"Nicer" car - doable for £6k?

TBH I think if you should just have a little chat with her and convince her you dont need a new car, save your pennies for something nicer later. Dont think that youll find much of an upgrade and tbh is a badge worth 6k, not really.

Hawker
 
Dave said:
My wife is Chinese and does not like Audis, as they are (unfortunately) the marque of a fu'er dai in China.
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Not to be pointing out the bleeding obvious here, but this is EXACTLY what she IS trying to achieve. She want's to look "wealthy" without doing the work required to actually be wealthy.

She needs to take a good look in the mirror tbh.
 
paradigm said:
Not to be pointing out the bleeding obvious here, but this is EXACTLY what she IS trying to achieve. She want's to look "wealthy" without doing the work required to actually be wealthy.

She needs to take a good look in the mirror tbh.
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It's a Chinese thing really, wanting to display (or give the impression of) wealth. She found it bonkers when I said that I'd happily drive around in a Mondeo even if I took home £200k (especially the new Aston Martin lookalike Mondeo :p). We bring home a good salary together so could easily afford to spend more money on a car - £6k is a somewhat artificial limit imposed so that we don't go overboard, as we could easily go and splash £20k on a car that we're not going to use for more than a couple of years. Houses around Cambridge or in Beijing are not cheap and so we tuck most of our money away into savings - nothing wrong with wanting to spend a little on something nice from time to time.

I was looking through Parkers last night and noticed that car tax seems to be universally lower on BMWs, and it mentions that servicing costs are generally lower too. I take it that "lower" doesn't correspond to Ford prices, but what sort of prices are we looking at for major/minor services of both companies?
 
Road tax is likely to be insignificant to any other costs you're going to incur (such as fixing something) and it will obviously vary with the model you're looking at but the database is here: http://carfueldata.direct.gov.uk/new-vehicle-tax.aspx?t=23ude39

Older BMW's you're looking at (E46 for example) might be available on the BMW Value service. BMW warranty is probably not a great idea here as the cost goes quite a bit higher over 60k miles.
 
Firestar_3x said:
Most of the general public have no idea how much a car is worth, they just see BMW and think WOW.

Tragic as **** imho, but what can you do.
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So true. I've had idiots mouthing off at me in both my old E46 330d and my current A6.

People just have no idea what a car is worth and assume that they should, therefore, be jealous and mouth off accordingly.
 
I'm glad my Chinese Malaysian wife doesn't buy into this whole display of status through designer brands thing! :)

Nothing will satisfy her desire to show status better than a 2k Merc S-Class with it's age hidden by a private plate! Just keep the rest of the 6k spare to keep it going. :)

I'm only partly joking - for 6k, if you insist on it being 2005 or newer you really can't get much that's actually nice - just pov spec diesel Cs or 3s. If you dont mind it being a few years older you can get something half decent and a loved example in excellent condition rather than a bottom of the market shed. When it's clean and shiny my old 4k 530i turns heads and people are gobsmacked it's 11 years old and worth so little. I think that's mainly just cos it's an awesome colour combo (blue paint, tan leather), but also cos facelift E39 sports just look timelessly great.

And that's a thing - if this is all for show then I'd put colour way higher up on the list of important criteria, up there with condition of the exterior and fancy wheels :). If she just has a tired looking grey (some people like to call it silver so they feel better about their grey cars :)) pov spec car, it wont matter that it's as new as you can afford - she'll still just blend in with every other ex company car out there.

If you dont fancy that I reckon you just have to spend more. Consider something a bit more showy like a coupe/cabriolet, or something a bit more prestige like a 5 or E. A bog standard 3 or C saloon is not remotely posh.

Good luck :)
 
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Liampope said:
If you dont fancy that I reckon you just have to spend more. Consider something a bit more showy like a coupe/cabriolet, or something a bit more prestige like a 5 or E. A bog standard 3 or C saloon is not remotely posh.
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This is the strange (to us!) thing - a coupe/cabriolet wouldn't be wanted. I think "posh" is the wrong word; "smart" is probably better. A C class would be comfortable and smart, for example, without being overly posh. Of course, on the streets of Beijing/Shanghai, a C class is probably what the Mondeo is here :eek:

Do people have much trouble with the way of vandalism with these cars? I've read things about jealous individuals keying cars and the like. I'm not worried about Cambridge (where I have to worry about the bicycle instead!) but Milton Keynes, where my wife works, perhaps is another story. The boy racers of the MK roundabouts will probably get even more feisty when a Merc/BMW lines up with them than they do a diesel Mondeo :p
 
I had my 7 year old bmw 330i sport Keyed but that was when left over night in one of the roughest parts of Salford, which is one of the roughest parts of manchester..... You'll be fine with any of the above cars in Milton Keynes, nor will anyone be trying to race a 523 se, barely anyone tries to race my considerably more sporty looking 335 msport coupe with twin exhausts and 19 Inch rims :p
 
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