Advice:
Hexxeh should consider desisting from referring to himself in the third person since a) it contributes little to the readability of his posts and b) he's not LJK Setright
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Hexxeh should also realise that the smaller the car, the peppier any given engine feels- and by smaller, I mean the lower the mass. The continuous bloat suffered by pretty much every manufacturer's small cars in recent years has done a great deal to blunt their performance, not only in a straight line but also around corners. This also impacts their fuel efficiency- modern cars have more efficient engines, but they have to do more work, meaning overall fuel consumption is similar.
Thirdly, hexxeh could have a look at his proposed finance model- I.E. £200 per month equalling £2400 a year, and realise that if he bought a car for under £1000 he'd be
very unlucky if he had to spend another £1400 to keep it on the road for three years, let alone one year.
Fourthly, hexxeh might observe that the insurance on Rave's MR2 when he purchased it aged 22 was £700 a year (albeit with 2 years NCB) and that over the next five years that came down in reasonably progressive increments to £230 (all TPFT- Fully Comp is pointless on a sub £1000 car).
Finally, hexxeh would only have to look on Autotrader or in the local paper for 15 minutes to see that there is an huge choice of fun, modern classic cars for well under £1000 to choose from. Aforementioned MR2, Clio 16V, Peugeot 205 GTi (or 205 1.4XS as recently eulogised by Chris Harris in Autocar), BMW 318si, Alfa 145/146 etc. etc.
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If you really can't afford to lose your car to a breakdown once or twice a year, then fine, get a Honda Jazz. They're nice apparently. Otherwise, get something older and more fun. My MR2 never broke down once- it cost me £1300 to buy, £600 to get it through it's first MOT and £500 through it's second. That's £2500 over 2 1/2 years. After that it hardly cost me anything other than petrol, tax and insurance- and it was way more fun to drive than any modern supermini could hope to be. It's rusted in my car parking spot for the last 6 months because I can't afford to replace a rusted exhaust
- it's sad, but even if I have to scrap it I've effectively lost £2500 to depreciation in 5 years. Britain is one of the few countries in the world where old bangers make serious financial sense. We buy so many new cars, and suffer such massive depreciation as a result, that you might as well drive something old and cool and spend the money on servicing instead.