The MPG Generation..

PESolution · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:04

Thank god boy racers are not prominent the little runts should all be burnt.

On another note - I like fast cars

sanofi · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:09

A sign of the times and our economic turmoil.

Glaucus · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:12

Why's it disappointing? It's been around for a decade or longer. It's one reason the whole Chav modding started. As they couldn't afford insurance on high BHP cars.
Reality is most of the population doesn't care about such figure. Speed limit is a max of 70 and pretty much any car will easily smash that limit.
For the real people moders and high bhp is still very much alive.

DBT85 · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:20

[TW]Fox;20083601 said:
Because its the cost of owning the car. In your case this cost is equal to the entire initial purchase price of the car. Thus the less you spend, obviously, the less it costs.

So on the basis that you have a flat amount to ***** on a car and that you will run it until it dies, the devaluation is of no relevance. How long it will last and all the costs of running it and keeping it running are relevant.

Is that right?

Malc · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:21

shoes said:
I've done the same journey numerous times in my 2001 1.6 petrol focus and achieve over 40mph without a problem.

I can't remember the exact reason I had the new focus now but I remember being shocked at how much more it cost. My driving is fine thank you very much - I consistently get more mpgs than Ford say I should from my car.

This is not meant to be criticism, but I just can't understand how a 1.6 diesel Focus with a quoted combined MPG of 60.5 can be less economical than a 1.6 petrol Focus with a quoted combined MPG of 41.5.

It has to be the fact that you were driving the diesel differently to how it was designed to be driven. Either that or something was wrong with the car.

[TW]Fox · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:26

Todge said:
So on the basis that you have a flat amount to ***** on a car and that you will run it until it dies, the devaluation is of no relevance. How long it will last and all the costs of running it and keeping it running are relevant.

Is that right?

It's always relevant, it just becomes equal to the total value of the car if you intend to run it into the ground. There is rarely such a thing as a flat amount that must be spent on a car, nothing stops you spending less and reducing costs that way instead.

Deep · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:30

[TW]Fox;20083855 said:
It's always relevant, it just becomes equal to the total value of the car if you intend to run it into the ground. There is rarely such a thing as a flat amount that must be spent on a car, nothing stops you spending less and reducing costs that way instead.

True, but when the extra initial cost is spread out over such a long period it doesn't really matter

shoes · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:36

Malc said:
This is not meant to be criticism, but I just can't understand how a 1.6 diesel Focus with a quoted combined MPG of 60.5 can be less economical than a 1.6 petrol Focus with a quoted combined MPG of 41.5.

It has to be the fact that you were driving the diesel differently to how it was designed to be driven. Either that or something was wrong with the car.

I know what you mean, I was also gobsmacked because I had assumed the economy would be completely the other way round. Almost the whole journey was motorways (420 miles) and the rest was on reasonably unbroken A roads. We were 4 up with luggage though, but I can't see it making that much difference. I imagine the petrol would struggle to do 40 4 up with luggage, but i doubt it would be much worse than 36.

As for the focus's 60.5 - the only time it went above 40 on the live readout was when my foot was off the throttle and it was going silly (99.9mpg).

Imy · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:42

Deep said:
True, but when the extra initial cost is spread out over such a long period it doesn't really matter

Well doesn't that depend on the sums involved?

For arguments sake lets say the useful life of a car is 10 years. If bought new at £20k and kept for all 10 years before scrapping, that's £2k/year lost in purchase value.

If you were to instead buy a similar car but @ 5 years old at a cost of £5k (plausible) and kept it for only 5 years then that's a loss of £1k/year.

Depreciation matters, whether you run a car into the ground or not.

Hades · 16 Sep 2011 at 14:45

Aren't long term service costs generally higher with diesel cars?

[TW]Fox · 16 Sep 2011 at 15:01

Deep said:
True, but when the extra initial cost is spread out over such a long period it doesn't really matter

Of course it does. Unless you want to say that as your yearly fuel bill is spread out that doesn't matter either?

All these costs add up to form your total cost of ownership.

Deep · 16 Sep 2011 at 15:07

Imy said:
Well doesn't that depend on the sums involved?

For arguments sake lets say the useful life of a car is 10 years. If bought new at £20k and kept for all 10 years before scrapping, that's £2k/year lost in purchase value.

If you were to instead buy a similar car but @ 5 years old at a cost of £5k (plausible) and kept it for only 5 years then that's a loss of £1k/year.

Depreciation matters, whether you run a car into the ground or not.

If you had 2 brand new cars and the petrol was £2-3k cheaper than the diesel. Then over 10 years the cost would be spread out and wouldn't really be that much.

Then if you take into account fuel costs:

Diesel @ 45mpg and 12,000 miles per annum = £1648 a year
Petrol @ 35mpg and 12,000 miles per annum = £2040 a year

It'd sort of equal out.

However, I do admit that mine aren't taking repair costs, and with that there is no guarantee that the diesel would break

Imy · 16 Sep 2011 at 15:32

For a straight new car petrol vs diesel comparison that may be true but as you know that's not the only cost of motoring that makes a difference. Depreciation can account for a massive amount of the TCO (as per my example earlier). Only if I was rich or had to choose a company car would I get a new one.

I can see why people go for high mpg cars, whether they be petrol or diesel but not why they buy brand new high mpg cars for the sole reason to save money.

Deep · 16 Sep 2011 at 15:37

Imy said:
I can see why people go for high mpg cars, whether they be petrol or diesel but not why they spend more on replacing cars for more mpg

Thats the problem with the general public

Does anybody know if it costs more to manfacture a diesel car than a petrol car?

Glaucus · 16 Sep 2011 at 15:38

Imy said:
I can see why people go for high mpg cars, whether they be petrol or diesel but not why they buy brand new high mpg cars for the sole reason to save money.

right or mainly wrongly. People do not see one of costs and recurring costs as the same thing.
You might have money upfront, but don't want a high monthly cost or can't afford a high monthly cost. Combined with the inability to just not spend thousands sitting in the bank, other than the extra fuel, tax and possibly emission zone payments.

Imy · 16 Sep 2011 at 15:41

Deep said:
Thats the problem with the general public

And I hope that never changes. The rest of us need people to be buying new so eventually we can take it off their hands a few years later at a fraction of the cost.

AcidHell2 said:
right or mainly wrongly. People do not see one of costs and recurring costs as the same thing.
You might have money upfront, but don't want a high monthly cost or can't afford a high monthly cost. Combined with the inability to just not spend thousands sitting in the bank, other than the extra fuel, tax and possibly emission zone payments.

Yeah no one likes ongoing costs but lets say you had a £20k budget for a new car. What if instead you paid £10k for a car a couple years old instead. You could put the £10k saving aside and use it for the ongoing costs of the car and I bet it would last a bloody while!

Begbie · 16 Sep 2011 at 16:06

One of the lads here paid way over the odds for an 05 TDCI Leon 130. Think he paid close to 6-7k? Might have even been more. He was a bit of a petrol nut before, always looking out for a nice scoob wrk sti.

He then somehow convinced himself this was the better buy, its cost him a fortune on repairs so far as he never done his homework. Its done 70k miles on it.

I paid 3.5 for my Clio, so nearly half. I get 20mpg less than him and he can't work out how me owning the Clio is cheaper than him owning the Leon regardless of MPGZZZ! I gave up the end.

I felt too bad after his gearbox, clutch went and a dear jumped in front of it!

Glaucus · 16 Sep 2011 at 16:19

Imy said:
Yeah no one likes ongoing costs but lets say you had a £20k budget for a new car. What if instead you paid £10k for a car a couple years old instead. You could put the £10k saving aside and use it for the ongoing costs of the car and I bet it would last a bloody while!

because people do not see it like that and most of us, including myself could not resist touching such amounts.
People generally also like new shinny stuff. It doesn't make much sense, but that's human nature and applies to a huge swath of the population.

Imy · 16 Sep 2011 at 16:33

I put my hands up and say my mentality a while back wasn't far off from that. I tried to convince myself that I needed to spend at least £15k to get a reliable and reasonale to run car but then noticed (allbeit took a while) all my colleagues at work had more car issues than me and they were driving BMW's, golfs, etc while I had/have a 11 year old Focus.

At one point I even thought about finance to top up my £15k to get something even more expensive as I found it a difficult budget to work with. Too little for the proper nice cars and too much for the smart choices.

Fortunately (after much reading about on here) I avoided an expensive mistake and decided infact I wasn't especially unhappy with my current car so I'll keep it longer and get another all-rounder later but around the £8k mark.

Haggisman · 16 Sep 2011 at 16:51

Why complain? It means the fun gas guzzling cars with massive engines are at silly low prices because the general public don't want them!