3k~ to spend on a car what would you buy?

[cwspellowe]

I saw on Fifth Gear a few years ago that you could get an Impreza Turbo 2000 for 3k. 3k for an Impreza turbo! That would be what I would spend 3k on a car. Can't see the point in anything else, TBH! My 306 is the ideal general purpose car.

If you can afford to fuel a thirsty petrol there are loads of those about under £3k.... Not so many diesels though, which is what we all need in the recession.

You seem to fall victim to the typical eco driver phallacy Tom. Considering the price difference between a lot of diesel and petrol variants of the same car it would take a few yeara to actually save money running a diesel.

Say for instance the petrol version of X car is £2.5k and the diesel version is £3.5k. Diesel is usually around 10p per litre more expensive than petrol but with better fuel economy, say 50mpg compared to 30mpg.

Petrol would cost, for instance, £1.30/L = £5.90/G. Which at 30mpg = £0.19 per mile.

Diesel, at £1.40/L = £6.30/G. Which at 50mpg = £0.12 per mile.

So 7p per mile cheaper, you'd have to do £1000 price difference divided by that 7p difference, or 14k miles before you save any money. Personally that would take me about 3 years as I don't use the car much. But still, even if you did that in a year, you wouldn't actually save any money until that point, and even then you'd save money at a rate of 7p per mile.

All hypothetical figures of course but could easily be applied in the real world.