Cheapest way to do 30k a year

[SevenR]

3 year old Kia Piccanto. I had a brand new one and it was amazing. So cheap to run and great fun to drive. Tax free, cheap to insure, will motorway all day or do city and hits over 60mpg. 7 year warranty so 3 year old is fine. Make sure and get the Aircon one though.
I think you'd be hard pushed to find a cheaper way.

[otolith]

Sounds as if the OP is risk averse with respect to maintenance costs and/or reliability.

To use the 7 year / 100k mile warranty option, and have it for two years and 60k miles, he'd want something < 5 years old and < 40k miles. Looks like that would cost about 6.5k for a KIA Ceed 1.6 CRDI. After two years and 60k miles, I think he'd be looking at 1k-1.5k value left in it. So about £210/month in depreciation. That sounds quite expensive to own a five year old Kia, but I've no feel for how much the PCP/lease options would be for 30k a year.

[slk 32]

CX53 said:

I'd be buying a polo 1.4 tdi Bluemotion from around 10 years ago.. 2,500-5,000 purchase price and 60+ mpg, torquey motor and reasonably comfortable and refined.

Leasing is or buying new or nearly new is never the cheapest option.

^^^^Exactly this

I've got a 2008 bluemotion 1 . It's now done 130k (of which 10k is mine). I paid £2600 and paid £1200 to bring it up to standard (cambelt, water pump, new pads, discs and service) . £4-5k will get you a nice example.

I've done 500 miles in a day no problem and because it's a turbo diesel has a good amount of torque and will happily cruise at 90-95.

Mpg- anywhere between 55 mpg (motorway 90+) and 75mpg plus at 65.

road tax is zero on the bluemotion 1 but if you're doing a lot of miles you may want the bluemotion 2 with air Con (£30 road tax)

Parts are dirt cheap. I fitted 4 new michelin eco tyres for circa £180 (14 inch rims!)

I also appreciate the geeky engineering that's gone into it to squeeze out the max mpg.. deeper front spoiler, rear spoiler,lightweight low rolling resistance wheels and taller gearing.

I pulled up at a pub a few weeks back just behind the owner of another one. We got talking and he was as smitten as I was ..He'd bought it for his wife but used it more himself instead of his Passat.

[R E S T E C P]

slk 32 said:

CX53 said:

I'd be buying a polo 1.4 tdi Bluemotion from around 10 years ago.. 2,500-5,000 purchase price and 60+ mpg, torquey motor and reasonably comfortable and refined.

Leasing is or buying new or nearly new is never the cheapest option.

^^^^Exactly this

On paper it may look like the cheapest option, but that's not always the case. Many 10 year old cars are good, and many aren't. I have spent a fortune keeping some going with worn out clutches, exhaust, suspension, etc. My current PCP on an approved-used car is working out the same per year so I got a nicer, newer car for no extra cost. And personally I find it easier to budget when I know that big things are covered by warranty, so I only need to plan for consumables and servicing.

Also at 10 years old are you going to get new airbags or just hope that the service schedule is wrong if you get in a crash?

[anonymous-user]

i do 1.5k a month in 2004 Octavia tdi, great car even at 155k miles.

[Willy Nilly]

Pints said:

the Mazda engines are impressively fuel efficient.

How do you know? I've never seen any figures for car efficiency.

[Sten.]

I do a similar mileage in a leased X3 30d, definitely not the cheapest option, but when I was waiting to take delivery I spent a month or so doing my 500+ weekly commute in a 2004 Kia Picanto I bought for £500. I was actually very surprised how composed it was on the motorway, it returned 50mpg, cost about 5p to insure and drove without fault. It was even in the £30/year tax bracket. If I needed 'cheap', I'd have another one in an instant.

[SevenR]

Sten. said:

I do a similar mileage in a leased X3 30d, definitely not the cheapest option, but when I was waiting to take delivery I spent a month or so doing my 500+ weekly commute in a 2004 Kia Picanto I bought for £500. I was actually very surprised how composed it was on the motorway, it returned 50mpg, cost about 5p to insure and drove without fault. It was even in the £30/year tax bracket. If I needed 'cheap', I'd have another one in an instant.

another one for the Picca. I'm telling you, it's a bloody great wee car. And the new ones are way btter than the 2004 ones too.

From First Vehicle Leasing on the one air 5 door.
36 months 30,000 miles per year £172.07 Inc. V.A.T. £516.20 Inc. V.A.T.

[Valgar]

Have you considered a Kia or Hyundai at 3 years old, they'll still have two years unlimited warranty on them.

[anonymous-user]

Astra. £690 + 45mpg. Nicely equipped and reasonable miles.
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2016...

Edited by allroad one on Friday 22 July 19:37

[anonymous-user]

Or if you HAVE to go new/ year old..
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2016...

Or..

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2016...

[anonymous-user]

R E S T E C P said:

Also at 10 years old are you going to get new airbags or just hope that the service schedule is wrong if you get in a crash?

The ten year thing on airbags was when they were relatively new and the manufacturers didn't know how they'd age. Turns out they still work fine so it's not an issue, Volvo for one have officially revised the guidelines to "they're fine as long as the airbag warning light doesn't come on".

[Max5476]

Cycle?

[Dubmaster77]

Walk.

[anonymous-user]

Crawl.

[Joe M]

Should elaborate, its for my brother, just out of uni in his first proper job, unfortunately a bit of a commute but good experience for a few years.
Commuting on the train will cost him approx 400 a month, so that is the sort of total running costs he wants to budget for, including fuel. This will get him to work and back, with the car as a bonus the rest of the time.
He has no mechanical knowledge whatsoever, so if he buys used then it goes wrong guess who will be left to deal with it...
The suggestions of a few year old vw up or kia are interesting, ill put it across to him.

[Bonefish Blues]

Not hwithstanding its reputation for refinement an Up! is an interesting choice for 30k miles pa.

I went the semi-shed route in an S60 D5 Euro 3

[Willy Nilly]

Nanook said:

Willy Nilly said:

How do you know? I've never seen any figures for car efficiency.

You know fine well what he means, and that for motor vehicles, it's often expressed in that manner.

It's still wrong. Efficiency is work out for effort in. small cars generally use less fuel than larger cars because their engines have to do less work, not because the engines are any better at converting fuel into work.

An Airbus A380 has a huge appetite for fuel, yet is a very efficient way of moving a lot of people around and those Wartsila ship engines have impressive specific fuel consumption figures, probably better than most cars, not that we'd know because we never get the figures for cars.

[Dubmaster77]

Willy Nilly said:

It's still wrong. Efficiency is work out for effort in. small cars generally use less fuel than larger cars because their engines have to do less work, not because the engines are any better at converting fuel into work.

An Airbus A380 has a huge appetite for fuel, yet is a very efficient way of moving a lot of people around and those Wartsila ship engines have impressive specific fuel consumption figures, probably better than most cars, not that we'd know because we never get the figures for cars.

But we are specifically talking about cars neither a ship nor Airbus would be of much use on the A40. Fuel economy is a measurement of how efficiently a vehicle uses a given ammount of fuel to cover distance, the higher that distance the more efficient it is. 1 person travelling at 60 MPH in a 5.0 Ford Mustang doing 20MPG will be making less efficient use of his fuel than another person travelling at the same speed in a 1.2 Renault Clio doing 49MPG.....

There are also other specific measurements of efficiency you could twist in to pedantry argument but really it's semantics to make you feel like you have some kind of intellectual advantage I suppose?

[va1o]

I think you need to consider the comfort element as well rather than focussing purely on making it cheap.

When I was on my Uni placement year I was doing about 400 miles, a week and used a 2-year old SEAT Ibiza 1.4 petrol manual. It did the job but was tedious driving in traffic and once you're up to motorway speeds sat at 3000rpm upwards.

I'm now a little older and wiser so learning from that made sure to go for a bigger diesel automatic for the similar commute I'm doing now. This makes the drive a lot more relaxing as you're far more cosseted. Adaptive Cruise also really really helps particularly in slow moving motorway traffic.