Reliability and Running Costs
Discussion
Luciano,
it really does depend on som many things but here's my example.
Car does about 5-6k a year has 1 service per year which i budget around £1400k for.
It doesn't chew tyres that badly (considering)
and i've not had to replace any yet after 8k miles.
I've not had any major problems only the usual that are on this forum all the time:
leaky rear window (or at least a water leak from somewhere anyway)
broken rear exhaust bracket (re-weld, again and again)
when i bought mine i bought a 2 year warranty which i haven't used and has therefore been a complete waste of £1k, but... it does give piece of mind!
hope that helps.
it really does depend on som many things but here's my example.
Car does about 5-6k a year has 1 service per year which i budget around £1400k for.
It doesn't chew tyres that badly (considering)
and i've not had to replace any yet after 8k miles. I've not had any major problems only the usual that are on this forum all the time:
leaky rear window (or at least a water leak from somewhere anyway)
broken rear exhaust bracket (re-weld, again and again)
when i bought mine i bought a 2 year warranty which i haven't used and has therefore been a complete waste of £1k, but... it does give piece of mind!
hope that helps.
Budget around £2k for servicing per years, and about another £2k for things that go wrong.
There is the chance, as with all 4-5 year old cars that something big will let go, but it is very rare. There are aftermarket warranties that will cover the major parts, engine etc.
I'd imagine, assuming you don't get a main seal failure, that the boxster S would be slightly cheaper all around, but then the boxster was £20k less new so that's hardly surprising.
J
There is the chance, as with all 4-5 year old cars that something big will let go, but it is very rare. There are aftermarket warranties that will cover the major parts, engine etc.
I'd imagine, assuming you don't get a main seal failure, that the boxster S would be slightly cheaper all around, but then the boxster was £20k less new so that's hardly surprising.
J
joust said:
Budget around £2k for servicing per year, and about another £2k for things that go wrong.
Budgeting £2k each year for things to go wrong on top of £2k annual servicing is pretty expensive.. certainly more than most standard Porsches and almost at Ferrari levels of running cost! Is the £2k worth of problems mainly caused by unreliability? Or is the Noble labour more than Porsche?
It's a shame because with Nobles selling for as low as £20k they were starting to look like value for money, but I don't think I'd be prepared to stomach those kind of running costs.. not sure how you guys manage!
joust said:
...the boxster was £20k less new
You've obviously not had the 'benefit' of being fleeced by Porsche! Unfortunately whilst a new Boxster S starts at £40k, the sneaky people at Porsche make you pay through the nose for all those tempting extras - it's not uncommon to see an additional £10k worth of 'accessories' bumping the price of a Boxster up to over £50k. For example, metallic paint £1.5k, £2.5k for full brown leather, £1.5k for alloys that actually fill the arches, £1k for xenons, £1.5k for hardtop etc etc etc
and that's before the lazy people fit tiptronic (£1k), and the chavs fit the sports design aero kit at £3k!
Anyway, I was always under the impression that Noble's were cheaper to run than TVR's?
luciano said:
joust said:
Budget around £2k for servicing per year, and about another £2k for things that go wrong.
Budgeting £2k each year for things to go wrong on top of £2k annual servicing is pretty expensive.. certainly more than most standard Porsches and almost at Ferrari levels of running cost! Is the £2k worth of problems mainly caused by unreliability? Or is the Noble labour more than Porsche?
What I'm saying is budget for having things go wrong. You may or may not need that 4k in total, but I woudln't recommend anyone getting into a Noble and thinking it would cost less than a grand to run for a year. You may fine if you did, but can you just 'magic' up a few thousand for a large bill.
Nobles are £55k hand built sports cars that had a development budget measured in millions, not hundreds of millions. To expect it to be like a Porsche is just therefore asking for trouble, but you'll be surprised of the number of owners on here that do just spend a grand or so on the car each year for servicing.
luciano said:
It's a shame because with Nobles selling for as low as £20k they were starting to look like value for money, but I don't think I'd be prepared to stomach those kind of running costs.. not sure how you guys manage!
I think you've got the wrong idea. A Noble is a £55k car and comes with £55k car bills. As for comparing to TVRs, the large number of friends that have TVRs do seem to spend more on them then I ever have on the Noble, but then TVRs are the same as Noble in that they are a £50k car - although you could argue the speed six engine is the root cause of a lot of their problems.
J
In my experience(3.5 years and 18000 miles),I cannot agree with Joust's figures. I know I'm probably tempting fate but the only extra expense has been one ball joint,about £70 fitted. Standard servicing from my main dealer is around £600 a time. Every one of those miles has been purely for pleasure which means it gets a reasonable thrashing at some stage of the journey. I choose not to do track days(although I have done in the past) which will increase wear considerably.
I will soon be buying the third set of rear tyres and the second set for the front. There are about 600+ Nobles out there with only a tiny minority of owners regularly posting on here. Horses for courses really,depends what you want from a car,exercise reasonable mechanical sympathy and enjoy it how you choose to.
I will soon be buying the third set of rear tyres and the second set for the front. There are about 600+ Nobles out there with only a tiny minority of owners regularly posting on here. Horses for courses really,depends what you want from a car,exercise reasonable mechanical sympathy and enjoy it how you choose to.
Edited by honestbob on Sunday 3rd December 18:58
I also think one of the big points here is that the 2 cars you are considering are very different.
Test drive one and I think you will soon decide. I had a few things go wrong and but some of these could have been avoided if I had listened to these guys (diff for example).
But I wouldn't sell it for anything (except maybe a 3r one day).
bondy
Test drive one and I think you will soon decide. I had a few things go wrong and but some of these could have been avoided if I had listened to these guys (diff for example).
But I wouldn't sell it for anything (except maybe a 3r one day).
bondy
honestbob said:
In my experience(3.5 years and 18000 miles),I cannot agree with Joust's figures. I know I'm probably tempting fate but the only extra expense has been one ball joint,about £70 fitted. Standard servicing from my main dealer is around £600 a time.
I was working on two of them per year (12k miles per year forces that) giving £1200+VAT as a minimum. Throw in the odd ball joint, battery etc. and I think the £2k per year for 'average joe bloggs' milage is pretty much on the nose. At 3.5 years and 18000 miles you aren't driving it like joe average bod (12k per annum is meant to be the average isn't it?) so your figures make more sense
J
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