the way home we drove into a car sales place and just bought the first cheap car we saw, had it for about 2 years or so with nothing going wrong other than a slight gasket leak and the exhaust fell off both easy fixes, it was a total workhorse and sold for £350

Friends did think it funny how I had such a banger and a real nice car but the R5 was hauling crap around nearly every week.

1997 Peugeot 406 estate. Bought for £1300 in 2005, lasted 11 years – scrapped for £100 or so – only scrapped it after an MOT failure because parts were getting difficult to find. Shame as it was basically fine and I didn’t quite make my 200k goal in it. Desperately unfashionable, but lovely big boot for the bikes, cruised quite happily down the motorway.

Not the most exciting, but father in law fancied himself a car dealer for a while and sold me a Rover 25 (similar to above with the Honda Civic engine in it) i got it as 42000 miles, and ran it to 148000, I gave it to a mate who’s van had broken down and needed something to get his painting and decorating gear around in, he was still running it at 240,000 miles when someone ran in the back of him and wrote it of.

Probably the Fiat Uno I had as my second ever car after the Chevette finally died. £350 from a bloke in Rotherham and it was absolutely mint right up until the shitebag son of the landlord of the pub I was working in took the keys, went on a drunken joyride and drove it headfirst into a dry stone wall.

best – 900 quid vauxhall frontera with the 2.2 engine bought as a stop gap.

had it for 3 years relitively trouble free –  Leaky injector spill pipes was the only let down in that time.

Mrs T-r was crashed into and shoved into a bus in it  – it reversed out the bus – drove onto my mates trailer with 3 wheels.

it was back on the road with bits from the scrap yard within 3 days. – Upper/lower control arms , Steering rack and a wing.

ultimately rust killed it eventually .

worst – i was given a 2000 hyundai lantra owned from new by my parents with 40 on the clock at 8 years old – serviced on the dot its whole life. total ecu failure within weeks and incurable wheel wobble at 70.  Got rid as soon as i could.

A Daewoo Tacuma. Huge people carrier thing. A sudden change of job resulted in a loss of my company car and an urgent need for a car to get to my new office on Monday morning. Also needed to carry my bikes. We didn’t need anything fancy as my mrs had a nice company car Bought on a Friday night for about £1k, kept for 3 years with zero issues and sold for £1k. It was deeply ugly, cavernous inside, drove absolutely fine, never let me down

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/2002_Daewoo_Tacuma_SE_1.6_Front.jpg%5B./img%5D

I was given a 1600cc AUDI 80 Auto once that I ran for years. Horrible drive, but it just kept going.

£8k for my current Golf is beginning to look pretty cheap at 293k miles.

VW Scirocco 1.8 GT2 (iirc) for £440 about 1998 – in great condition but they were quite unfashionable.

Drove it for a few years, sold it for twice what I paid when I needed something more practical.

Still miss my Mk1 Nissan Almera

(not mine but same colour and spec)

Bought for £500 in 2000/1, had only done 50k when I got it ran flawlessly for 5 years until I lobbed it in a ditch on some black ice. It still drove fine after that despite major realignment of bumper and bonnet but I couldn’t get the headlights back to a normal position to pass an MOT.

Comfy ride because of the balloon tyres and the handling didn’t seem to suffer much despite them. Peppy enough as it didn’t weigh a great deal, great fun on bumpy twisty back roads.

Insurance was half of what the 1.0l polo breadvan it replaced was as it was so undesirable.

Merc 300TE, £700, 190000 miles. Loved it, Le Mans trips (including full size freezer and Genny!), bike trips, camping trips, football away days with 7 seats the lot. MPG was piss poor tho. Only had a fuel pump replacement in about 3 years.

Not cheap, but bought a Nissan Primera at 10 months old for £11k. I’ve still got it 23 years later. Been very reliable.

9 years ago, I paid £6.5k for 2009 Lexus 250i with 35k miles.

It’s now done 105k miles and has only had consumables.

It’s now doing a lot more short journey’s but still holding out.

I bought a Volvo 343 for £210 came with a free bottle on methodone in about 1998. Kept it for two years, sold it for £190, only thing it needed was a new starter motor from a scrap yard when it got to the stage that even hitting it with a hammer didn’t help.

I reckon the days of cheap bangers will be over in a decade or so. Engines seem to go on forever, but all the other electrical gubbins associated with cars nowadays I’m not so sure about.

As for move to ev’s…Wonder what the range of a well used Tesla in 20 years time will be…

Wonder what the range of a well used Tesla in 20 years time will be…

more than a new one if you listen to the evangelists

This has restored my faith in STW – I’d take any of the above over what is currently being discussed in the £40k tax moan thread!

Another Fiat Panda Fire here, was an ace 1st car in black, got broken into twice whereby someone just bent the front door frame enough to reach in and unlock only to find I’d not put the removable Kenwood stereo under the seat, bent the door back into shape no bother. Also when there was the fuel shortage I just sailed past the queue and put leaded petrol in as my dad said the engine was so basic it would be fine and it was for a few more years before I upgraded to a Punto. Loved that car took me and mates to many clubs around the north west. Mate had the 4×4 version which are big money now.

Objectively the best car I had was a Scorpio. It was bought in a hurry as I had a weekend in which to find a car and it was the least worst option I could afford. It had a face only a mother could love and it was seriously tail-happy almost to a point of being dangerous, but man it was comfortable. It was the base spec and still had a walnut dash, electric everything and a 2L engine in it, it was like driving an armchair. It was the perfect motorway muncher. I think I paid £2k for it, might even have been £1k.

Bestest favouritest was a Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6 GL. Might not qualify here as it cost £6k, my mum helped me buy it. It was love at first sight, coming from a Friday night special Mk3 Escort it was like getting a Rolls Royce. Electric windows! Heated mirrors! Everything was just where it should be, the handling was fantastic and totally predictable. I ran it to the moon and back, wound up selling it to a mate’s brother for something like £500.

This was getting towards the end of its life: