Focus Diesel or Petrol?

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Situation is, i have been offered company car, however as I drive 4 miles to work round trip and around 40/50 miles a week out and about im thinking the company car is not such a good idea, and I may take the cash.

I was looking online and the focus does 55mpg, and the petrol dooes an average 40mpg. taking into account I can pick up a 04/03, 40-50k on the clock between 3/4k and a diesel is more 5/6k and fuel is 102 a litre and petrol is 91 a litre... would I be better off going for a 1.6 petrol.

borich
 
Your mileage is pretty low, take the cash. Cash is almost always better than a company car these days.
 
You are the ideal person to buy something mental. MPG doesn't matter when you do around 2500 miles a year.

at 40mpg, it will cost you £258.44 for 2500 miles Petrol.
at 30mpg, it will cost you £344.00 for 2500 miles petrol
at 20mpg, it will cost you £516.88 for 2500 miles petrol.

at 40mpg, it will cost you £286.97 for 2500 miles Diesel
at 50mpg, it will cost you £231.85 for 2500 miles Diesel

By spending more on the diesel focus you might actually end up spending more on fuel.

Buy something crazy ;)
 
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You are the ideal person to buy something mental. MPG doesn't matter when you do around 2500 miles a year.

True, but he may want to pocket the cash, drive something cheap and reliable and put the money saved towards other things (house, holiday etc).
 
For £300 a year?

I'd be looking for the biggest, loudest gas guzzler I could find at that annual mileage.

Buying a £5k Focus and buying a £5k M3 (just an example) will have totally different running costs, not just petrol.

All his cash would go on the running of the gas guzzler in upkeep where as a good example Focus would cost very little to run and keep and thus he'd save the money.
 
Well I'm gonna pimp a thread a made a while back - clicky.

If you've got excel you can have a play with it, but as you only do ~3.5k miles a year then you'll save about £80 a year by going for the diesel. Given a ~1k price difference it'll take 4607 days (12 years) to return the extra spent. (I've just took the average prices off http://www.petrolprices.com/)

I'm in a similar position in terms of mileage, I do <5k a year so I've just bought an MR2 :D
 
going to test drive a 1.6 focus tomorrow

:)

50,000 miles Manual Green Petrol Hatchback 1596 cc

2004, 53 reg, metalic olive green, only 50,000 miles, year mot, 6 months road tax, electric windows, history, electric mirrors, cat d, alarm/immobilizer, front fog lights, heated front screen, air con, 3x3 point rear seat belts, ABS, Alloy wheels, Audio remote control, Body coloured bumpers, air bags, sports black seats, excellent condition, please call for more information on this car. Thank you. £2,995

Not bad for 3k

Borich
 
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I'm in a similar position in terms of mileage, I do <5k a year so I've just bought an MR2 :D

I only do about 5k a year these days... but most of that is in long trips. 250 mile trips into Wales, 500 mile round trip to my parents etc. I'd say 70% of my driving is long trips to fairly rural places, some where finding a petrol station within 50 miles on a Sunday morning is not at all easy!

With 5k a year a 35mpg petrol would by £190 more expensive than a 55mpg diesel. It would also be a bit more expensive on tax and likely more expensive on insurance (to get anything interesting). So we're probably looking at around £300 a year more expensive to run the petrol over the diesel per year - plus the Sunday morning rural petrol station shortage problem.

I'll stick with the Fabia vRS. :)
 
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