03-01-2013, 11:15 AM
I could replace aGolf engine much more cheaply........I still have most of one spare in the Garden. 
You completely contradicted yourself there Niall, saying that why is a newer car better....then said your £3k car still had age/milage related issues - so a newer lower milage car will have less of those issue!
My Mums NEVER had a major fault on any newer car she's bought, and she does more miles than anyone else I know, at one point she was doing Ipswich to Barnesly and back every single weekend. She started with a an Volvo when I was small, I remeber various faults with that, including the acc cable snapping and the car overheating, not liking sainsburys leaded petrol (showing its age!) and having to be drained and then dumping its coolant which is when it died - old, cheap, shit, unreliable and not worth repairing.
She then got a Micra, it was only a few years old at the time, NEVER had any work done on it, wasnt even serviced, even ran it down to Bognor Regis with the oil light on and not even enough oil to touch the dipstick! She only sold it cos she was given (not bought.
) a Y plate Skoda Fabia by my Grandad - now this skoda had a faulty wiring loom from the factory, but my Grandad wouldn't take it back cos he was a stubborn old guy at times haha. Anyway, it was always shit, they changed various sensors for her, and in the end they said 'f*ck it' basically it needed a new wiring loom which may or may not have solved the issue. She traded it in for a new skoda fabia, and I know for a fact the other one was just auctioned, so some poor guy buying a second hand car from a dodgy dealer got that shitter!! Anyway she had no problems at all with that new Fabia until it was 6 years old and had done 96k miles - then the cat broke and it would've cost more than the cars trade in price to fix (£1500) because small pov spec petrols depreciate like hell. Anyway, she then got use of a Hyundai i10 and realised she wasnt 80 years old, it was wank on fuel and my Grandad had broken it in the few years he'd owned it, so she traded both in for a Suzuki Swift, first nice car she's had imo, and no problems in 6 months and ~8k miles so far.
What I'm saying is it is the luck of the drawer whether a car is good or not - generally brand new cars have faults from the factory (think of the billions they make, theyr enot all gonna be perfect) but they'll be rectified under warranty. Then cars go for a few years without any major issues, until they start getting old and rusty and deteriorating - this was the thing with the 2nd Fabia, if it'd been a VRS it would've been worth fixing as the rest of the car was still perfect, the only rusty part was the exhaust, everything in the bay was still in perfect condition. The interior was still in perfect conditon. That car could've been driven anywhere knowing there was very little chance of anything at all going wrong. And this is what it's about for me, reducing anxiety levels, I'm scared to drive hard or even overtake in the 306 cos Im always thinking 'what if the turbo dies when Im on the worng side of the road, what if the clutch fails, what if a wheel falls off etc. I can't drive this anywhere near as hard as I drove the Golf, and what the hell is the point of owning a car you're scared to drive anywhere?
My problem is theres only a small distance area where I can buy cars from (again, other issues creating barriers) and the thing with that is I dont have much choice in what I buy for ~£2k, so I take what I can as there'll only be one HDi, or one PD Golf, or one 1.8 306 in this small area. Using a bit more money (which as I've already said, my Nan wants to give me) that opens up a lot more choice, so I can be more picky rather than having to take the 7 owner, 130k, longlife serviced Golf just because it was the only one around...just as an example lol. And if I can find a car that I'm comfortable with that I can trust AND would be cheaper to run, then that would at least reduce stress in one area, as theres no way I can reduce stress at home currently from the seems of it.
I know we'll have different opinions on this, but the fact is I've made my mind up now.
You completely contradicted yourself there Niall, saying that why is a newer car better....then said your £3k car still had age/milage related issues - so a newer lower milage car will have less of those issue!
My Mums NEVER had a major fault on any newer car she's bought, and she does more miles than anyone else I know, at one point she was doing Ipswich to Barnesly and back every single weekend. She started with a an Volvo when I was small, I remeber various faults with that, including the acc cable snapping and the car overheating, not liking sainsburys leaded petrol (showing its age!) and having to be drained and then dumping its coolant which is when it died - old, cheap, shit, unreliable and not worth repairing.
She then got a Micra, it was only a few years old at the time, NEVER had any work done on it, wasnt even serviced, even ran it down to Bognor Regis with the oil light on and not even enough oil to touch the dipstick! She only sold it cos she was given (not bought.
) a Y plate Skoda Fabia by my Grandad - now this skoda had a faulty wiring loom from the factory, but my Grandad wouldn't take it back cos he was a stubborn old guy at times haha. Anyway, it was always shit, they changed various sensors for her, and in the end they said 'f*ck it' basically it needed a new wiring loom which may or may not have solved the issue. She traded it in for a new skoda fabia, and I know for a fact the other one was just auctioned, so some poor guy buying a second hand car from a dodgy dealer got that shitter!! Anyway she had no problems at all with that new Fabia until it was 6 years old and had done 96k miles - then the cat broke and it would've cost more than the cars trade in price to fix (£1500) because small pov spec petrols depreciate like hell. Anyway, she then got use of a Hyundai i10 and realised she wasnt 80 years old, it was wank on fuel and my Grandad had broken it in the few years he'd owned it, so she traded both in for a Suzuki Swift, first nice car she's had imo, and no problems in 6 months and ~8k miles so far.What I'm saying is it is the luck of the drawer whether a car is good or not - generally brand new cars have faults from the factory (think of the billions they make, theyr enot all gonna be perfect) but they'll be rectified under warranty. Then cars go for a few years without any major issues, until they start getting old and rusty and deteriorating - this was the thing with the 2nd Fabia, if it'd been a VRS it would've been worth fixing as the rest of the car was still perfect, the only rusty part was the exhaust, everything in the bay was still in perfect condition. The interior was still in perfect conditon. That car could've been driven anywhere knowing there was very little chance of anything at all going wrong. And this is what it's about for me, reducing anxiety levels, I'm scared to drive hard or even overtake in the 306 cos Im always thinking 'what if the turbo dies when Im on the worng side of the road, what if the clutch fails, what if a wheel falls off etc. I can't drive this anywhere near as hard as I drove the Golf, and what the hell is the point of owning a car you're scared to drive anywhere?
My problem is theres only a small distance area where I can buy cars from (again, other issues creating barriers) and the thing with that is I dont have much choice in what I buy for ~£2k, so I take what I can as there'll only be one HDi, or one PD Golf, or one 1.8 306 in this small area. Using a bit more money (which as I've already said, my Nan wants to give me) that opens up a lot more choice, so I can be more picky rather than having to take the 7 owner, 130k, longlife serviced Golf just because it was the only one around...just as an example lol. And if I can find a car that I'm comfortable with that I can trust AND would be cheaper to run, then that would at least reduce stress in one area, as theres no way I can reduce stress at home currently from the seems of it.
I know we'll have different opinions on this, but the fact is I've made my mind up now.