Afternoon ladies and gents,

I appreciate this a an oft done to death topic and I have done a fair bit of searching already, so I thought I'd put up my suggested budget and see what the general opinion was.

I don't really want to get into the specifics of buying just yet as there are lots of opinions (get a turbo/spend 5k more/spend 5k less/get an Exige/AWD is heresy etc). However, the top end budget for the car is £20k and I'm aware that for this there will be compromises, however, I'd rather get something with a low owner numbers, a good indie history and some duff paint and scuffed wheels than a garage queen that's had nineteen owners, five litres of Halford's best each year and never seen a specialist. I intend on owning the car for a number of years and running it daily, doing about 10k miles per year, so with servicing, I've averaged out the likely costs for minor, major and really major on the basis it's better to save today for tomorrow.

Annual Costs:

Finance: £5000
VED:£500
Insurance: £1000

Service/MOT ave: £600
Tyres: £800

Fuel (ave 22mpg @£7.75/gallon): £3500

On this basis I propose to ring-fence £300/month to cover everything but fuel and finance, which brings the total monthly bill to about £1000.

Is this too little? Am I too exposed to a big bill? What have I forgotten to budget for?

Also and this is quite important - can anyone tell me how wide at it's widest a C4S is please? Failure to fit in the garage would be embarrassing...

Many thanks in advance and apologies if I've missed an identical recent thread. I did skim about 20 previous pages and google like mad.

Nuts! Yes, 996. I thought post 2001 cars would attract the maximum tax, which is steadily creeping up. I've tried to be cynical with costs and get nice surprises!

Bit of an open ended question. If you buy a good one that has had recent rads, clutch, rms, tyres, discs and has just had a major you will only spend about 300 quid at an Indy for the minor that first year if nothing else goes wrong! If not your cash outlay could be into the thousands. Mine was purchased through opc and needed clutch rms oil pressure sensor and heated seat element in year one. A Rad has just gone too. Prob about a 400 quid fix at an Indy. The car has 36k on the clock.

I would recommend taking a maintenance plan with either Hartech or Sports and classic.

The approx cost for annual Std servicing (incl standard servicing parts & labour) and MOT is 80GBP per month. This will also cover all labour costs if anything else needs doing and you just have to pay for parts.

RFL is 270

Tyres - budget 1,000 per set however, depending on driving style, the fronts will only need replacing every 20 - 24K

You'll need to put aside another couple of grand a year for 'other fixes'. That should be enough to cover the usual bills that tend to accompany a standard routine service. You are unlikely to need this fund every year, but they are not cheap cars to run in the longer term. I've just had a major service on my 996 at a highly regarded indy and it cost £740 without any serious faults. Parts and labour quickly add up.

so are you better to go for a car with full history and a higher mileage (say sub 80K) than a car with lower mileage - the age will be the same, but if the car has done more mile some of the bigger jobs will have already been done?

Making a massive assumption here without picking through history of the cars of course

From Grant Neal 996 Buyers Guide Turbo/C4S width = 1830mm

Unless you start folding the mirrors in the wide body car really isn't any wider. Good luck finding a good one when you are ready.

Agree with most of the posters on here,having run an 03 C4S for 3 years/ 30,000 miles, I think if you find the right car ie with fresh tyres and brakes servicing costs will be lower than you expect at a good indy approx £300 for a minor.
My car had 5 owners when I bought it at 30k miles and was trouble free with NO oil leaks
RMS included, only odd fault was a couple of coil packs at £35 each.
Best of luck finding your car.

Dave, I've annualised my costs so I can contrast the £ sum against income. Pence per mile feels irrelevant as some costs are mileage independant. What I'm looking for here is a realistic lump from my paypack to allocate each month. The finance figure is, again, annual outgoing and doesn't infer any %. In fact, it's irrelevant to all but me really!

Regards depreciation, this is my man-maths allowance. I'm ignoring it. I'm not trying to invest in a car and it's a long term prospect, so I plan to deal with the resale value when it arises and not worry about theoretical money disappearing. I could be wrong, but I also can't see a C4S coming in at under £10k in five years. Settling around 14 would be my ill-educated guess.