Financial Considerations when buying a car

It all depends on the deal at the time. The 20i M Sport deal earlier in the year was a no brainer, you will never be better off by buying a Z4 yourself.

I leased a Micra as a runabout, 3+35 for £156 a month on a 15k miles a year deal (personal lease so including VAT). I paid in total £5928 over the time and then gave it back, it would have been worth £4k trade. The car was £10k to buy.

To get the same monthly payment I would have needed a bank loan for £9.5k for 6 years, payment each month of £155. After 3 years I'd still be owing £5,300 on the bank loan and would only be able to offload the Micra for £4k. Allowing for a discount I would have got on a new car, and maybe getting a bit more for it trade then I could have closed that gap a bit, but I'd still never be better off buying that car over leasing it.
 
I use my work car allowance to fund any finance I take on the cars. I've built up a lot of equity in the 6 years since I came out of the car scheme. I'd never have got to that position by PCP/leasing. I never buy brand new because of the initial steep depreciation. If I ever decide to go back in to a company car scheme I've got a nice tidy sum now to invest in something more sensible than cars. I haven't used any of my actual salary to get to this position. Yes I could've run much cheaper cars and invested the surplus from the car allowance but that's missing the point, which was to enable me to buy the cars that my company car scheme would've never allowed me to drive. At the time i opted out for example, any convertibles were barred, although ironically E89's are now on the list but I don't want one!
 
Our company car scheme prices were jacked out of reach the day they decided to charge on the VAT associated with the purchase onto the monthly payments, meaning that you'd pay upwards of £150-200 per month on top of your allowance just to get a reasonably decent family car, never mind something like a Z. Last time I looked an e89 3.0 with a decent spec had a monthly cost of over £1,000. £500 a month allowance - which you pay tax on - meant £500+ a month top up from your salary - after tax - which is a good chunk of a second mortgage. And of course you pay tax on the value of the vehicle vs. emissions. Oh, and you have to give it back after 4 years/80k miles with no return. I am well out of that, even with the costs I never used to worry about like tyres, servicing and things that go 'bang'.
 
Sounds like your scheme was quite different to ours Bing. Ours was a list of cars dependant on grade/seniority and then on some models on your list you were allowed an options allowance (say £2k's worth) without needing to make any personal contribution. On others you needed to make a contribution over 26 months (say £80/month) if they were at the top end of list price for your grade. We had to keep ours for 5 years, 120k miles too (used to be the same as yours but they changed it during the credit crunch).
 
I always think you have alot of outlay on a used car aswell, usually in less than year need a set of tyres, service, tax, mot

my girlfriends mum and dad were looking at leasing a new 3 series, decided against it as they don't want the monthly payments and in the last 2 months they have spent over £900 and they are needing it mot and taxed in another 2
 
This is an interesting discussion. I'm lucky in the sense that I've never had to take out a loan of any kind..

I recently purchased a house and was weighing this up. At the end of the day I decided to go cash rather than mortgage as the financial benefit is slightly better.

I would never / have never purchased a new car for obvious reasons and I wouldnt buy anything I couldnt afford outright..
 
I've always had a 2nd car, from being 17 when I had my MG Midget I also had a £90 Austin Allegro or similar as a run around, then I sold the MG had a loan for 2yrs and bought my 240Z, paid that off sold the 240Z had a 2yr loan and got my next car, It made a massive difference 13 yrs ago when I got a company car allowing me to buy my 911, essentially building up car equity upto the point of buying my ///M, I only had a small loan, from work, which is now paid off so she's all mine now!

Sure its depreciated over my 2 yr ownership but it's all relative, so has my next car, whatever that is, even if I move to the "Dark Side" :D :driving:
 
Darren Slone said:
I've always had a 2nd car, from being 17 when I had my MG Midget I also had a £90 Austin Allegro or similar as a run around, then I sold the MG had a loan for 2yrs and bought my 240Z, paid that off sold the 240Z had a 2yr loan and got my next car, It made a massive difference 13 yrs ago when I got a company car allowing me to buy my 911, essentially building up car equity upto the point of buying my ///M, I only had a small loan, from work, which is now paid off so she's all mine now!

Sure its depreciated over my 2 yr ownership but it's all relative, so has my next car, whatever that is, even if I move to the "Dark Side" :D :driving:
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Darren we can't let you buy an MGF!!!!
 
My company never buy brand new cars, they buy outright ex demo cars, my A5 is a January 2012 with 7000 miles on it, list was £32,500 ish and my company paid £24,000, quite a saving for what is, with my annual mileage of 35-40K, a 3 month old car , quite savvy really :thumbsup:
 
Stark said:
Darren Slone said:
I've always had a 2nd car, from being 17 when I had my MG Midget I also had a £90 Austin Allegro or similar as a run around, then I sold the MG had a loan for 2yrs and bought my 240Z, paid that off sold the 240Z had a 2yr loan and got my next car, It made a massive difference 13 yrs ago when I got a company car allowing me to buy my 911, essentially building up car equity upto the point of buying my ///M, I only had a small loan, from work, which is now paid off so she's all mine now!

Sure its depreciated over my 2 yr ownership but it's all relative, so has my next car, whatever that is, even if I move to the "Dark Side" :D :driving:
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Darren we can't let you buy an MGF!!!!
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How did you know!! :rofl:
 
My last 3 used cars have cost me roughly £900 in maintenance per year. That's averaging the cost of servicing, MOT and replacing general worn parts such as tyres, brakes (which my last 3 used cars have needed at some point during my ownership) I would like to say that I was also very lucky with these cars as none of them ever broke down or failed in anyway.

2 of the cars were diesels and I was never done hearing about blown turbos and the scary costs involved in repair. That was both via the internet and the indie that I use for all my German car needs. I also have the problem that because used cars don't have the risk of voiding the warranty if you mod them, I inevitably end up spending money on modding and as we all know, that is money down the drain.

As my Z4 may well be going tomorrow I'm at a bit of a loss what to do now. I have a lump sum where I could use part as deposit on a PCP and bank the rest or I could pour it all into a used car, top it up with a loan and suffer the potential bills and modding costs again. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of a car or fuel allowance with my job, reading those posts makes me feel sad, please stop posting them now :wink:
 
So what's the plan Mowflow, anything you fancy buying within reason? What are you going to do without a car?
 
ZermattV said:
an Annual Mileage of 35k - do you commute to Inverness :D
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Not quite but I do go to Dundee, Portsmouth, Newcastle, Wales....... I did 173 mikes yesterday ..... Occupational hazzard :driving:
 
Stark said:
So what's the plan Mowflow, anything you fancy buying within reason? What are you going to do without a car?
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The plan changes daily. I'm not going to rush into anything.

We have an excess of cars in our house at the moment. 2 drivers and 4 cars so no worries about having to mix with the great unwashed on public transport.

Sale isn't a certainty yet anyway. Ste off the forum is coming to view the car tomorrow, then maybe buy. I was out for a short drive at lunchtime, lovely day so had the roof down and had to ask myself why the hell I was selling it. If only it was legal to put a child in the boot :D
 
Mowflow said:
Stark said:
If only it was legal to put a child in the boot :D
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...or two kiddie seats bolted to the rear luggage rack that you can fit to the bootlid :D

I could never justify the amounts of £££ some folk on here spend on cars. I don't begrudge it in any way whatsoever, but personally I could never see myself happy to pump loads of money into a depreciating asset. My Z4 - purchased at 4 yrs old, sold at 7.5yrs old - cost me less in depreciation per YEAR as some of you are quoting paying per month. And there were no scary servicing bills either, just regular stuff.
 
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