Financially savvy minds needed!

It may be difficult to find a car that will do 50mpg if your mileage is mostly done in town (which I'm guessing it is)?

You will potentially end up with an extra cost in the £k's per year to save maybe half your target in year 1 followed by a similar level of investment being needed in year 2 onwards.

It's a difficult one really as you will see the useful (low repair cost) life of almost any car in a couple of years. Gut feel is there's at least a year left in the Mondeo before it's time to think about changing
 
I would say better the devil you know, with £3k into this car it is probably now a very good car mechanically. Whats to say any used replacement will not need a huge number spending on it again with the mileage you do.
 
Ant84 said:
Of course it is.

My quandary is that moving to a more reliable car which returned 50mpg instead of 40mpg would save me upwards of £2,000 a year. Hence the question, is it worth changing?
Click to expand...

I'd have thought what you'd save in mpg would be negated by the cost of buying not to mention depreciation of the replacement - and that's before you shell out on repairs that you will need regardless of the vehicle.

Your fortunate to operate in an area where private hire cars can be old, take full advantage of this and run the Mondeo into the ground, fixing it as you go, and pocketing what would otherwise be payment / depreciation money.
 
How about a 1-3 year old 1.6 CRDi Hyundai i30 estate or 1 year old 1.7CRDi i40 Tourer? They have a 5 year, mileage unlimited manufacturer's warranty. Assuming they get past the warranty period OK drive them into the ground and then part exchange or scrap and start again when you get a really nasty bill.

Kia's warranty is longer but not mileage unlimited.

Edit: having said that, depreciation is predictable but I'd be inclined to gamble on repairs. After all there's a limited number of things that can go wrong.

Also an alternative - Mk II Prius (2009 are newest). They will happily take moon miles http://priuschat.com/threads/toyota...ill-working-after-ten-years-400k-miles.70673/ . The batteries love high mileage and it's lack of use that makes them deteriorate. Plus if you do a lot of in-town journeys that's exactly where they get better MPG than other cars.
 
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I just can't see a 1.6 focus being more reliable.
As good as the focus is it isn't big enough to be a taxi.
And I just can't see it handling the kind of hammer a taxi gets very well.

Mondeo is a far better built and more solid car.

My qualification, I drive a mondeo and my missus has a focus.

LPG info, on a 4 cylinder simple petrol engine will cost you about £1000, MPG will drop by ~5% cost varies quite a lot but round here I am currently paying 76p per litre about 1.5 miles from where I work and Asda which is a bit further afield sells at 70p per litre.
I use approx £30 of petrol a month and my average is ~ 12 - 15,000 a year, I also had flash-lube fitted with mine which has almost used the 2nd bottle of lube since I had the conversion done end of March last year and it costs about £15 a bottle. (probably cheaper on the bay)

Have to get an annual service on it which I am told is going to cost me £80.
Although there may be a mileage limit on it as well.


I would say what all else have said, keep your mondeo and get your moneys worth out of those repairs, although if the injectors have not gone budget for those as well as they are common failures on this engine right ?

When the time comes to upgrade perhaps consider a low mileage petrol mondeo and have it converted ?
LPG apparently burns a lot cleaner than petrol and when the engine is maintained tends to last longer than one that has run on petrol <<< or so I am led to beleive.
 
My vote is.........Stick with the mondeo. Regardless of what car it is, with 70,000 miles in a year, any car is going to give lots of repair bills. I don't think it's worth the risk on a newer car to save a little on fuel, when the repair bills could be equally as big, if not more expensive.
 
Thing is the mondeo you have now has had so much done to it that you will lose money even by getting rid due to its condition,
Its likely after all that work that it will run on fairly cheaply for a while now, (Unless its ruisted to hell) and its only worth less in real terms than most of the same model. So it would be better to recoup the money you spent on repairs by actually using it anyway before replacing it with something else in my eyes.
 
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I should probably clarify that the car has cost £3k over the last 35k miles. From now on it will be covering 70k as it's being double shifted.
 
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