When to cut your losses with a car?

@oikeith well it at least sounds like I could take it to 180k miles if I’m lucky, another 12 months and it’s paid off so I guess just repairs after that but they seem to never go a month or two without needing something spent on them, usually costing what a monthly payment on something new would which is what the kick in the nuts is for me.

another 12 months and it’s paid off so I guess just repairs after that but they seem to never go a month or two without needing something spent on them, usually costing what a monthly payment on something new would which is what the kick in the nuts is for me.

Think about it the other way, buying a ‘new’ car you pay some faceless finance company every month whether it goes wrong as well on top of that or not.

At least once it’s paid off you’re no longer paying to play that lottery.

DMF and Clutch for my Mini were going to be closer to £1500 – At an independent….5 years ago!

No local VW garage can fit me in until 6th January

this is the deal breaker for me – or ideally, just before it reaches this point.

paying for repairs on cheaper cars is possibly financially sound.

but being without it* for 3 weeks, including if you’ve got travel plans for christmas, thats not fulfilling its basic function as my primary transportation.

*is it drivable? do you trust it for a long trip?

It’s possibly drivable but for how long is a gamble. Could very easily leave me stranded or cause further damage if it can’t supply adequate fuel pressure to the rail, so realistically, it’s out of action now.

it being Christmas is actually useful in a way because I normally rely on it for work travelling round the region to client sites but I’m off work soon for a while.

Given I’m reliant on the car not just to commute to work, but as part of my job driving to meetings, I really wonder if a lease car with a warranty would be better. There’s only so many times you can apologise for car trouble to a client before it starts taking the piss a bit.

Why are you driving your own car to meetings? Do you get a car allowance?

Do you get a car allowance?

Yup, and 47ppm ?

Yeah I get a car allowance of £3,800 a year then 24p a mile. Should really be 47ppm but they’re a bit tight.

I’ve got a 13 year old Passat (1.6tdi) with 145k on the clock. Had tons of problems with the injectors, fuel pump and EGR value when i got it but that was sorted on warranty. Since then ive not spent much on it except obvious consumerbles likes brakes, servicing, timing belt, bushes. Its been pretty relaible and i intent to keep it for a few more years.

As someone else mentioned, dont go to the main dealers they are expensive for both parts and labour. It was once in for warranty work at VW and they mentioned the brakes needed doing, they quoted something like double my local garage and probably quadrupal what i could do myself.

I often think about changing but then for the price i’d pay for a newish one, i could fix a lot each year on my banger. I do a lot of the work myself if i can get to it on the drive so its a no brainer for me to keep it.

I thought the higher rate was only for people who didn’t get an allowance? Certainly is at every company I’ve worked in the last 15 years.

You just claim the difference on your tax return. So you’ll get 47ppm just a bit deferred.

Hold on a sec…

The man maths just don’t stack up here, we’re talking about a Passat that’s knocking on for a decade old now. For which you’re still paying off an (exorbitant even in 2022) £10.5k (so interest on top?) plus you’ve shovelled a £1.5k into repairs on it and you’re looking down the barrel of the same again? Within 24 months? 

Dude that thing has sucked almost £14 grand out of you thus far and clearly isn’t reliable, it’s a money pit,.Chopped in via WBAC you reckon you’ll still be ~£10k down?

Honestly get out now before it gets any worse. My (uninformed) opinion, Yeah VAG group cars are nice enough and will mostly last a couple of decades, but that second decade tends to be full of ever increasing bills.

And you have a car allowance (roughly equivalent to £315 a month) from work? I’d get on Lease loco. Does it need to be Passat sized (for work/family)? You could probably do a smaller (new) car with a bolt on maintenance/tyres package more or less within your allowance budget… And just hand it back after a couple of years.

Why are you driving your own car to meetings? Do you get a car allowance?

As I understand it a car allowance is taxable at the same rate as your salary (except possibly without NI, and without your employers NI) so really its not a benefit its just a weird way of expressing your salary. I guess it could be a way to have office and site based employees on the same base salary but give the travellers a bit of a bonus?

in any case, once they’ve started giving you a “car allowance” not only do they not have to pay the full 45p/mile that they would if you used your own car, they then also gain the right to start dictating what sort of car you have:

age – I know of people that must have cars no older than 5 (or even 3) years – to present a “professional appearance”;

must have 4 doors;

must comply with some poorly worded and not thought through attempt to seem eco that doesnt actually work in reality.

As someone who likes to buy 3ish year old, 2 door cars, and run them until they seem like they are about to get expensive – any of these criteria would mean an annoying and costly downgrade.

This is for me, 2 or 3 sites to visit a week, mostly in the same or neighbouring counties, probably only a few thousand miles a year. If you were racking up 20k miles of business miles it becomes a very different calculation.

Yeah I get a car allowance of £3,800 a year then 24p a mile. Should really be 47ppm but they’re a bit tight.

if you get a car allowance then they only need ot “cover” your fuel costs, 24p seems about right. anything over that would be a taxable benefit so you wouldn’t see all of it.

if you get a car allowance then they only need ot “cover” your fuel costs, 24p seems about right. anything over that would be a taxable benefit so you wouldn’t see all of it.

Doesn’t happen for me & I’m paid both?

age – I know of people that must have cars no older than 5 (or even 3) years – to present a “professional appearance”;

If you are failing to turn up to client sites as your old car is in for repair (again) then I can see where they are coming from.

You just claim the difference on your tax return. So you’ll get 47ppm just a bit deferred.

No, you get the tax back on the difference, so (assuming 40p tax rate) 45-27p = 18p, x0.4 = 7.2p per mile back from HMRC.

if you get a car allowance then they only need ot “cover” your fuel costs, 24p seems about right. anything over that would be a taxable benefit so you wouldn’t see all of it.

Depends on the company and how it’s paid.  there’s no legal requirement to pay anything, the 45p is the max HMRC will allow you to claim without it being taxed, they could pay you £1/mile but then you’d pay tax on the other 55p as if it were income.

If they provide you with a company car (and you pay BIK on it) but no fuel card then the rate is less as it’s only supposed to cover fuel.

If they pay a “car allowance” then from a tax perspective that’s just income and taxed as such.  The company is still free to set the expenses per mile at whatever they like.

If they do a car scheme via salary sacrifice then I think that comes under company car rules but I’m less sure.

Hold on a sec…

The man maths just don’t stack up here, we’re talking about a Passat that’s knocking on for a decade old now. For which you’re still paying off an (exorbitant even in 2022) £10.5k (so interest on top?) plus you’ve shovelled a £1.5k into repairs on it and you’re looking down the barrel of the same again? Within 24 months?

Dude that thing has sucked almost £14 grand out of you thus far and clearly isn’t reliable, it’s a money pit,.Chopped in via WBAC you reckon you’ll still be ~£10k down?

Except there’s zero evidence to suggest that once fixed the car will be any less reliable than anything you could replace it with.

Selling it cheap and then having to pay £300+ each month foevermore is just guaranteeing that you’ve lost money and will continue to lose money.

If you are failing to turn up to client sites as your old car is in for repair (again) then I can see where they are coming from

I get the intent, especially in OP’s case, they dont want an unreliable old banger – but in general, forcing people to get rid of a 3 year old car under 50k miles in this day and age seems less about reliability and more about you the employee showing up in a car that looks like they have given you with a company car (current model dull base spec german repmobile), but without them having to put the effort or expense in to actually providing one for you.

employee showing up in a car that looks like they have given you with a company car

I had a £5k car allowance with no stipulations so I just carried on using my ex military Nato green 110 Defender.

Could very easily leave me stranded or cause further damage if it can’t supply adequate fuel pressure to the rail, so realistically, it’s out of action now.

Yup, low fuel pressure into the HP pump and rail can give all sorts of issues with cylinder temps, exhaust systems, missfire and so on. Especially at higher engine speed and load. See it a *lot* on modified cars.

OTOH depending on the car and tank it can vary from extremely easy to change a pump (couple of hours, mostly undoing and doing up bolts/removing the rear seat cushion then 15 minutes to get the pump swapped) to an entire day of cursing and having to drop the tank/remove exhaust etc.

I’m fearful that it’s getting close to needing as much spent on keeping it running as it’s worth and they aren’t the most reliable so a single big repair bill would mean I’d be better off scrapping it. I still owe about £2800 on it from a bank loan.

What you have to remember is that most things on a car are independent. So if e.g.  your water pump fails one day it doesn’t mean that your brakes are going to fail any time soon. What that means is that for a given age, a certain component has (more or less) a given probability of failure.  That means that the maintenance cost of a car is really a separate concept from the purchase cost.  You buy it for a known sum, then you have a certain probability of a certain maintenance expenditure for however long you keep it.  If you change the car for one of a similar age, that doesn’t change.  It is also not affected by the market value of a car.  That can be artificially low or high depending on a variety of criteria that may not be the same as your criteria.

If you chop the car in, and buy another of similar value you’ll face a similar chance of similar bills. If you buy one significantly newer, you might avoid having to spend on that one thing but you might hit another bill that could already have been changed earlier on the older car.  For example you might have a 100k mile car that’s just had a new clutch, but if you buy an 80k car it might need a new clutch soon etc.

If you buy a car that’s much newer than the one you’ve got, you might end up spending ten grand more than you already did just to avoid three grand’s worth of work. That doesn’t make sense from a maintenance cost perspective, but you may end up with a car that you like better.

In short, it’s nearly always worth fixing an old car and don’t worry about the market value until it’s rock bottom.  A car’s value to you is not the same as its market value. I should probably not have sold the Passat, I’d still be driving around in it now and probably be at least ten grand better off.

Thanks for all your viewpoints, much appreciated. Some thinking to do over the Christmas break for sure.

Except there’s zero evidence to suggest that once fixed the car will be any less reliable than anything you could replace it with.

Well there’s no evidence of the opposite either, and cars don’t tend to improve with age…

Selling it cheap and then having to pay £300+ each month foevermore is just guaranteeing that you’ve lost money and will continue to lose money.

It’s an ongoing cost for transport. Amortize the ~£12000 the OP is into this Passat so far over the two years of ownership and it shakes out at about £500 PCM, offset by whatever he gets chopping it in (you can do better than WBAC’s offer) he’s still probably spending about the same as a lease (on a decade old, out of warranty car). Ownership incurs similar overall costs but comes with some harder to predict liabilities if (when) it suffers a breakdown.

If you’re wed to the idea of owning a car you do need to be realistic about the costs and the fact that reliability does not improve with age and use…

If I had the time, space and patience I’d love to do bangernomics ‘Rusty Nissan Prairie‘ style. But realistically most people aren’t in a position to do that…

My take on it is that quite a few cars have an age where quite a few parts reach the end of there lives. I had it with an older Passat between 110k and 130k miles a few relatively big ticket items failed, alternator, brake servo, injector wiring loom in the head, intercooler pipes. I was lucky to be skilled enough to do the work myself. It then ran from 130k miles to 220k miles with just normal brakes and suspension bushes.

I am just about to retire a 2006 Citroen Dispatch van. 180,000 miles, most repairs done by me and has only broke down once, last year, in 12 years of ownership. Whilst the engine is sound (I’ve maintained it and they can do 300.000), runs well and passes MOT’s and emissions with ease. Yes the Bosch EGR actually works and only needs a clean along with the intake about every 80,000 miles. The van itself is an old design dating back to 1994 and certainly feels it compared to modern vehicles!

It got rear ended last year by some buffoon (paid out and bought back) which has accelerated it’s root to the scrap yard. I’m not repairing the damage or any of the other things that need doing. It’s adios amigo as I have a new (new to me) petrol MPV to replace it. I didn’t want an MPV or petrol engine (there’s no way I can afford the extortionate prices of electric vans), but my arm has been twisted by emission charges and it will do, until SH electric vans slot into a more reasonable price range!

you can do better than WBAC’s offer

I’m not sure – it sounds like a shed.

You owe it nothing, move on.

Time to cut your losses IMO. Either get a lease or a loan and buy something fairly new. You could get a £15k car loan over 4 years for around £350 a month. Less than the current car has cost you. Newish cars have fewer problems.

Aside from consumables and servicing my almost 7 year old Skods has required a cracked brake light lense replaced and front brake pad shims (warranty repair)

I also am seeing a narrowing between running second hand cars and new lease or similar deals. I think the rising cost of repairs is a major factor, as is the ‘more technical it is, more to go wrong as it ages’ factor, as is ‘bigger car = bigger bills and faster wearing out’ factor…

We still managed to run a small second hand car cheap(ish). But, we chose to spend less than we could afford – my extra few £000 seemed to buy a ‘nicer’ car, but not necessarily more reliable or prone to issues.

Our mileage has significantly dropped as well now, and so the gap between lease and our loan + “older car running costs” has come right down. Excluding insurance and fuel, our Fabia is £230 a month…I can lease a new Astra electric estate for £290 on an amortised Lease for 10k miles is similar. I am assuming all regular service, tyres, fuel, insurance etc is the same.

If it’s any help I have a 64 plate Passat estate with 100K on it and just had timing belt, water pump, new battery and MOT done for £850 in Edinburgh and paid £180 for a service in September.  Not expecting to be paying anything else until it’s next service /MOT