'Appy wedgeday...
Discussion
Meant to mention it before I nipped off on me jollies to Italy (Stelvio Pass
alas not in the Wedge!)... 1st of September was the 10th anniversary of my buying the 390SE!
In that time she's covered a paltry 23000 miles and cost me £2768 in parts, tyres, MOTs, paint... but that figure includes the cruise control system, 'project' fuel injection system and a rolling-road session, none of which were strictly necessary, so you could round that down to £2500.
I make that £250 a year excluding road tax, insurance and fuel, or 1.1 pence per mile
If we use this year's costs for insurance, fuel and road tax then we get: £600-worth of fuel; £112.75 tax (6 months) and £103 insurance.
That's a total of £816 for a summer's worth of motoring, or 35p a mile. I bet you couldn't go a mile on a bus for 35p
If you get really picky and hypothesise that the car has depreciated 50% since I bought it (£3000 for a scruffy 390 about right?) then you can add another 13p a mile, but I still doubt you could go a mile for 48p!
So, who says TVRs are expensive to run...
alas not in the Wedge!)... 1st of September was the 10th anniversary of my buying the 390SE!In that time she's covered a paltry 23000 miles and cost me £2768 in parts, tyres, MOTs, paint... but that figure includes the cruise control system, 'project' fuel injection system and a rolling-road session, none of which were strictly necessary, so you could round that down to £2500.
I make that £250 a year excluding road tax, insurance and fuel, or 1.1 pence per mile

If we use this year's costs for insurance, fuel and road tax then we get: £600-worth of fuel; £112.75 tax (6 months) and £103 insurance.
That's a total of £816 for a summer's worth of motoring, or 35p a mile. I bet you couldn't go a mile on a bus for 35p

If you get really picky and hypothesise that the car has depreciated 50% since I bought it (£3000 for a scruffy 390 about right?) then you can add another 13p a mile, but I still doubt you could go a mile for 48p!
So, who says TVRs are expensive to run...

Wedg1e said:
Meant to mention it before I nipped off on me jollies to Italy (Stelvio Pass
alas not in the Wedge!)... 1st of September was the 10th anniversary of my buying the 390SE!
In that time she's covered a paltry 23000 miles and cost me £2768 in parts, tyres, MOTs, paint... but that figure includes the cruise control system, 'project' fuel injection system and a rolling-road session, none of which were strictly necessary, so you could round that down to £2500.
I make that £250 a year excluding road tax, insurance and fuel, or 1.1 pence per mile
If we use this year's costs for insurance, fuel and road tax then we get: £600-worth of fuel; £112.75 tax (6 months) and £103 insurance.
That's a total of £816 for a summer's worth of motoring, or 35p a mile. I bet you couldn't go a mile on a bus for 35p
If you get really picky and hypothesise that the car has depreciated 50% since I bought it (£3000 for a scruffy 390 about right?) then you can add another 13p a mile, but I still doubt you could go a mile for 48p!
So, who says TVRs are expensive to run...
Many happy returns!
alas not in the Wedge!)... 1st of September was the 10th anniversary of my buying the 390SE!In that time she's covered a paltry 23000 miles and cost me £2768 in parts, tyres, MOTs, paint... but that figure includes the cruise control system, 'project' fuel injection system and a rolling-road session, none of which were strictly necessary, so you could round that down to £2500.
I make that £250 a year excluding road tax, insurance and fuel, or 1.1 pence per mile

If we use this year's costs for insurance, fuel and road tax then we get: £600-worth of fuel; £112.75 tax (6 months) and £103 insurance.
That's a total of £816 for a summer's worth of motoring, or 35p a mile. I bet you couldn't go a mile on a bus for 35p

If you get really picky and hypothesise that the car has depreciated 50% since I bought it (£3000 for a scruffy 390 about right?) then you can add another 13p a mile, but I still doubt you could go a mile for 48p!
So, who says TVRs are expensive to run...

I'm not going to add up my cost per mile, last time I did it was roughly 75p/mile before any costly repairs

Hmmm, not sure 'happy anniversary' is entirely warranted.
Y'see, how I came by the 390 was a bit of a saga...
I got married at the start of August 2000 and a guy up here lent me his (nitrous-injected
) 400SE to pose around in (er, I mean, arrive at the ceremony in) and the day after the wedding, the wife and I were stuck in a traffic jam in said 400SE, roof down, blazing sunshine.
Wife turned to me and says 'If you ever get another TVR, make sure it's a convertible'.
The day we got back from honeymoon I logged onto the then place to talk TVRs, the Domino/Egroups forum, and lo and behold there's a post from a guy in London who's looking for a quick sale for his 390 as he's scored a job in Dubai and needs to sell it quick as previous interested parties have all bowed out. The asking price was slashed from £9000 to £4500, and remember this was 10 years ago, so straight off I banged a reply back saying I'd have it (hadn't worked out how to pay for it at that point!).
Danny (Mr. Hoffman of this parish) volunteered to go and take a look at the car for me, basically to make sure it went like stink in a straight line.
I ransacked my piggybank, squared it with the wife and looked forward to the following weekend when Danny would call me with the good news.
In the event what happened was that I went out for an hour on the Friday and when I got back there was a message from the kids to say that 'the car had gone'. No further explanation, so I assumed that one of the previous buyers had come up with the readies.
As you can imagine I was a tad gutted, but eventually it dawned on me that I'd already sorted the finance, all I needed to do was find another V8... though I guessed it'd have to be a 350, rather than a 390.
By chance there was a dearth of wedges for sale at that point so I ended up ringing the dealer from whom I'd bought my Tasmin and he said 'No 350s, but I've just got a silver 390 in....'
Hang ooooonnnn.... sure enough it turned out to be the same car; the owner had sold it back to the dealer he bought it from (though not, claimed said dealer, for the £4500 he was asking on the forum... yeah, right
)
So I had a rethink, dug a bit deeper and found the necessary £6000-odd (not a bad profit for two days on the forecourt, I thought).
It then took me a year to sell the Tasmin (which, the more I look at it, the more I'm convinced it's now Mick Wilkinson's car in the TVR Challenge)... and three months after our first anniversary, the wife and I went our separate ways (we'd been together 10 years though, she wasn't a Russian bride or owt
).
Y'see, how I came by the 390 was a bit of a saga...
I got married at the start of August 2000 and a guy up here lent me his (nitrous-injected
) 400SE to pose around in (er, I mean, arrive at the ceremony in) and the day after the wedding, the wife and I were stuck in a traffic jam in said 400SE, roof down, blazing sunshine.Wife turned to me and says 'If you ever get another TVR, make sure it's a convertible'.
The day we got back from honeymoon I logged onto the then place to talk TVRs, the Domino/Egroups forum, and lo and behold there's a post from a guy in London who's looking for a quick sale for his 390 as he's scored a job in Dubai and needs to sell it quick as previous interested parties have all bowed out. The asking price was slashed from £9000 to £4500, and remember this was 10 years ago, so straight off I banged a reply back saying I'd have it (hadn't worked out how to pay for it at that point!).
Danny (Mr. Hoffman of this parish) volunteered to go and take a look at the car for me, basically to make sure it went like stink in a straight line.
I ransacked my piggybank, squared it with the wife and looked forward to the following weekend when Danny would call me with the good news.
In the event what happened was that I went out for an hour on the Friday and when I got back there was a message from the kids to say that 'the car had gone'. No further explanation, so I assumed that one of the previous buyers had come up with the readies.
As you can imagine I was a tad gutted, but eventually it dawned on me that I'd already sorted the finance, all I needed to do was find another V8... though I guessed it'd have to be a 350, rather than a 390.
By chance there was a dearth of wedges for sale at that point so I ended up ringing the dealer from whom I'd bought my Tasmin and he said 'No 350s, but I've just got a silver 390 in....'
Hang ooooonnnn.... sure enough it turned out to be the same car; the owner had sold it back to the dealer he bought it from (though not, claimed said dealer, for the £4500 he was asking on the forum... yeah, right
)So I had a rethink, dug a bit deeper and found the necessary £6000-odd (not a bad profit for two days on the forecourt, I thought).
It then took me a year to sell the Tasmin (which, the more I look at it, the more I'm convinced it's now Mick Wilkinson's car in the TVR Challenge)... and three months after our first anniversary, the wife and I went our separate ways (we'd been together 10 years though, she wasn't a Russian bride or owt
).Wedg1e said:
Hmmm, not sure 'happy anniversary' is entirely warranted.
... and three months after our first anniversary, the wife and I went our separate ways (we'd been together 10 years though, she wasn't a Russian bride or owt
).
Cant say it wasnt THAT bad an anniversary then!!! you've still got the car! :; ... and three months after our first anniversary, the wife and I went our separate ways (we'd been together 10 years though, she wasn't a Russian bride or owt
).

Stu
taz turbo said:
Ian,
Scary....
I saw you name in the OP list, and immediately thought 'Wonder how long you've had your 390 now' One click and question answered.
Chris.
Well, I guess you must be up for a long service gold watch, the time you've had your old bus Scary....
I saw you name in the OP list, and immediately thought 'Wonder how long you've had your 390 now' One click and question answered.
Chris.
I remember looking around it at Back Home; I'm pretty sure it was '97... that was the year I missed getting in the cavalcade video because the Tasmin overheated and I had to stop on the prom. By the time I reached the video man, he was putting his tripod away... 
Lunch at the De Vere: £15-worth of cold lasagne in school-dinner sized portions... still, Trevor Wilkinson was sat behind me so I got to say hello

wedg1e said:
Well, I guess you must be up for a long service gold watch, the time you've had your old bus I remember looking around it at Back Home; I'm pretty sure it was '97... that was the year I missed getting in the cavalcade video because the Tasmin overheated and I had to stop on the prom. By the time I reached the video man, he was putting his tripod away...
Lunch at the De Vere: £15-worth of cold lasagne in school-dinner sized portions... still, Trevor Wilkinson was sat behind me so I got to say hello
The cars 28 years old now, and Iv'e had it for 21 of them... Lunch at the De Vere: £15-worth of cold lasagne in school-dinner sized portions... still, Trevor Wilkinson was sat behind me so I got to say hello
So now at the age of 41 Iv'e had it for longer than I haven't!
I think it was 97 back home (or there abouts) I had the great pleasure of driving Trevor (the great man, not the car). His comments were 'I don't really like these new cars', God Bless Him.
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Oh, is there supposed to be a different way to treat them? Maybe that's where I'm going wrong... 