When to call it a day?

mousedown

mousedown

Well-known user
Jun 7, 2010
366
101
Newcastle
I love my car, always have but time after time she keeps letting me down with costly repairs. I've now spent more in repairs than I bought the car for (2.5 years) which is never a good sign. Is everyone else the same?

Sad but true, but we're going to see the death of more and more cats. When do we switch off the life support machine ?

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The thing is mate your car is a known quantity and the money you've invested means the car should be more reliable.

You can trade her in for something else but you might be buying a wreck.

I've looked around but unless I spend stupid money there is nothing out there that i like more than the cougar.

Do you do your own work on the car or do you goto a garage?
 
in fairness, i think a lot of that stuff is a little rich on the price too, I reckon that figure could have been below £6k if you had a local mech no charging you top whack, and the parts could be had a little cheaper.

However, moving on....as others have said - you know what you have got with your car, and its worth (unfortunately) not a lot of money.
 
You also don't show how many miles you've done.

Mine has cost a fraction of that to buy and maintain, but I don't do many miles so it wouldn't be fair to compare my costs to go 3500 miles per year to your costs if you were doing 30,000 miles per year.

You could then work out a cost per mile.

It does sound like you've spent a lot though and from the labour charges and servicing costs it looks like you don't do any work yourself. Owning an older car can be expensive if you don't do the work yourself. I had my first cougar for approx 18 months and the total it cost me including depreciation between buying price and selling price and all maintenance and repairs for that time was less than £200, and I covered just over 5,000 miles in that time. I've spent £25 on my current cougar so far which I've had for 4 months. I do need to do a few jobs at the cougar when the weather improves which will probably set me back about £100.


At the rate you're going you may be better looking at a lease. Before the cougars I had a lease for 2 years which cost approx £4500 in total for the two years. That price includes the road tax so that's another £430 saving. So all in it cost about £2k per year for that you get a brand new car replaced every 2 or 3 years. The car is under warranty for any repairs etc - I just had to pay for 1 service at 12 months which was £100. The only limitation on mine was I couldn't do more than 10,000 miles per year. It's a cheap way to own a new car, the car I had had a £19k price tag. After 2 years they offered it to me for £11k, but on Autotrader they were fetching more like £7-£8k. So if you assume you'd get it a bit cheaper than 19k, say 18k then it depreciated £10k over the 2 years but only cost £4k.

Leasing wasn't my cup of tea, and I didn't 'enjoy' a new car as much as I thought I would but for some people it's got to be better than spending out loads on either buying a new one or paying someone else to maintain on older car
 
You spend the money on it because you love it, or you don't... and in that case you sell it and buy something else to spend money on to keep it on the road. All cars need money thrown at them to keep them going, and even if they're not driven.

I paid $100 for my 1978 Escort coupe. Spent $6,500 on it during the restoration, and keep spending money on it keeping it in top condition. I've spent scary amounts on the 1978 Cortina Ghia. All done because I love to work on them and love to drive them. Call me a motoring enthusiast.

The Cougar gives me the same joy, so I have no problems spending the money needed to keep it in top shape. There's no other modern car (that I could afford) that I'd rather own than my Kitty. Ticks all the boxes for what I look for in a car.
 
Sounds like a common question that my family, friends and coworkers keep asking me. With the money I have spent on my Cougar in the last 1.5 years since I purchased it is in the region of £4600 so far. But despite this I have stuck with it knowing I will be lucky to get a quarter back of what I have spent; any car purchased on that shoe string budget would no doubt be near the same condition, if not worse, than the Cougar was when it was initially purchased. Only without any of the repairs or modifications so it would be starting the same cycle once more.

With the Cougar you know what you've got, with another car you may end up spending the same money again only to be back in the same scenario once more.
 
I do the maths regularly to make sure - especially with the price of fuel rising to £1.35+ . Even if I took the option of getting a brand new VW every 6 months through work, I find that keeping, running, fixing MOT'ing & servicing (and modding of course :) ) the Cat is still cheaper overall throughout the year than paying a monthly loan cost on a new car! Depends what you're after, but I haven't found anything at all that would make me move on from a Cougar at the moment!
 
There are a lot of "voluntary" costs in that list ie: modifications, so realistically you shouldn't be adding them to running/maintainence costs, add the consumables and it adds up to quite a bit off the total. Also worth considering self maintainence, these DIY courses can save thousands of ££££'s in unnecesary garage bills. My cat cost me a fraction over 1k 6 years ago (bargain at the time) but i never look at the running/modification costs, i darent :sick:, but the fact is, like many others, i do it because i enjoy it and the car as well :beer:.
If your intention is to buy a car and keep it absolutely bog standard as a runabout, and it starts "costing" then maybe it's time to look elsewhere, but if you buy it with the intention of even minor mods, and you like that car enough to compare it with other cars available at a similar price, then you are on a loser. You will never gain by selling one money pit for another. Tbh, if i read that list of costings you've done, and i saw that car up for sale at £1,500 it would have to be a serious consideration as all the serious stuff has been done and i would get all the benefit from your work, depending on bodywork condition. Sit down, have a think about the money you would be throwing away by parting with it, then think about starting all over again with something completely different.
Your choice. ;)
 
Same here. I have spend nearly 7K on my car, but at least 6.5K of it are mods. My car has only really cost me around £500 in 2 years of owning it. I know there will be a time that things are going to need replacing and fixing but that is all part of owning a car and running a car.
 
Personally, the day I start adding up what my car costs me is the day I scrap it, I get that much enjoyment out of driving my Cougar that I dont care what it costs me to keep on the road. It has been off the road now for about 8 months having bought 3 new engines and 2 gearboxes for it trying to get it running again, now have a problem with loosing clutch fluid lol never ending but to much fun to get rid of plus doesnt really cost me much as do alot of it myself or with help from fellow members (y)
 
I started making a list like this just for a pure look at what I'd spent, however as the purchase price was about the same as your final figure, I don't think you want to know how much i've spent since 2004! ;)
 
I used to have 2 cars generally between 2 & 5 years old and paid car loans for both. We still have one that i purchased at 3 years old and intend to run for 3 years but I was lucky enough that i didnt need to borrow for this.

My Cat was 1200 quid in feb 2009 with 126k on the clock then, she now has 148K - with the knowledge gained and help from the guys on here and a willingness to have a go I reckon i've saved a fortune on parts and labour (have also had some luck getting spares) and spent far less on wear and tear stuff than I would of on another 3 year old motor.

Like others have said - a lot of your high costs were front end of your ownership (new engine etc) and some of the prices you've paid do seem high but now you've done all the brakes, cables, wheel bearings, starter, waterpump etc then hopefully you are over the worst and owed some low cost driving.


For the record I had a 4 year old renault scenic that cost nearly 500 quid for a service and brakes, a battery etc so its not just old cars that cost
 
Yes you have spent a lot

Think how much someone loses in the first year on a new car!

My Pug 308 diesel would have been £18K list when new ( so say buyer paid around £15K ) , its now a year old it would trade in at £8K. *14K miles, and would have had a £250 service.

(I paid £10,500 when it was 6month old )


I am looking forward to some cheap and fun motoring with my new cougar.
 
mousedown said:
I love my car, always have but time after time she keeps letting me down with costly repairs. I've now spent more in repairs than I bought the car for (2.5 years) which is never a good sign. Is everyone else the same?

Sad but true, but we're going to see the death of more and more cats. When do we switch off the life support machine ?

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Click to expand...


the thing is it does seem a lot, but a lot on the list are items you would of had to repair/replace on what ever car you buy
tyres, brakes, oils, filters, plugs etc are consumables,some of the mods are also what you might do to any other car you bought, also fitting a LPG system on an older car will take along time to recover it outlay, also depends on mileage as to how quick you recover costs, as others have mentioned
also it also seem like you have been paying for for brake repairs a lot,do you trust that garage?
seems you've had
may 09, handbrake, brakes and calipers
july 10, rear dics's and pads
june 11, front pads, rear pads, caliper, pad kit, handbrake cables...

at least now you know whats been done, to this one. if you buy another you could end up going through a similar process all again
as for service's rapid fit or the like do oil and filter change offers, take advantage of these as these are good value, the rest of the service you could do yourself as if you read what's done it's check's, check brake fluid, check powersteering fluid +other levels, tyre pressures (if your lucky)tyre tread depths, most of the service are just visual check and report, they don't do a great deal else, your paying someone a lot to do basic checks that you may well be doing yourself anyway.
if you like the car and your happy with it then thats what matters, also if you can have a bit of fun driving it so much the better
 
My brother has an Audi A6 Avant 3.0 deisel (S Line spec) which he's owned from new. It's now just over 3 years old and he's just given it its first MOT.
He's well paid and he gets a car allowance but he's still paying for the orginal purchase and will be for several years to come (about 41k plus the interest!).
It's a nice car but it doesn't do anything for me emotionally nor him as he's talking about replacing it.
The annual service is about £500 and one tyre is about £250. Repairs are in that kind of ball park but fortunately he hasn't had to do many.

Now which car is better value for money?
 
Mate and here was me moaning about £200 for two tyres and that Audi cost twice the price! :LOL:

Just looked in the garage section and I've apparently spent about £4330 on mods! ....have I??? so god knows what the servicing and repair costs are. Yeah you have had a bad run with the repairs by the looks of it and many a man would probably called it a day so fair play to you.
 
There's no such thing as a car you just put petrol in and drive it. Private transport is expensive - it's just a question of whether you want a fixed cost of a new car under warranty or take a chance on random costs (which are usually much less cumulatively) of an older car. Some folk like general newness, and I can see the attraction. Of course, some people prefer "new" to "actually nice" and wonder why the 61 plate registration alone fails to satisfy after 2 years when it's not new anymore and you bought a stupid generic car because it appeared to be a good deal. If that's less important, then running older cars is almost always better value for money.

Market value versus looming repair cost is a meaningless measurement because you can't just walk away without spending the same (and usually more) on a replacement car which invariably comes with it's own 'features' which will raise their head and demand cash. You're onto a loser when you start thinking like that, are are doomed to be permanently skint because you keep getting rid of a car just as you're getting it sorted in favour of the next bag of nails to pour money into.
 
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