What percentage of your income do you spend on cars?

[Tickle]

I own both my cars so it will bring the % down, a few quick sums have spat out 5.5% of my income including fuel, insurance, servicing and tax... and a bit of money per month for stuff (car care products and 'bits')

Edited by Tickle on Wednesday 11th February 12:19

[sawman]

about 20% of net income I reckon - two cars, just petrol,insurance and routine maintenance, both bought and paid for, so I guess you could figure in some depreciation, but the 2003 jeep is well down the curve on that front though!

[Dinoboy]

About 12%

[Fastdruid]

Purchase price was ~14% of (gross) salary.

Running costs (including the loan for purchase and assuming a new set of tyres a year) about 9% PA (also including the mileage payments for business miles).

It is worth mentioning though that 11.4% of my gross "salary" in that calculation is car allowance! So effectively my car is totally free and I pay a pittance of about 2/3rd of the petrol for my personal miles.

[moleamol]

RobM77 said:

In terms of performance, a £10k Formula Ford can lap a race track quicker than a Mclaren P1 worth nearly a hundred times as much.

Do you have any references for that claim?

[BritishRacinGrin]

I'm guessing no.

[kambites]

moleamol said:

RobM77 said:

In terms of performance, a £10k Formula Ford can lap a race track quicker than a Mclaren P1 worth nearly a hundred times as much.

Do you have any references for that claim?

It's probably true on a twisty enough track if the FF is allowed to run on slicks and the P1 isn't.

[xRIEx]

moleamol said:

RobM77 said:

In terms of performance, a £10k Formula Ford can lap a race track quicker than a Mclaren P1 worth nearly a hundred times as much.

Do you have any references for that claim?

I wondered too, so AQG revealed Anglesey Coastal, P1 1:11.2, FF1600 1:11.179.

I suppose it depends on timing accuracy so the P1 could actually be faster, but even so in the grand scheme of things it's close enough for me.

[RobM77]

moleamol said:

RobM77 said:

In terms of performance, a £10k Formula Ford can lap a race track quicker than a Mclaren P1 worth nearly a hundred times as much.

Do you have any references for that claim?

It was a brief comment in a list of others typed quickly, but yes, I can back that up with numbers. Evo magazine lapped a P1 at Anglesey at 1min11.2 (once Mclaren had delivered new tyres for the car): http://fastestlaps.com/cars/mclaren_p1.html. The current Monoposto (club single seater racing) lap record for a FF Duratec on the same circuit is 1min11.070 http://www.monoposto.co.uk/results/lap-records/lap... Regarding the value, the P1 was about £900k IIRC and there are FF Duratecs everywhere at the moment for £10k to £13k due to the recent change to EcoBoost engines. Now, in the interests of fairness, whilst Jethro from Evo is a pretty handy driver, a pro could perhaps knock a second off his time, I think we could agree on that. However, Monoposto have to run their cars with a 4cm ride height and because of this they're always a bit slower than the original spec cars in lap times, plus they're not pros, so I'm confident that with the same capable driver in both cars, the FF would be quicker, more than two tenths in fact. Needless to say, I could have easily said a Formula Renault, which would be about £5k more to buy and would wipe the floor with both.

ETA: If the above FF1600 time is correct, then yes, a Duratec FF would be quite comfortably faster than the P1.

kambites said:

It's probably true on a twisty enough track if the FF is allowed to run on slicks and the P1 isn't.

The FF1600 was probably running on ACB10s, the same tyre fitted to the original Caterham R500 and yes, they're road legal and arguably no more extreme than the expensive rubber the Mclaren P1 wears.

Edited by RobM77 on Wednesday 11th February 12:48

[Roger Irrelevant]

A paltry 3% or so for me which doesn't include depreciation, but even if I only got scrap value for it today it wouldn't be more than 5%. To be honest one of the things I most like about being a PH type is that you quickly learn that you don't need to spend a lot to get a car that does the job you want it to, be that fun or utility. It always strikes me as odd that a lot of people who really don't give a monkey's about cars nevertheless spend a significant chunk of their income on them, usually because they think that anything over five years old must be an unreliable deathtrap. Obviously I'm glad they do though coz I can then pick up perfectly good used cars for peanuts!

[griff7]

Varies every year from about 10% but this year it could be as much as 90% with a couple of planned purchases later in the year.

[moleamol]

kambites said:

moleamol said:

RobM77 said:

In terms of performance, a £10k Formula Ford can lap a race track quicker than a Mclaren P1 worth nearly a hundred times as much.

Do you have any references for that claim?

It's probably true on a twisty enough track if the FF is allowed to run on slicks and the P1 isn't.

My dog could lap a race track quicker than a McClaren P1 if it was twisty enough.

[moleamol]

RobM77 said:

The FF1600 was probably running on ACB10s, the same tyre fitted to the original Caterham R500 and yes, they're road legal and arguably no more extreme than the expensive rubber the Mclaren P1 wears.

Edited by RobM77 on Wednesday 11th February 12:48

Yet a quick Google reveals the FF is over 23 seconds slower around one of the most famous racetracks in the world. Which is probably why the P1 was built, rather than Anglesey.

[RizzoTheRat]

Fuel and maintenance <10%, but I do a fair few company miles so I get some of that back, never worked out exactly much but an estimate of yearly mileage gives me about 4% of salary.

No idea how much its depreciating though but if it lasts me another 3 years it'll be below 3% net salary.

No idea on the bike, a fair sized chunk of my mileage tends to be on holidays so a fair costing would be to compare it to other holidays that I haven't taken.

[nickpan]

Thanks everybody - I calculate the Pistonheads average to be about 15% from all observations received so far.

That places me slightly above average which doesn't surprise me as I run two cars, both with six cylinder engines and do not have have a family to look after (yet..) so can probably allocate more to cars and bikes!

[Funkstar De Luxe]

Just finished doing the calculation 8%. Seems a bit high in my opinion

[Fastdruid]

To put that into perspective a zone 1-6 travelcard in the anthill works out as being ~6% of the average London wage...

I don't think an extra 2-3% is unreasonable for your own transport and not having your face pressed into someones armpit everytime you go anywhere.

[greggy50]

My Car cost me 26% of my annual wage

Running Costs are very minimal mileage from work covers my fuel and most of my insurance with the additional money I make (45p a mile) on a 2.0 TDI.

Probably spend about 8-10% to run both cars off my wage if include my weekend toy which I don't think is too bad at all.

[greggy50]

moleamol said:

Yet a quick Google reveals the FF is over 23 seconds slower around one of the most famous racetracks in the world. Which is probably why the P1 was built, rather than Anglesey.

Bit more expensive but I think a high power Ultima GTR would get very close to a P1 for about 1/15th of the price if it was setup properly the 720hp version did a 1.09.9 on the Top Gear track with a random driver so get the more powerful version and a stig behind the wheel and would probably knock that down to 1:08 flat.

Considering the V10 F1 Car took 59 seconds don't think a P1 would knock much off that!

[DottyMR2]

When I was younger, it was in the region of 30%. That's due to high insurance costs and me constantly messing with them.

It dipped to about 10% for a few years when I got my Saab. Reamrkably, spend about the same as I did on my Corsa but I got a decent wage increase so accounts for % drop. I do far less miles now though and I'm no where near as abusive to the car.

In the past year though, I shudder to think what % I've spent. To be honest, I don't want to know as it may make me feel guilty. I'm basically just machine gun firing 20s at the track car to get it race prepped. Spending about £3k on it for the next month to make SLS on time will be 150% of my monthly wage!!!