I'm currently trading in my Peugeot 206 soon, I've been offered £450 which isn't too bad considering the tax is running out soon, I've saved up nearly a grand, so hopefully I can find a reasonable car.
Hopefully his was only owned by a closet-chav, and not actually boned! Looks like a good one though from that shot!
It's funny, here in the states (at least where I live) it's the opposite from over there: insurance (at least liability, the bare minimum/manditory so you don't get sued when you get in a wreck) is pretty cheap (unless you're 16, then it's like $1200 a year) whereas there's hardly such thing as a "cheap car". For instance, a decent pickup truck (I'll admit this is different, here) will cost you at LEAST $2-3,000 regardless of if it is 10 years, 20, or 30 years old. A good car is a good car in some respects. If I understand correctly (please correct me if I'm totally wrong!) you can get a pretty sweet car over there for decently cheap, but the insurance sucks!
It depends on a lot of factors. I bought the car below for £500, and it's probably going to cost me about £300 to put it right. As for insurance, I'm 28 now and it's going to cost me £450 a year to get it fully insured to cover myself legally as well as a replacement if it gets written off or stolen. However had I not had 3 points on my license I would have gotten that insurance for £400. If I were 3 years younger it'd cost me £1200 a year for insurance (turning 25 makes a big difference here for some reason) and finally if I were under the age of 20 no insurance company I looked at would insure me on this car due to the reputation it has. The fact that I've held my license for 10 years makes a big difference. There's a chap I work with who is only 17 and looking to get his first car. It's a 1.0L Ford Fiesta and he's looking at around £2000 a year for insurance for it, it wasn't anything like that when I was his age and I think it's a case of the british government trying to reduce the number of people on the road for as long as possible, our accident and claim rates have been declining each year so I can see no other reason for such a huge price spike in cover costs. Anyway... I had a chance to clean it up yesterday and give it a good look over. A lot of cosmetic work needs to be done. Mechanically it's pretty sound however I have a suspicion an engine mount needs replacing as flooring it rocks the whole car a bit and it's wobbly on tick over. Until today it was shaking itself to pieces over 50mph but I found out that the insides of the front tyres are badly worn due to it bottoming out occasionally (and hard lock turning). So for the time being I switched the front and back and they're a little better, although tomorrow evening I'll be picking up a set of 5 original silver alloys with new tyres (for only £80...bargain). It also doesn't help that it has cheap Halfords metal dust caps on some of the wheels that just will not come off two of the tyres. I know that one of the tyres had 10psi more in it that it should do so god knows what the rest of them have got in them :S I also picked up some standard front springs today as well for only £15, however in the quickly fading daylight I couldn't get the drop links out without a blow torch and decided I'll leave it until the weekend to do it. However should the new engine mount and wheels make the car a little more solid again...I may leave it lowered. It's not too low, maybe only 10mm lower at the front, we'll see. Either way it's a great car and I'm having fun just messing with it. I'm not a boy racer by any means but these are just great to drive and I'm looking forward to it being normal and safe again (that said I did take it to 70mph in second gear last night on a country road...scared the crap out of me but put a smile on my face) and it's great that most parts are not a huge amount of money, even brand new. Anyway took a few pics of my own (the previous was taken by the original owner before I bought it):
is that £450 on your parents insurance or your own? I'm fucked in that regard, no proper next of kin with insurance to go on and I'm only 19. Insurance will be ridiculous. Quick question if I started taking tests and passed and got a full license, do they run out and I have to retake at some kind of cost or am I good forever? I come from a family [well immediate] that do not drive.
Thats for me on my own policy. However it's the first time I've ever gotten my own insurance. I've been a named driver for 10 years. That £450 is using only 1 year of no claims discount as a named driver (as dad has lost all of the details of the previous companies...we switch a lot), I was surprised at how "cheap" it was, in fact I was actually paying more being a named driver on a safer and slower car. It'd be £550 without the NCD. Your license lasts until you're 70 or something once you've got it. You don't need to use it to keep it alive. Insurance might not be so bad what I'd recommend is this, go to someone like confused.com, Tesco or Directline and grab a random registration number from a car you could see yourself sensibly owning. Run a quote to see what comes back, you might be pleasantly surprised. Once you do get your license, start driving as soon as you possibly can really and start building up that no claims discount and actual experience, otherwise when you're my age, the insurance will likely be the same if you have to put in 0 years driving experience and 0 years no claims discount regardless of how old you are or how long you've had your license. Yes it'll be expensive but it's kinda like an investment, if you pay high amounts in early and grin and bear it, it'll pay off in the long run. Few other tips for filling out those quotes/buying a car: 1. Put your annual mileage at around 4,000 2. Don't value the car too cheaply, people think if the car is worth nothing then the insurance will be cheap...it doesn't always work that way. 3. Engine size means nothing these days...NCAP safety ratings do (put it this way, Ford's new 1.0 EcoBoost engine will out perform most standard 1.4 engines, so insurance companies tend not to care about engine size too much, also for example, a 1.8 MG Rover is cheaper to insure than a 1.4 because the 1.8 comes with extra air bags, bigger brakes and ABS). 4. If you can, put down the use of the car as social and domestic only. 5. Play around with the voluntary excess cost, sometimes paying less equals a smaller premium...I haven't really worked out why yet. 6. If you can, go fully comprehensive. Once upon a time 3rd party or 3rd party fire and theft used to be cheaper...doesn't seem to be that way anymore, but switch between the two in the options and see what happens. 7. Post code and where you keep the car also makes a big difference, but there isn't always much you can do about this. Any other questions just let me know or drop me a PM. This 106 is my 30th car since I was 17 so I'm no stranger to the world of motoring. BUMP: Replaced the wheels back to standard and went for a drive
I'm liking that Peugeot you have there, Twimfy. Get that done up to original spec and get rid of those horrid white alloys and you'll have a very tasty classic hot hatch. Actually, the body work on it looks pretty solid apart from that ding in the front wheel arch. how is it paint wise? Nice and straight? Someone requested a video of a drive through the tunnel that links Honshu and Kyushu together so here it is plus below is the follow up to the night time drive through the park. [video=youtube_share;Sz8mS4bM5Vc]http://youtu.be/Sz8mS4bM5Vc[/video]
White wheels are gone (those are silver originals in the last pic). The paint work is really nice actually with zero fading and only a few flakey sports, a good t-cut will make it look nice. I think I have an engine mount gone however, so far I'm spending way more money on it that I planned to but I love the car already so hopefully it'll be worth it. As for the small dents, I'd probably do more harm than good getting them out, but one of them is in the plastic wheel arch of which I have a replacement, just waiting for the clips to arrive.
Thanks for the help twimfy, but honestly I can't afford to drive right now, I'm an apprentice so my pay is crap, I'd also have to buy the car and then pay the insurance myself. Especially not given that I live in a fairly poor area which will help push it up.
