At this point the only sensible choice is keep what you've got or go EV, internal combustion including hybrid is a dead end (for a daily driven road car) and a waste of new money.

I've suggested to Helen she weigh up how likely she is to keep her Kodiaq until it's literally unmaintainable and if she's not, switch to EV while she's got a guaranteed final value on the finance because within 5 years second hand values are going to nosedive.

Not just because 2030 is EV-only year but increasing emissions penalties - Birmingham is introducing an emissions zone any day now; her office is right on the border of it and it's currently "Euro 6 and EV exempt" but how long before that's "EV exempt"? How long before all the other metropolitan areas follow suit? How long before Smart motorways start sending you pro-rata bills for polluting them? How long before fossil forecourts disappear or at least start switching pumps to chargers?

Get a home charger and there's plenty of infrastructure - the new EVs can go a (couple of) hundred miles between charges and if you're going that far from home you'll be on a motorway where you can put half an hour on at services without losing much time.

Booo, MOT fail due to a front coil spring not being springy. Stupid cars costing me stupid money.

What's wrong with your current car?

Get it lowered if they're being replaced

Nothing, I want to replace it in the next 12 months anyway as it will need MOT and the warranty runs out.

But if I can upgrade early, and save money leasing, it is a possibility.

Booo, MOT fail due to a front coil spring not being springy. Stupid cars costing me stupid money.

No free retest at that mot station? Boo.

Prices of nearly new interesting cars are stupidly high at the moment.
I’m sure a Boxster 981 or 718 are at least £10k more than they would have been for a similar age car before the pandemic.

You can spend £40k on a new Mini convertible which is just madness.

Delivery dates on new cars are much longer due, principally to the following two reasons. Car manufacturers shut down last year due to the pandemic. Even bog standard cars have 50+ microprocessors, the manufacturers of those have focused elsewhere (speculate crypto mining), the car manufacturers have become low priority, and they can’t get the chips to build their cars to the volumes they’d like.
Consequently used car prices have climbed, across the board as buyers don’t want to wait 5+ months for a new car.
Sports cars are something else though, I think the people who could afford them, having seen their income static, but expenditure drop, are buying “the car they promised themselves” as going for a drive is a YOLO thing.

£50 for an MOT? They're £27 where I'm taking the Puma tomorrow.

It has best not catch the coil spring flu!

How much did it cost?

£50 for an MOT? They're £27 where I'm taking the Puma tomorrow.

It has best not catch the coil spring flu!

You setting off anywhere in it tonight? Perfect weekend for first adventure.

Finally got our van:



Absolutely made up with it. Spent the last couple of days doing the outside bits with a bit of help from Z.

Well fuck me if the offside spring wasn't snapped.

Sadly, that was among the least of its problems.

I looked into leasing when I bought the i30-N and quickly realised it made no sense (in fact, I believe some BEEX-ers told me it was a stupid idea when I mentioned it here).

Leasing appears to be for people who can't afford to buy a car (but can manage a deposit), you pay out a shitload of money in what are effectively rental charges, and at the end of it you don't have a car - plus it's never even your car as you have to give it back at the end of the lease agreement.

I crunched the numbers on the i30-N and the overall costs over three years (factoring in depreciation) worked out the same, except that with buying it I had a car at the end of three years.

Sometimes there are super-cheap deals to be had on leasing, but they tend to be on less desirable cars or where manufacturers have end of line models or stock surpluses they want to get rid of, which seems unlikely in the current market.

Here were my sums from the time (EDIT - my figures on depreciation through owning were pessimistic too):

To buy the car costs £28K, and at the end of four years I have a car that's worth, let's say £10K. I can put £12K cash in, plus £10K trade in, so I only need to finance £6K and I can borrow money off the bank at 3.3% APR. (And TBH, with a bit of a stretch I could put the full £18K cash in so no finance at all.)

To lease the car costs £21K in total over four years, and at the end of it I have no car.

Am I not £3K worse off by leasing? Sorry if I'm being dense here but I thought leasing was supposed to offset the cost of depreciation, which doesn't seem to be happening here, and either way I get a new car at the start of it.

Hope it pans out for you

Hope it pans out for you

Not taken many of the inside, just when I picked it up:

I'm a Merc wanker now!

And I've doubled down, because I'm a convertible wanker too!

Nothing gets the ladies wetter than a middle-aged fat man in a drop-top!