'Car pups' and massive expense being a petrolhead...
Discussion
OP, your thread really resonates with me, but the difference is I went the complete opposite way and chickened out of buying my dream 911, and bought a fixer upper house to sell on.
Mid 2008, with the recession starting to bite, I decided to take vol redundancy from a very decent IT PM job as I could see the writing on the company wall and having been there a for years the offer was too good to refuse. I had not long sold my home at the top of the market, just avoiding it collapsing and sensing trouble I luckily made the decision to rent.
So, being newly single, playing the field, with a very health bank balance and having deciding to have a bit of time off before looking for a new job, I thought it was a good idea to buy a nearly new Golf GTI for a ridiculously low price while I searched for a 911.
With a budget of £25k I really fancied a 993, or maybe a 996 C4S, but I had read about the 996 issues and I just couldn't bring myself to spend over £20k on a car with over 100k miles. The running costs also scarred me.
I ended up buying a few other cars to compliment the Golf GTi which I really enjoyed and after 18 months sold for almost what I had paid for it, but in the end I saw a house I liked with the plan to do it up and sell it on.
It didn't work out like that, as not long after buying the house I got with Mrs Emeye and cutting a longish story short Mrs Emeye came with a fantastic son and we soon had another one on the way, so fixer up house got fixed up but as our family home and took all my money.
Looking back I have probably lost the only chance I had to buy my dream car, so at least you have lived the dream, even though there were ups and downs. Those days when everything was working properly with your 911 must have been magical.
So I have a beautiful wife and kids, and a nice home, but my career is still struggling to get back up to the level it was and my wife has a 8 year old Honda FRV and I drive around in a 13 year old Merc.
So we both ended up skint and f
ked by the recession, but you got to experience the highs and lows of a 911 for 4 years. I do wonder sometimes if i should have just bought a 911 and carried on renting, but i have no regrets as I ended up with a beautiful wife and a family and home while I also managed to scratch plenty of other car itches.
So just to repeat, I have no regrets. Definitely. Er, well maybe i do regret it, but your post does slightly put my mind at rest that my worries of a problematic and expensive 911 ownership experience were not just me being a pussy!
I should have bought that damn 993.
Mid 2008, with the recession starting to bite, I decided to take vol redundancy from a very decent IT PM job as I could see the writing on the company wall and having been there a for years the offer was too good to refuse. I had not long sold my home at the top of the market, just avoiding it collapsing and sensing trouble I luckily made the decision to rent.
So, being newly single, playing the field, with a very health bank balance and having deciding to have a bit of time off before looking for a new job, I thought it was a good idea to buy a nearly new Golf GTI for a ridiculously low price while I searched for a 911.
With a budget of £25k I really fancied a 993, or maybe a 996 C4S, but I had read about the 996 issues and I just couldn't bring myself to spend over £20k on a car with over 100k miles. The running costs also scarred me.
I ended up buying a few other cars to compliment the Golf GTi which I really enjoyed and after 18 months sold for almost what I had paid for it, but in the end I saw a house I liked with the plan to do it up and sell it on.
It didn't work out like that, as not long after buying the house I got with Mrs Emeye and cutting a longish story short Mrs Emeye came with a fantastic son and we soon had another one on the way, so fixer up house got fixed up but as our family home and took all my money.
Looking back I have probably lost the only chance I had to buy my dream car, so at least you have lived the dream, even though there were ups and downs. Those days when everything was working properly with your 911 must have been magical.
So I have a beautiful wife and kids, and a nice home, but my career is still struggling to get back up to the level it was and my wife has a 8 year old Honda FRV and I drive around in a 13 year old Merc.
So we both ended up skint and f
ked by the recession, but you got to experience the highs and lows of a 911 for 4 years. I do wonder sometimes if i should have just bought a 911 and carried on renting, but i have no regrets as I ended up with a beautiful wife and a family and home while I also managed to scratch plenty of other car itches.So just to repeat, I have no regrets. Definitely. Er, well maybe i do regret it, but your post does slightly put my mind at rest that my worries of a problematic and expensive 911 ownership experience were not just me being a pussy!
I should have bought that damn 993.
Edited by Emeye on Monday 17th June 07:21
Ray Luxury-Yacht said:
... for an ordinary working-class bloke like me...
I must admit that I thought you were somehow massively wealthy because of your login name on PH.Over the same time period as your 996 adventure I've had a hankering to buy a 997 GT3, but I don't own a house at present and that takes priority.
It's quite hard having the money to buy something like that in an account and _not_ just doing it, for me at least.
C
First rule of PH. Never add up what a car cost you.
Also, never estimate what it may roughly have cost you, and think, ha, I could've paid off a 1/3 of my mortgage.
Never look at that unnecessary second weekend car and think, do I really need that? Just take it for a drive, come back grinning inanely and convince yourself "It'll be fiiiiiine"
Also, never estimate what it may roughly have cost you, and think, ha, I could've paid off a 1/3 of my mortgage.
Never look at that unnecessary second weekend car and think, do I really need that? Just take it for a drive, come back grinning inanely and convince yourself "It'll be fiiiiiine"
Adding up the costs isn't always bad news.
I took the plunge in 2007 and got a 964. It was the most expensive thing I'd ever bought, after my house. I was told to expect a maintenance bill of about £2000 pa, and that's what its worked out at. I do some work myself, and that has allowed me to fit a few upgrades into that budget.
I've been on various roadtrips, a few trackdays, about 25,000 miles of proper fun. In that time it let me down just once, when the starter motor failed. 3 hours later I was back on the road. I've loved every minute of owning it.
Apparently its now worth more than I paid. So the cost has been the 2k per year. I can live with that.
My daily runaround is an old Golf TDI. Cost me £750, and maintenance consists of fixing anything that wears out. And that's not much!
I took the plunge in 2007 and got a 964. It was the most expensive thing I'd ever bought, after my house. I was told to expect a maintenance bill of about £2000 pa, and that's what its worked out at. I do some work myself, and that has allowed me to fit a few upgrades into that budget.
I've been on various roadtrips, a few trackdays, about 25,000 miles of proper fun. In that time it let me down just once, when the starter motor failed. 3 hours later I was back on the road. I've loved every minute of owning it.
Apparently its now worth more than I paid. So the cost has been the 2k per year. I can live with that.
My daily runaround is an old Golf TDI. Cost me £750, and maintenance consists of fixing anything that wears out. And that's not much!
Ray Luxury-Yacht said:
Bought a 911, cost a fortune.
Emeye said:
.. didn't buy a 911, regrets it.
This is a great thread. I'm firmly in the first camp - check out my garage entry for my V8 Esprit.. cost me a bunch of money BUT aside from the financial pain i really had a blast and thoroughly enjoyed the car, using it to the max (vmax!).
Although it was a real struggle financially I don't regret a minute of it - and like Emeye i now have a wonderful family and kids so I'm glad i took the opportunity when i did - there's no way i'd be able to justify a sports car right now.
The flip side though is that I also had an elise soon after the esprit and that cost me zip, so you don't necessarily need to have financial meltdown to live your dream
Spending small fortunes on cars has been a well trodden path for me . . . . . . . . . and SWMBO! I have always calculated the cost of our motoring excesses although they have been balanced against family life as well. Early days were spent highly modifying the sheds I could afford, followed by a series of hot hatches when first married during life BC (before children). Once the sprogs arrived then things settled down to a series of family wagons, mostly LR Discoveries ( of the V8 variety of course) to get all the kids gear into and to ferry them around at weekends. This then developed into acquiring a Range Rover as the family bus and two more sporting vehicles - an Audi TT for me and an MGTF for the missus. School and University fees followed for our two boys but those days have just ended and so alongside the Range Rover, my BMW Z4 35is and her Mazda MX5 I went and acquired the car I've always wanted - A Ferrari F355.
My career has gone pretty well so I'm now in the position of having enjoyed motoring since I first passed my test, have a nice home, brilliant family with my two lads having graduated fron Uni and have more than sufficient funds available to run a four car stable with comparative ease - the costs however can be eye watering . . . . . . . . . . . . but, as said in an earlier post, you can't take it with you when you eventually 'pop yer clogs'.
Regrets - none, and I now have a clear run at motoring nirvana until I'm too old and crinkly to drive properly (although that probably still won't stop me!).
My career has gone pretty well so I'm now in the position of having enjoyed motoring since I first passed my test, have a nice home, brilliant family with my two lads having graduated fron Uni and have more than sufficient funds available to run a four car stable with comparative ease - the costs however can be eye watering . . . . . . . . . . . . but, as said in an earlier post, you can't take it with you when you eventually 'pop yer clogs'.
Regrets - none, and I now have a clear run at motoring nirvana until I'm too old and crinkly to drive properly (although that probably still won't stop me!).
OP - I feel your pain. I did almost exactly the same thing (not involving finance, but that was about the only saving grace).
Mid 2008 I was looking for an Elise or another SLK.
What did I buy? A 2002 R230 Merc SL500. Heart over head. OK, it looked mint, full Merc history, only 50K miles.
However these cars are the most unreliable things on the planet (scoring a What Car? RI of 555 - to put this in perspective the next least reliable car was some Land/Range Rover or other with an RI of 347. Toyotas and Subarus - score about 6).
About two days after I bought it the stock markets and banks all collapsed (not so good when you're a self-employed IT contractor).
These cars are, to be honest, utter st. Bad design, badly put together. Telephone number parts prices. Nightmare suspension - it was costing me an average of £500 a month in servicing/repairs (not including fuel, tax or insurance). Every time I got in it I was crapping myself as to what would be broken, would break or what message would appear on the display. I can't go through everything that went wrong, but electronics, suspension, bearings, electronics, more electronics, suspension blah blah.
In 3.5 years it cost me around £18K. The final insult? Despite the thing being in full running order, all gizmos 100%, still with Mobilo, stacks and stacks of history: I sold it a year ago for £7.5K
When I see people driving them now I don't think "nice car", I actually pity them.
That experience nearly broke me and ruined my interest in cars. Luckily I have recovered.
Mid 2008 I was looking for an Elise or another SLK.
What did I buy? A 2002 R230 Merc SL500. Heart over head. OK, it looked mint, full Merc history, only 50K miles.
However these cars are the most unreliable things on the planet (scoring a What Car? RI of 555 - to put this in perspective the next least reliable car was some Land/Range Rover or other with an RI of 347. Toyotas and Subarus - score about 6).
About two days after I bought it the stock markets and banks all collapsed (not so good when you're a self-employed IT contractor).
These cars are, to be honest, utter s
t. Bad design, badly put together. Telephone number parts prices. Nightmare suspension - it was costing me an average of £500 a month in servicing/repairs (not including fuel, tax or insurance). Every time I got in it I was crapping myself as to what would be broken, would break or what message would appear on the display. I can't go through everything that went wrong, but electronics, suspension, bearings, electronics, more electronics, suspension blah blah.In 3.5 years it cost me around £18K. The final insult? Despite the thing being in full running order, all gizmos 100%, still with Mobilo, stacks and stacks of history: I sold it a year ago for £7.5K
When I see people driving them now I don't think "nice car", I actually pity them.
That experience nearly broke me and ruined my interest in cars. Luckily I have recovered.
£10k a year isnt totally stupid. nice car to be driving about in. although i guess its all realtive. i always measure how happy expenditure makes me - and as others have said - EVER EVER add it up afterwards!
i also reckon its good for the economy....gets a few more pounds churning around.
as Roberto Cavali once said
" throw money out the window and it blows back in the front door "
i also reckon its good for the economy....gets a few more pounds churning around.
as Roberto Cavali once said
" throw money out the window and it blows back in the front door "
mackie1 said:
I've gone against all my instincts to rent a C63 for 2 years, but it's actually quite cheap for what it is so fk it, why not?
Totally agree - no unexpected uber-bills. Your motoring costs are fixed: you knew what they were when you took out the lease. k it, why not?I now rent an SLK diseasel - my costs are through the floor compared with my SL500, and despite all the V8 worship that goes on, my SLK will wipe the floor with an SL500. It goes like stink and doesn't break down every week and make me cry.
pobox205 said:
What would 4 years motoring in a new highish spec BMW 3 series cost including depreciation?
Chances are you haven't spent significantly more.
Chances are you haven't spent significantly more.
Not that hard to spend a lot of money on a new "decent" car from one of the premium German brands. Depreciation is a killer on anything new or newish.I have a poverty spec 320d SE, bought as an ex-demo 5 years ago. It has cost me about £15k in depreciation, servicing and consumables. Can easily imagine how a high spec 335i would have cost a lot more than that.
OP, I admire how you have been so honest with yourself. No "man maths" here. Out of interest, what kind of mileage did you cover in your 996? Reading between the lines, it sounds like you used it a lot. Maybe the costs won't sound so bad if you work them out on a pence per mile basis.
Dog Star said:
I now rent an SLK diseasel - my costs are through the floor compared with my SL500, and despite all the V8 worship that goes on, my SLK will wipe the floor with an SL500. It goes like stink and doesn't break down every week and make me cry.
Open-top diesel? Sorry, I do not and never will get it.£40k is a lot of money for sure, but I'm jealous you have done the 911 thing for that.
Looking back over my garage, my last 535d cost me £9.5k pa for the two years I owned that and the 550i will be around the £10k pa mark.
Would rather be driving a 911 for that but the demands of family life dictate otherwise!
Looking back over my garage, my last 535d cost me £9.5k pa for the two years I owned that and the 550i will be around the £10k pa mark.
Would rather be driving a 911 for that but the demands of family life dictate otherwise!
My thread has arrived
My story is one of much more modest cars, as being a poor northerner, I've never had much money, but I'll be damned if I didn't spend every penny I didn't have on cars over the last few years.
My journey started in 2004. I bought only my second ever brand new, 0 miles car. Even to this day, I still have not bought another brand new car since.
In the interests of keeping it brief (TLDR etc)...
2004 - Bought brand new Fabia vRS. Didn't live up to the promise of fuel economy and was dull to drive. Sold a year later, lost £2K in depreciation.
2005 - Bought a second hand Mk2 Golf GTI. Spent £950, sold some months later for £350, after spending a fair whack trying to put right its issues.
2005 - Bought a Clio 182, 5,000 miles on the clock and full warranty for £10,750. Chose it over an ITR because the ITR cost about £300 more to insure. The Clio was luckily under warranty which covered most (but not all) of what went wrong with it....
2007 - Ended up with the DC2 that I really wanted after all, losing £4K on the Clio. Brilliant car, but I eventually needed to experience RWD motoring, so....
2009 - Bought a Eunos RS Limited, with a supercharger. The car was a dog when I bought it, spent £1500 or so making it mint, then after a while, deciding I wanted a change. That was clever.
2011 - Next up was a BMW 328, kept for a few months, got bored...
2011 - Swapped for an MR2 Turbo, which frankly, was fked. Originally paid £1800 for the BMW, swapped for this, and that went for a measly £600 on ebay. 
2011 - With my sensible head on, bought a Primera GT. That got written off after a month in a rear-end collision. I made a profit on that, as they gave me the full value I submitted for it (paid £750, got £1K) plus £1K for whiplash.
2011 - Got another MX5 to replace it, it was rotten, paid £950, sold for scrap after 3 months.
2012 - Started a new job after redundancy, ALMOST had debts cleared when I bought a Clio 172. This would turn out to be the year where I made the most stupid decisions yet, my judgement badly clouded by the depression I was suffering at the time. The Clio was a right old dog, decided to try and make it mint and keep it for a while, but this car just did not show ANY signs of ever becoming a trouble free car, and after I'd put well over £2K into it, I decided to cut my losses.
2012 - Traded the Clio for a 350Z, I figured that with my wage being good now and with the Clio proving to be a ridiculous money pit, I may as well just finance up a big engined sports car while I still had the chance. I enjoyed it, but the costs were already mounting up significantly, and with the always present danger of being thrust back on the dole, I flogged it and lost another £2K.
Overall, despite in most cases, owning 10+ year old cars for the last 9 years, I have probably lost £20K - £30K , I don't know exactly how much, and frankly, I don't want to know.
It would have been more forgivable had I had some really desirable metal, but most of them were just sheds or old classics. Can anyone really claim to have wasted so much money on so little?
I now drive a Puma, and have rediscovered how liberating genuinely cheap cars can be, but at the same time, I am still paying for the debts resulting from all of these cars, and realistically, with life taking other priorities, the chance of me ever owning a "properly nice" car are next to none. It's a good job I can get my fix with cheap stuff.
That said, while I regret the manner in which I did it, I don't regret owning all of those cars, and I have a much clearer idea what I like these days.
My story is one of much more modest cars, as being a poor northerner, I've never had much money, but I'll be damned if I didn't spend every penny I didn't have on cars over the last few years.
My journey started in 2004. I bought only my second ever brand new, 0 miles car. Even to this day, I still have not bought another brand new car since.
In the interests of keeping it brief (TLDR etc)...
2004 - Bought brand new Fabia vRS. Didn't live up to the promise of fuel economy and was dull to drive. Sold a year later, lost £2K in depreciation.
2005 - Bought a second hand Mk2 Golf GTI. Spent £950, sold some months later for £350, after spending a fair whack trying to put right its issues.
2005 - Bought a Clio 182, 5,000 miles on the clock and full warranty for £10,750. Chose it over an ITR because the ITR cost about £300 more to insure. The Clio was luckily under warranty which covered most (but not all) of what went wrong with it....
2007 - Ended up with the DC2 that I really wanted after all, losing £4K on the Clio. Brilliant car, but I eventually needed to experience RWD motoring, so....
2009 - Bought a Eunos RS Limited, with a supercharger. The car was a dog when I bought it, spent £1500 or so making it mint, then after a while, deciding I wanted a change. That was clever.
2011 - Next up was a BMW 328, kept for a few months, got bored...
2011 - Swapped for an MR2 Turbo, which frankly, was f
ked. Originally paid £1800 for the BMW, swapped for this, and that went for a measly £600 on ebay. 2011 - With my sensible head on, bought a Primera GT. That got written off after a month in a rear-end collision. I made a profit on that, as they gave me the full value I submitted for it (paid £750, got £1K) plus £1K for whiplash.
2011 - Got another MX5 to replace it, it was rotten, paid £950, sold for scrap after 3 months.
2012 - Started a new job after redundancy, ALMOST had debts cleared when I bought a Clio 172. This would turn out to be the year where I made the most stupid decisions yet, my judgement badly clouded by the depression I was suffering at the time. The Clio was a right old dog, decided to try and make it mint and keep it for a while, but this car just did not show ANY signs of ever becoming a trouble free car, and after I'd put well over £2K into it, I decided to cut my losses.
2012 - Traded the Clio for a 350Z, I figured that with my wage being good now and with the Clio proving to be a ridiculous money pit, I may as well just finance up a big engined sports car while I still had the chance. I enjoyed it, but the costs were already mounting up significantly, and with the always present danger of being thrust back on the dole, I flogged it and lost another £2K.
Overall, despite in most cases, owning 10+ year old cars for the last 9 years, I have probably lost £20K - £30K , I don't know exactly how much, and frankly, I don't want to know.
It would have been more forgivable had I had some really desirable metal, but most of them were just sheds or old classics. Can anyone really claim to have wasted so much money on so little?
I now drive a Puma, and have rediscovered how liberating genuinely cheap cars can be, but at the same time, I am still paying for the debts resulting from all of these cars, and realistically, with life taking other priorities, the chance of me ever owning a "properly nice" car are next to none. It's a good job I can get my fix with cheap stuff.
That said, while I regret the manner in which I did it, I don't regret owning all of those cars, and I have a much clearer idea what I like these days.
Alex said:
Dog Star said:
I now rent an SLK diseasel - my costs are through the floor compared with my SL500, and despite all the V8 worship that goes on, my SLK will wipe the floor with an SL500. It goes like stink and doesn't break down every week and make me cry.
Open-top diesel? Sorry, I do not and never will get it.Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff