Thinking of buying a Cerbra
Discussion
I will shortly have to part with my much loved Elise as the wife and I are expecting our first sprog
, the sensible side of me has been thinking of replacing it with a porker 911 and the other a Cerbera
. I would like a bit of advice please from you fellow Pistonheaders, what would the running costs be like – I would do 8000 miles a year using as my daily transport and the car would be garaged at night.
, the sensible side of me has been thinking of replacing it with a porker 911 and the other a Cerbera. I would like a bit of advice please from you fellow Pistonheaders, what would the running costs be like – I would do 8000 miles a year using as my daily transport and the car would be garaged at night.Did the S1 Elise -> Cerb thing, and thoroughly enjoyed the switch. Ran the Cerb as an everyday car, too.
Overall: the Cerb was a much more "complete" car (it has floor mats for a start). No having to wear black trousers to stop crap from the sill mucking 'em up, no having to carefully plan how much shopping I could buy at once/how long I could go away for based on packing stuff into the "boot", etc. Not to mention the complete lack of puff the Elise has above 70 or so.
In comparison, I've always found 911s much less involving, much less characterful, and a complete change in ethos from the Elise (no waves, etc. from other drivers/no pointing & staring from pedestrians, etc). Typical advice is to budget for £3k a year in servicing + unexpected bill costs. Hopefully it'll cost much less, but you shouldn't be caught skint should the worst happen if you take this into consideration. Driving it everyday will help keep any problems of leaving it for weeks on end at bay, too.
Coming from an Elise, I'd recommend you get one with Nitron dampers already fitted, or you'll be in for a £1k bill at some point for getting the handling up to spec (and it really is good once you've got them fitted).
Happy hunting...
Overall: the Cerb was a much more "complete" car (it has floor mats for a start
). No having to wear black trousers to stop crap from the sill mucking 'em up, no having to carefully plan how much shopping I could buy at once/how long I could go away for based on packing stuff into the "boot", etc. Not to mention the complete lack of puff the Elise has above 70 or so. In comparison, I've always found 911s much less involving, much less characterful, and a complete change in ethos from the Elise (no waves, etc. from other drivers/no pointing & staring from pedestrians, etc). Typical advice is to budget for £3k a year in servicing + unexpected bill costs. Hopefully it'll cost much less, but you shouldn't be caught skint should the worst happen if you take this into consideration. Driving it everyday will help keep any problems of leaving it for weeks on end at bay, too.
Coming from an Elise, I'd recommend you get one with Nitron dampers already fitted, or you'll be in for a £1k bill at some point for getting the handling up to spec (and it really is good once you've got them fitted).
Happy hunting...
The running costs depend on wether you buy a peach or a lemon. They can be as low as £500/year if you get one that's had all it's upgrades that you want and only suffers from minor niggles.
On the other hand, if you get Daggart's old one, kiss your cheque book goodbye.
£3000/year is about right, this year it's cost me £300, next year I'm expecting it to cost me around £3000 as there's a lot of jobs I want to do. I want to upgrade the suspension, back lights and there's a few cluncks I want to get sorted.
On the other hand, if you get Daggart's old one, kiss your cheque book goodbye.
£3000/year is about right, this year it's cost me £300, next year I'm expecting it to cost me around £3000 as there's a lot of jobs I want to do. I want to upgrade the suspension, back lights and there's a few cluncks I want to get sorted.
matrs said:
Cheers Fellas, budgets just been cut though on those running costs - would £16,000 get me a good early car?
"Budgetting for £3k" is very different from actually having £3k sat in the bank waiting for it. I'd suggest having "some" money around just in case (£1k for emergencies, perhaps?), and just knowing that you could afford the other bills should they come along in time. I.e. using any one of the 9 months interest free credit card offers, that're out there, etc.
As long as you'd not be stretching yourself to deal with such bills, I'd probably (assuming you had £19k) spent £17-18k on the car, put £1k in the bank, and expect to spend £1k on the obligatory "new owner tax" that you'll have if you buy the car privately.
Would rather be having to find a good Cerb for £18k than £16k (not to say that there aren't good/bad ones at both prices). Make sure you do a search on the previous threads in the forum for things like why '98 onwards cars are generally considered "better", why you'll want one with a later/replaced clutch to save a bit of money, etc...
J_S_G said:
I want to upgrade the suspension, back lights [...]
Hang on, that £3k's not allowed to include upgrading the car, or we might as well as quote SXS's 50-bajillion pound upgrade project that could buy him the whole of Blackpool's output of Tivs for decades to come...
OK, the back lights are a luxury, but my suspension aint. The thing is bouncing around like tigger and I'm sure TVR suspension units are just as expensive as avo's.
www.pistonheads.com/sales/detail.asp?i=33364&s=6 - does anyone know about this car as seems a little cheap?
matrs said:
www.pistonheads.com/sales/detail.asp?i=33364&s=6 - does anyone know about this car as seems a little cheap?
S6 Cerbs tend to sell for considerably less than V8 ones, due to both bragging rights & the lack of faith in the reliability of the engine. High(er) mileage won't help the price, either. Personally, wouldn't worry about the mileage, and as long as the engine had been rebuilt in the last two years, I'd not have too many worries about that either...
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