Best cheap car you ever had

I’d take any of the above over what is currently being discussed in the £40k tax moan thread!

As the op of the other thread and a contributor to this one, id strongly advise taking the new car based on my exp of my saab! 😉

Seriously though, im all for cheap interesting cars, ive had them all my life up until this point and whilst I fancied something newer for a change, I’ll probably have one again in future. Not all the above appeal, but take that vrs of binners up there for example. I’d have that in a heartbeat.

1987 F Reg Ford Fiesta, lovely condition, bought for £325 if I remember correctly as a run around when we came back from travelling in 1999. Cost about £50 to get it through it’s MOT. Few months later we needed* to buy someting a bit newer as my wife needed to drive to Birmingham from Leicester every day, so I sold it for £750.

*didn’t need to but wanted to the confidence and comfort of something better.

RustyNissanPrairieFull Member
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.

I mean, sure, great car and a brilliant project, I’ve been enjoying your thread.

But the only way that can be described as cheap is if you are valuing your own time as £0/hr!  For anyone else that would be absolutely ruinous!

The best cheap car I had was a W reg Fiesta donated by a relative.  It was cosmetically wrecked, but it drove perfectly, tight as a drum.  Toured all round France, it got flooded out in a hurrendous storm, drove it to Scotland, Wales etc all the way from the east acrrying our bikes on the back and it never missed a beat.  Even the heated windscreen and air con still worked.  Literally never did a single repair on it in about 100K. Just tyres and a couple of broken coil springs. Brilliant car.  Great revvy little 1.25 engine as well.

Not all the above appeal, but take that vrs of binners up there for example. I’d have that in a heartbeat.

@tpbiker – you’ll like it even more when you hear the story behind it. I used to have one of those that I bought new in 2005. I left it with my ex-wife when we got divorced (about 2010). She ran it for a few years then traded it in.

So 6 years ago my Golf GTI needs a load of work doing and I need another car. I fancy another Octavia vRS estate. So I put that into an Autotrader search and the first one that comes up is immaculate, full service history. I look at the number plate and it’s my old car. What’s better, it had just been listed literally 10 minutes earlier and was in a garage 3 miles away from where I was working at the time in Blackburn. I went straight there and bought it, cash, half an hour after they listed it. At £1500 it was an absolute bargain! Especially since I knew most of its service history.

Its got 3 names on the log book… me, the bloke who had it after me (who’d kept up the dealer servicing with all the receipts), then me again.

19 years old, 2 owners!

I absolutely bloody LOVE this car. We were clearly meant to be together 😀

It would have to be the D-plate Fiat Panda 4×4 with the 999cc FIRE engine. I loved that car. Went like a rocket if you revved it, 4wd worked really well for light off-roading and getting around dodgy parking site and it would take a 9’6″ mini-mal surfboard on the inside. 350 quid and so much motoring for the money.

A really big shame it had really bad rust protection and essentially dissolved during my ownership. Poor thing. Hell, it would be a classic now. Well, if I could get new door skins and find a really talented welder.

A worthy second place goes to the W plate Vauxhall Frontera I got for 750 quid after a Polo I had lunched the head after the water pump seized and stripped the timing belt. It was a comfy drive, relatively economical and could take a double mattress in the back for camping trips. It only went because the engine kept going into limp mode and it rusted through in the heater matrix. after 350k miles though, it had earned another life as the donor vehicle to another Frontera owner’s project car.

1987 F Reg Ford Fiesta

You’re off by a year, F-reg was 88/89.

Rover P6 for £400 and in great condition.  It was ‘only’ 15 years old when I had it though.

You’re off by a year, F-reg was 88/89.

Even more of a bargain then!

you’ll like it even more when you hear the story behind it. I used to have one of those that I bought new in 2005

Brilliant…although im not sure if that technically disqualifies your car from the thread given you kinda bought it new! 😉

Fast estates are the way to go for sure. Considered an old vrs a while back but I couldn’t find a decent one for cheap enough that looked like it wouldn’t explode..

£1400-1650 in total ford fiesta in 2002 at auction it was mint , drove it for 18 months went travelling, got an email off my dad, he’d sold it for me £1950 ;0)

Fast estates are the way to go for sure. Considered an old vrs a while back but I couldn’t find a decent one for cheap enough that looked like it wouldn’t explode..

Indeed. Mines a rare, bog-standard, unmolested one. Most have been bought by boy-racers and to quote Pauline Calf “*** me Paul, it looks like you’ve covered it in super glue then ram-raided Halfords” 😀

Benoit the Berlingo.

Paid £625 for him at the peak of Covid microcamper silly season as he was pretty disgusting, covered in nicotine and tar with malfunctioning locks and 3 days MOT.

He then managed about 30,000miles, almost entirely for work at 45p/mile costing no more than a clutch cable, a DIY oil change, a door handle, and H4 bulb (and fuel, tax, insurance) until the clutch pedal bracket cracked which wasn’t practically repairable).  So that’s a ROI of about 1440% (excluding the actual wages I got as a result of being able to do the jobs that required traveling).

As for move to ev’s…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

I dunno if I’d be so sarcastic, There’s been a few mega mileage examples now so battery / motor life is fairly well known.  And unlike a half million mile Volvo you can just ask the onboard computer how healthy the battery is.

Car’s like Leaf’s had a very definite end of life because of stuff like the battery leases or tech and expectations moving on from a 75mile range.  A bigger EV it’s harder to  say.  You could in theory just keep replacing / refurbishing the battery and motors indefinitely.

I looked a while back and although no one seems to have published the data you can sort of infer that most cars are written off in accidents rather than reaching the end of their useable life.  The age of cars on the road drops in a fairly consistent curve rather than there being a consistent number of all ages then a cliff edge at 20 years.

So yea, I’d probably assume that a 20 year old Tesla* will be a lot closer to a 10 year old Tesla in value than a 20 year old Fiesta is.

*aside from model / brand specific issues like irreparably cracking chassis etc.

Fast + old + cheap = knackered.

The worst were early Fiestas. Made of cheese.

My first car was a 1977 Fiesta 1.1L. It must’ve been one of the first off the production lines. It belonged to an uncle who passed away, it was 13 years old when it came to me and had 35,000 on the clock. The executors of the will were my mum and her cousin, they decided that I’d pay the cousin half the value of the car and my mum would gift me the other half, so I paid £150 for it. I pretty much ran it into the ground, then sold what was left of it for £350.

It was quite nippy for what it was, rust doesn’t weigh much I suppose. But as a friend who had a series of bangers once said, “third class motoring is better than first class walking.”

My everyday car is a £2500 Peugeot Partner that is equally absolutely amazingly useful and equally embarrassing.

got the same car – in fact it looks identical.  Was given to me for free 7 years / 100,000 miles ago

would actually be at a loss as to what to replace it with

But the only way that can be described as cheap is if you are valuing your own time as £0/hr!  For anyone else that would be absolutely ruinous!

Yes if you do the work 9-5.

But 5 till 9? How much do most people value their evenings?  What’s the opportunity cost of fixing a car Vs watching TV?

As the op of the other thread and a contributor to this one, id strongly advise taking the new car based on my exp of my saab! ?

For some reason new cars just leave me cold, zero interest in them – it’d be as exciting as buying a new fridge.

Don’t get me wrong, I could easily justify spending that amount on a car (or 10x 4k sh1tboxes!)… it just wouldn’t be anything built in the last 20+ years.

As for move to ev’s…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

to be fair – i’m less mocking the cars than the enthusiasts.

In 2006 I got a job as a consultant for a software company, that I still work for.  I got a car allowance which was use to fund this, a Fiat Marea Weekend (estate) with the 155bhp 20v engine from the fiat coupe.  Bought one night on eBay for £1600. 5 pot, 7grand red line, which it loved to get to.  Very rapid for its time, decent handling and a brilliant cruiser.  It had 42k on the clock and  >170k when I scrapped it four years later.  Including purchase, all repairs tyres and tax it cost me £3500 over that time.

miss it lots. I’d have another in an instant if there were any good ones left

Citroen C15 van.

Bought it when I come back from Australia due to landing a job with a consultant engineering firm. 1st day they started talking about mileage rates ” I don’t have a car”. “ermmmmmmmm” “I have a motorbike” “errrrrmmmmm you’ll need a car for this job” “That was never raised with me until now”. They re-issued my contract that specifically said car. I went and bought a van…..

It took me everywhere, multiple Scotland winter climbing trips and trips to the far north of Scotland, numerous trips to the alps etc. Only costs where a new radiator and some brake shoes for the back.

Heater director control was ‘boot’ or ‘hat’.

X reg (1981) mk1 Jetta.

Poverty spec 1.5L model.

I paid £50 for it in the late 90s. It was cheap, it had a carburettor with busted autochoke – could have been an easy fix if I’d been bothered, but the only symptom was a very fast idle for 5 minutes. Everything. Else. Worked. It also had the bulk of a years MOT and half a years tax.

Drove it for a year. Sold it.

Oh, how I wish I had kept it.

What a foolish young fool I was.

Heater director control was ‘boot’ or ‘hat’.

Pfffft.

My old MG has none of that, you can turn the fan off, and you can shut the vent entirely.  But the heat is controlled by a valve under the bonnet, and the direction is controlled in a zero sum way by either having the flap by your knee open or closed.  If it’s closed then the air comes out of the much smaller holes in the scuttle towards the windscreen.

Yes if you do the work 9-5.

But 5 till 9? How much do most people value their evenings?  What’s the opportunity cost of fixing a car Vs watching TV?

I find it easier tinkering with cars than I do working my day job and I like the challenge. I made a tracking rig and string aligned our trusty Volvo this weekend. That’s more rewarding than watching Strictly or killing whining teenagers on Call of Duty?

Peugeot 306.  Got for  £1200 ran for maybe 4 years – just needed a radiator hose and a throttle cable in that time.  Sold it for pretty much what I paid for it.  Then I fell in an expensive hot hatch rabbit hole before moving to vans

1996 Jeep Wrangler when I lived in Qatar.

Bought it for $5000, drove it for 5 years, basically just oil and filters and a bit of home spannering, sold it for $5000

I loved that car

I bought a nissan micra in 1999 for £75 , One window was wedged in position with a chisel ,heating was either full or off and you could open the rear hatch by turning a screwdriver in the lock. It just ran and ran and ran. Eventually sold it for £40 after 4 years bought a hugely expensive escort for £500 quid which cost a fortune with a stream of different faults  then got stolen.

A VW Polo we bought for Mrs Comet to learn to drive.
£1,600, one careful lady owner (it really was). It was an interesting shade of apricot, had “JMB” in the registration so became “Jimbo”.

After around a year and after passing her test we sold it for about the same money. Jimbo is still missed and no car since has been as loved.

Volvo P2 v70 AWD…5 pot turbo…that thing went like a frigging train and really comfy… That’s the only car I miss, apart from my fiesta.

I think the fiesta was a MK5 but I put an upgraded 1.7 pumaspeed engine into it.. the ‘Yamaha’ one with variable valve timing… wider tyres, induction kit, 4-2-1 manifold, along with uprated ECU, brakes, suspension and all the stuff…complete waste of money but that thing was like a go-kart on steroids. Utterly mental!

So that was not a cheap car, but it was insane!

I’d love to have both those cars back, lol!

Two spring to mind. The £300  2004 1.6 8v Astra G estate picked up 10 years ago for my OH. It had a water feature. We traced it to the seam under the roof strips.

It was commuted from Reading to Oxford for a while, then retired from commuting as the train was a better option. It did 2000 miles this July on holiday fully loaded with roof box and 3 adults. It’s been up and down the Alpe Duez climb many times. I’d forgotten to do the Cam  belt and water pump as we hadn’t realised we’d had it that long.

looked perfect when I did the belt/pump after we got back from France.

Might need a clutch in the next year as the rear main seal has a small leak and it’s the original clutch/slightly shuddery.

Everything still works and it does 40mpg. Headlining is sagging and lacquer is peeling.

The other was a 1993? K plate Cavalier 1.6 lx or gl. That was very cheap from a mate. Couple of hundred plus it needed a wheel bearing for the MOT. Cost me nothing but fuel the whole time I owned it.

My first car, a Focus TDDI 1.8 estate- the slowest Focus they ever made. Cost me £800. Had an inexplicably massive boot considering it wasn’t a big car, brilliant bike carrier. I put 30000 miles on it, had to rebuilt the rear brakes and do some maintenance and the sills pretty much dissolved but it never really had a big bill til the end. Clutch slave exploded, I stuck it on ebay and sold it for £600.

https://i.imgur.com/viaCWW7.jpeg

This one might not qualify, it cost me £600 to buy but it needed an engine, drove it from Oxford to Edinburgh rattling its heart out and did a trackday in it before it completely gave out. But it’s cost me a bit more than that now

https://i.imgur.com/Fqr1E3h.jpeg

I guess the only car I have owned that actually made me money was one I bought when I was saving for a house!!

Paid £300 for it and sold it 2 years later for £3000 😀

I did help that the bloke I bought it off was being made redundant and didn’t know its rarity and a year after I bought it they stopped making it.

Mk1 3000E Capri manual

1996 Mazda 323, bought at 13 years old and 130k. Ran for a 16months/16k miles, cost one service and MOT and one tyre. Everything worked on it, only a noisy electric aerial which was solved with chain lube.

Bought for £500. Sold for £600.

@northwind

That’s a tidy looking MX5- I bet it’s a riot to drive!!!

Shame about the focus.

When my nephew left home for a job in Manchester he decided he didn’t need his car (a 57 plate Fiesta 1.4 petrol with low miles) so it was left to rot at the end of the garden here. Realising a small runaround would be useful to me and Mrs WF I gave him £200 for it with no MOT and stuck it on the ramps. Needed a small patch welding on the sill and a battery. I also put a new set of all season tyres on it as it was winter, though it still had plenty of tread left on the old ones. Flew through an MOT and insurance was cheap so drove for a year thinking I could always scrap it later. That was 4 years ago and it has just had another MOT without any advisories. I thrash the living daylights out of it in the hope it will die and I can get something nicer, but it refuses to! They even too £50 off the insurance at last renewal making it only £180 to insure. Ridiculously cheap motoring, and since mrs WF actually likes driving it I guess it will be here a bit longer yet.*

I kind of hate it but have a grudging respect for it too.

*Don’t tell her but I am actively looking for something a bit more modern as a replacement. It won’t go down well when she finds out.

to be fair – i’m less mocking the cars than the enthusiasts.

… he said, as a member on a forum dedicated to a form of transport. 🙂

The other was a 1993? K plate Cavalier 1.6 lx or gl.

That’s the facelift model so it wouldn’t have been a GL. LS perhaps? (I don’t recall there being an LX at all)

I had multiple Cavs in various flavours of engine, trim level and disrepair. It my go-to cheap motor for ages after my ‘posh’ one above, I knew the car backwards and knew what to look for in a rotten one. There’s a website called something like “Drive Your Dad’s Car” which lets you drive old motors and they’ve got a Cav, I’m sorely tempted.

£200 Tundra Green original mini. PCG 231P. Saw me and my sister through university and about 30k miles up and down to London from Devon. Was sad when it died of big end bearing failure. But it was fun while it lasted.

MG Montego EFi.  Loads of bang for your buck, and torque, in the days when cars came with basically sodall and most still had carburettors, not injectors.  Sun roof, dry interior (unlike Fords of that era), and (if you knew it’s location under the dash) an immobiliser (actually the inertia based fuel pump cut out that opened in a crash to cut off the fuel supply). Activating it  when leaving the car stopped it being nicked at least twice.

Went out to the Alps several times in it,  for both kayaking (with boats on the roof)  and other walking trips.  Multiple trips boating in Scotland,  countless trips to the Lakes and Wales too.  + to work every day for years.  Only things I remember ever fixing was to change brake pads, and 1 wheel bearing.  Maybe a rear exhaust too.

Even had the front discs glowing red hot on more than 1 occasion ?.

Cost £1850 with about 40k miles on it. Used it till about 135k miles before it was totally worthless and all the suspension bushings and pivots etc worn out to a point where it wasn’t economic to fix.

mattyfez
Full Member

That’s a tidy looking MX5- I bet it’s a riot to drive!!!

Ta! It looks like crap up close but it drives better- 2.5 litre swapped, all new suspension and bushings throughout and absolutely no bloody rust 🙂

My first car was a slightly ratty Porsche 968 Coupe I bought for £7000 which I never quite managed to part ways with. It wasn’t particularly cheap to buy or to run but was a bargain in its peculiar way with very little on the road that could match its blend of practicality and visceral joy. It probably ruined more modern performance cars for me forever, turning me from a petrolhead to an ascetic. One of these years I’ll get it back on the road.

Two spring to mind:

Fiat Strada in a fetching gold colour. Cant remember the year but was 300 quid and sold it for 300 18 months later.

Series 2 A land rover that paid 500 for,driven for 2 years and sold for a small profit.

Neither had anything other than fluids and filters. I Do recall the fiat had the longest throw gearshift i have ever used.

My second car was a 1973 Mk3 Triumph GT6 in non-original metallic BRG. Paid 3 grand knowing that it had a badly vibrating propshaft.

I poured a fair bit of money into it, but made friends with a mate who had worked for his family engineering firm who also had a GT6 and we spent almost all our spare time fettling and tearing around the countryside. I even featured in a (dodgy) Channel 5 TV programme – Top Dog, comparing the GT6 to the (blatantly inferior 😉 ) MGB GT.

A younger neighbour who was a joiner loved it so much that he built a speaker cabinet and hid the 6 CD player stacker in the back for the cost of the materials and a drive in it.

I sold it for slightly more than I paid for it when I emigrated. Would have been nice but not very practical here…

… so I bought a Triumph 2500S when i moved out to Queensland. Paid $2.5k I think. Over 14 years it was often our main car. Sold it for $7.5k. Admittedly there wasn’t much left original except for the bodywork. Drove it to Tasmania, had a rebuilt and vastly upgraded but noisy as hell engine fitted, uprated suspension, seats, driveshafts, etc, etc. Great fun. Drove it to South Australia, up and down the east coast of Oz a few times. Brilliant on the dirt roads, but no a/c which was a bit awkward with tiny kids.