Has a consensus been reached on this yet?

I was thinking (and thinking aloud here, as ever)…I prob do about 2,000-3,000 miles a year, say £500 petrol, no depreciation, £200 VED, £300 MOT + servicing, £300 insurance = £1,300pa

Recent hire experiences were:
18 hours & 90 miles = £60 (city car club)
3 days = £72 (+ petrol)

so I could get say 9 of the above hire sessions (w/4 gallons petrol with each hire) instead.

Seems like ownership is a winner to me?

why “no depreciation”?

and if no depreciation (assuming old)why no repairs ?

It’s an 89 Eunos, depreciation has to be minimal, £300 servicing/repairs is more than what has been spent so far…

Anything wrong with me numbers otherwise?

City car club is very expensive for longer hires. Its meant for short hires of an few hours

I recently hired a car for 4 days for £60 Your fixed costs ( which as ever you grossly underestimate) would give you 50 days hire a year.

Car ownership is pretty cheap. Hiring only makes sense if you like newer cars

totally depends how much you need the car. we need one infrequently and generally hire from enterprise when we do. a small hatch costs between £11-£15 per day over the weekend which includes insurance & unlimited mileage. i can’t quite remember how we did it, but we worked it out that we would need to hire a car for more around 100 days before it became economical to purchase something half-decent for our needs (~£1000 spend), but this didn’t take into account tax/insurance/running costs that car ownership incurs and which you obviously don’t have the hassle of with rentals.

so we’re renting for the forseeable as it makes loads more sense to us. plus one less car, not using it when we can walk/cycle to the shops and all of that…

looked into car clubs and frankly, they are a bit of a rip off!

Even at the 40p per mile figure, it’s still the right ball park.

TJ the only fixed cost that he might have underestimated is sevicing. The insurance and VED look about the same as I pay and my car is Focus ST3.

Flexibility? A fake MX5 isn’t the most practical of vehicles. You may still end up hiring if you need to travel with more than just a passenger and a couple of cases.

As a regular customer you could probably wangle an account and get cheaper car hires.

Ownership cost wise: Tyres, brakes, exhaust, all can expire as a result as the passage or time, not just as a result of milage. Also you’re forgetting breakdown cover

The key thing to think about perhaps….. Even if on paper hires might be more expensive than the cheapest you could manage to make owership – with hires there are no surprises. Aside from you excess if you have a shunt a days hire will be exactly what you expect it to be. Theres nothing unexpected like breakdowns, big service items and the like. If you’ve only being spending around £300 per year on maintenance then do you project from that that it will only cost £300 per year this coming year? Or that a more expensive year is due?

TandemJeremy – Member
City car club is very expensive for longer hires. Its meant for short hires of an few hours

I recently hired a car for 4 days for £60 Your fixed costs ( which as ever you grossly underestimate) would give you 50 days hire a year.

Where did you get that price?

How am I underestimating?

I recently hired a car for 4 days for £60

Is this regularly available? Is it some kind of weekend offer?
Do you have to book in advance?
Are there mileage limitations?
What is the insurance excess for this?

I ask as whenever I have booked a hire car (or looked into booking a hire car) it has been about £40/day at least.
Do you get to choose what car? I’d consider hiring an estate car for a weekend away if I could get a similar price to this.

If you don’t do big miles repairs/maintenance is negligible. I’ve spent less than £100/year servicing my Jeep and I’ve had it 10 years 85k miles. It’s only had 3 sets of tyres in that time (<£200 a set).

I’ve only had a car recovered once in 400k+ miles so I’m not convinced breaking down is likely if you do 3,000 miles a year.

Hiring is a good alternative to keeping a new car on the drive and doing 3k p/a but it’s hard to imagine how it can beat an old car you know to be reliable.

Do you get to choose what car?

You get to choose a ‘class’ of car rather than a particular model. So if you want a mondeo, you can expect a mondeo sized car, but what you’ll get exactly is a lottery unless the hire co only have one model on their fleet.

ive hired a car for 7 pounds a day in the past …. without booking just rocked up

it was a shit box but it was cleaninside and it didnt sound ill … and they were to recover it if it broke down !

for 4 days over a weekend ive hired the biggest van in the lot – 3.5tonne iveco lwb high roof for 120 quid if i took a city car it would have cost me near 200 !

if i lived in a city id consider going car free but it does take away the spontinaity of going away – for example i decided yesterday i would go and cycle the west coast next week- to get there by anymeans other than car from aberdeen would eat considerably into my holiday. booking one now from aberdeen enterprise shows my trip to be prohibitavely expensive…..

I’ve only had a car recovered once in 400k+ miles so I’m not convinced breaking down is likely if you do 3,000 miles a year.

I’d say the reverse – low use is its own set of problems – sitting there cold in the damp edinburgh haar – gremlins crawling all over the cold damp electrics 🙂

stumpy01 – check out enterprise, they have weekend specials. usually costs us £35 for the weekend, unlimited mileage, but for a small car. you can opt in for a reduce excess to £100 instead of £600 if you want. lots of choice on cars and can generally call and book a day or so before, but have done so on the same day in the past as well.

maccruiskeen – Member
Do you get to choose what car?
You get to choose a ‘class’ of car rather than a particular model. So if you want a mondeo, you can expect a mondeo sized car, but what you’ll get exactly is a lottery unless the hire co only have one model on their fleet.

Yeah, I realise I won’t be able to turn up & ask for a Mondeo Titanium Estate with the bluetooth pack. What i meant was, are offers like this (assuming it is an offer) available across a hire fleet (presumably with an increased cost for a bigger car) or are they limited to, for example, a Kia Picanto??

peachos – Member
stumpy01 – check out enterprise, they have weekend specials. usually costs us £35 for the weekend, unlimited mileage, but for a small car. you can opt in for a reduce excess to £100 instead of £600 if you want. lots of choice on cars and can generally call and book a day or so before, but have done so on the same day in the past as well

Cool – that’s good to know for the future……

Hmm think I should be looking at this, my car is mostly just so I can go riding or when I need to shift something, last year I only did 20 “away” rides and other people drove for some of those. Thinking I need to ditch my car and just hire occasionally.

Stumpy – what peachos says – its was an enterprise weekend deal.

I get extended insurance off one of the internet specialists.

Because I am a regular user with my local enterprise I actually selected the exact car I wanted and they reserved it for me

Donk the problem is mainly psychological – you have to pay out the £50+ for the hire in one go and you notice it more that owning a car. It seems expensive to drive a few miles to go riding

I’d say the reverse – low use is its own set of problems – sitting there cold in the damp edinburgh haar – gremlins crawling all over the cold damp electrics

Certainly some truth in that. A garage and a trickle charger helps.

A garage and a trickle charger helps.

no garage but I disconnect battery.

It seems expensive to drive a few miles to go riding

yep thats exactly it, last minute plans could be a pain too, plus I like to be on the road quite very early. So ditch mine and the mrs dinky car get a medium sized for her and hire when we both need a car. so after next MOT best place to sell a car?

Surely it depends HOW you need to use it. If say you do 300 miles a month but you do that over one weekend and don’t touch it for the next 28 days then hire must be a winner. If you need a car for ten 30 miles trips evenly spread out over a month, with the outbound journey first thing in the morning and the return last thing at night, the sums would be very different.

Then there is the emotional (not sure right word) security of having it there just in case vs the stress (again, not sure right word) of living with the uncertainty of potential unexpected large bills.

There’ll be no one formulaic response to work out which is best.

Flexibility? A fake MX5 isn’t the most practical of vehicles.

though the early ‘fake’ ones have far better corrosion protection hence lots of UK spec Mk1’s failing MOT due to rot..

but correct not the most practical of vehicles – good cars though

issue for me for hire is that if you used it for biking you would have be very careful about keeping the hire car clear of mud and stains etc otherwise you would get hit for cleaning charges

TJ are you going to tell me how I’ve underestimated my fixed costs then?

Hiring is a good alternative to keeping a new car on the drive and doing 3k p/a but it’s hard to imagine how it can beat an old car you know to be reliable.

It’s always going to depend on having an old reliable car though, which is never a given. Last car I owned for about a year only cost £400 to buy, but then about £600 in service, repairs and tyres. Then the engine blew 😉

The other point I’d make is that you’ll definitely do less miles if you’re hiring cars. Bacuase of the up-front cost you’ll simply choose to drive less frequently.

Regarding costs of hire Enterprise have always been good for me, circa £30 for a long weekend for a group A car. If you’re wanting an estate though I reckon that’d be about £90.

teh other good thing about hire is you always have an appropriate vehicle for what you are doing.

In the last year or two I have had a medium van to take the tandem and camping kit up north, a camper van for the strathpuffer, a small car to take just the two of us a couple of hundred miles, a Mondeo for a long motorway trip, a people carrier for us an the tandem to Englandshire etc etc

Cynical – all the small things people forget but that add up Tyres, washing it, screen wash, repairs, oil top ups etc etc

edit

issue for me for hire is that if you used it for biking you would have be very careful about keeping the hire car clear of mud and stains etc otherwise you would get hit for cleaning charges

never been an issue but i do tend to put an an old blanket in the back

convert speaks sense & harks back to my very first point – it depends how you use a car as to which is the better option.

My wife does minimal mileage in her little Micra [3k maybe]
Once a year MOT and Service costs £89,
Tax is £20
Ins is £180
and I can’t remember the last time it needed tyres, certainly not in the last 3 years

It’s oldish so depreciation is minimal/non existent and it has never once broken in 5 or so years

So about £300 year plus fuel

TandemJeremy – Member
Donk the problem is mainly psychological – you have to pay out the £50+ for the hire in one go and you notice it more that owning a car. It seems expensive to drive a few miles to go riding

If I was going to do this, I would have a hire car saving pot to dip into, the same way I currently have a ‘car running costs’ pot that I pay into via standing order every month.
I don’t really notice tax/mot/insurance/servicing costs as the money has already been accounted for and ‘removed’ from my account.

The other point I’d make is that you’ll definitely do less miles if you’re hiring cars. Bacuase of the up-front cost you’ll simply choose to drive less frequently.

This is a good point. So many of my best life experiences have been on a whim. Some of them have required car transport to happen and I’m convinced the extra faff of hiring (or not being able to as decision time is 10pm on a Saturday and all local hire places are closed) and the thought of spending out (I’m aware I have already spent out for the car sat there, but it does not feel as immediate) would have stopped me bothering and my life would have been consequently less rich.

stumpy – I have a mental reserve of £2000 a year for car hire and taxis.

An example tho would be if I wanted to go to Glentress – 50 mile round trip – car hire say £25 plus a fiver petrol. paying £30 for a day at glentress somehow seems excessive.

Ride there and back you lazy git 😉

I know people who rent bikes on the same thought process. Not convinced though.

Cynical – all the small things people forget but that add up Tyres, washing it, screen wash, repairs, oil top ups etc etc

Tyres are generally cheap and last ages on a normal car, if you drive like my other half they’re way past their sell by date before wearing out. As usual I’m going to point out you vastly over-estimate the cost of repairs to a half decent older car and wear and tear to make a point, but maybe it balances the people who mis-calculate the other way 😀

Hiring is cheaper. Leasing is next least expensive followed by ownership being the most expensive.

hmmm my recent experience was my 406 estate.

purchase 1300 kept for 4 years and scrapped so dep = 325 pa
ins £200 pa
Tax £150 pa
Repairs and tyres were £2600 (injector pump died so did water pump and cam belt – £900) but eveyr mot there was something) over the 4 years so thats £650 pa maintainance
breakdown cover £60 (included because you always get it with car hire)

= £1385 pa

I rented my wife a focus for 10 days whilst I took her car to the alps at 19.99 a day including vat and cdw. so for longer hire its 20 a day

I can rent a car for a single day for £33 in vat an cdw.

If you estimate that half your rentals will be longer and half will be single days then you could add them together to make £53 and divide into the 1385 = 26 days car rental..

Dunno how this works out but this year I’ve done 3 x single days and the 10 day stint which is £300 so far.

Whilst I do use the wifes car, we have got rid of the other car so at least we are a 1 car family now..

You also need to factor in the extra costs using the bus/train etc. for trips where you wouldn’t maybe hire a car.
If there’s more than one of you, that could be quite significant

No way I’d run two cars if we were only using one of them sporadically. Far too much hassle.