Is it worth it?

ultralaser

ultralaser

ultralaser

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1,169
Cars. We love them. We want to own one, but does owning a car really make economic sense in todays world?

Maintenance = £350 (service / tyres / oil / etc)
Tax = £150
Insurance = £300
MOT = £50
Cost of car = £800 P/A (for something that TW won't moan about).

Now that works out about £138 a month. Putting that another way you could rent from enterprise a little city car for every weekend and 4/5 days a month on top. Is the future a rental world?
 
My ST has so far in 4 months of ownership
Maintenance = 1k
Tax = £290
Insurance = 1.2k
And 5k to buy. I could have a brand new car on lease for less than what my 9yr old one is costing :Dbut I wouldn't change a thing. Especially when I get it modded. It's worth every penny compared to renting a hateful little 1.0 **** from time to time.
 
Yeah.. Means no public transport. I hate public transport with a passion. I used to pay more than that on my insurance alone not to take a bus!

And rental? That means no mods which is the fun part of owning a car!
 
I'm a full paid up member of the car owner group, just as you guys are.... but I do feel for the first time in a while, renting is close to (in fact well below) the cost of owning. I think it's an interesting debate :D
 
[TW]Fox;28906761 said:
Some dubious maths there.

Renting cars in this country can be fairly expensive especially at short notice.
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In fairness you are right, but in general I get offered £25 +/- £5 for a weekend / 2 day hire. But yes you have a point, as do I.
 
Someone I used to work with did the car rental thing. It worked for him because he lived 5 mins walk from work and didn't mind driving a Corsa to Wales every weekend to visit his parents.

Rental works for occasional use but not ongoing.
 
SDK^ said:
Someone I used to work with did the car rental thing. It worked for him because he lived 5 mins walk from work and didn't mind driving a Corsa to Wales every weekend to visit his parents.

Rental works for occasional use but not ongoing.
Click to expand...

Totally agree but do the sums and it's surprisingly attractive hence the thread. Just a thought though :)
 
ultralaser said:
Cars. We love them. We want to own one, but does owning a car really make economic sense in todays world?

Maintenance = £350 (service / tyres / oil / etc)
Tax = £150
Insurance = £300
MOT = £50
Cost of car = £800 P/A (for something that TW won't moan about).

Now that works out about £138 a month. Putting that another way you could rent from enterprise a little city car for every weekend and 4/5 days a month on top. Is the future a rental world?
Click to expand...
No, because I need my car a lot more than weekends and 4 or 5 other days a month.
 
Maintenance = a lot
Tax = a lot
Insurance = a lot
Cost of car = a lot

Economic sense = No
Do I care = No
 
ultralaser said:
Totally agree but do the sums and it's surprisingly attractive hence the thread. Just a thought though :)
Click to expand...

I can't imagine many attractive things about renting city cars from Enterprise every weekend. Where are you going to go in them? If just around town you may as well use a taxi.
 
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ultralaser said:
Cars. We love them. We want to own one, but does owning a car really make economic sense in todays world?

Maintenance = £350 (service / tyres / oil / etc)
Tax = £150
Insurance = £300
MOT = £50
Cost of car = £800 P/A (for something that TW won't moan about).

Now that works out about £138 a month. Putting that another way you could rent from enterprise a little city car for every weekend and 4/5 days a month on top. Is the future a rental world?
Click to expand...

No, of course it's not. For a start that would not buy you 16 days of rental!

I live in a city and work in an industrial estate 15 miles away. It means my commute by car is 20-30 minutes. If I wanted to take any sort of public transport, I'd have to walk (10 minutes) to the station and get a train (25 minutes) to a town near the estate I work in. Then I'd have to walk through that town (10 minutes) to the bus station and wait for a bus (30 minutes). Finally, I'd have the 5 minute walk across the estate to the office. By the time you account for waiting for busses and trains, my 45 minutes in a car each day turns into 3 hours every day to get 20 miles down the road.

This is my fifth job since starting my career 10 years ago and I've always lived in the same city. Not one of them was it viable to get public transport to - although my last one was a (lengthy) walk if I wanted to.

Public transport just doesn't work - so a car is my only option to get to work
 
My route to work is 12 miles by road. Google maps estimates it at 25 minutes because it's through a series of lanes. 15-20 depending on traffic is a closer estimate.

To do the same journey via public transport would be 1hr 36 minutes (11 minutes walking) and involve no less than three different buses, run by three different operators (Roberts, Arriva, Stagecoach)
Not sure how I get a Cisco 24 port switch and 15 laptops on a bus or between buses either. No thanks!
 
Lopéz said:
My route to work is 12 miles by road. Google maps estimates it at 25 minutes because it's through a series of lanes. 15-20 depending on traffic is a closer estimate.

To do the same journey via public transport would be 1hr 36 minutes (11 minutes walking) and involve no less than three different buses, run by three different operators (Roberts, Arriva, Stagecoach)
Not sure how I get a Cisco 24 port switch and 15 laptops on a bus or between buses either. No thanks!
Click to expand...

Try 3 2U servers and switch is a ruggedised chassis.... Would have to tie it to the back of the bus!

cHT8hwHl.jpg
 
If you barely need a car then yes, renting one every so often probably works out cheaper. For people who actually use their cars regularly, I think they can offer incredible value for money, especially so if you are treating them solely as a tool and using cheap cars.

My Golf cost £1800 5years ago, so if I assume it's worth nothing now, it's only cost a few hundred quid a year in lost value. Services run to a couple of hundred quid a year, same for tyres and MOT and other bits. The biggest cost is fuel but that's dependent on usage level.

It's not a lot of money really for something warm and dry to get to work in everyday, to fetch the shopping, to take me on holiday, to go on trips at a moments notice, to visit family etc etc etc.

I think my car is probably the best value item I've ever spent money on.
 
If like myself and many others public transport simple isn't an option i still think the right car can be by far the cheapest option. My Yaris cost me £2100 a few years ago and costs roughly:

Tax - £30
65 MPG so about 8p a mile at the moment
Insurance - £150
Maintenance - £30 quid an oil change every 6,000 miles. Tyres seem to last a good 40-50k and the only thing that's broken is 1 injector clip which cost me £3 from Toyota.

Even assuming it's worth almost nothing now (i could probably get almost a grand for it still) I don't believe i could have caught the bus over the last 4-5 years as cheaply as i've run my Yaris let alone rent another car.

If i lived in a city even then i think financially my yaris may still come out on top but i'd probably use public transport for commuting as i wouldn't want to drive through a cities rush hour every day.
 
With electric self driving cars on the horizon the future is kind of visible.

Electric cars require very little to no maintanance.

The self driving aspect means people can realistically share cars, uber will have a fleet of electric cars, you call one tell it to take you to your destination and it will disappear after.
 
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