Fix the old car (again) or buy a new one?

[Spink]

We've got a 10 yr old car, 120k mileage. Bought it 2 yrs ago for £4k. In the last year it's cost us £1k (brakes & suspension stuff). Yesterday it broke down & will cost just over £1k to fix (clutch).

We might fix it & then it be fine for the next 2 years or so, but the garage have told us there are some corrosion issues that'll need to be dealt with & that "with a car this age" these problems are normal.

Dh doesn't want to buy another old car for the same thing to potentially happen & reckons we should look at newer cars (3yrs old) from dealerships which are under warranty & can be expected to be in decent condition. He spoke to a dealership who said they would give us £1k for our old car, unrepaired.

We could afford the newish car if we bought it on part finance - the car he's looked at is £11k (gulp) and is our 'perfect' family car. But obviously it's a lot of money.

Wwyd???

bump... I know it's a bit of a boring one...

in a similar position in that my car engine has done 100k, body has done 130k, lost the clutch yesterday on the M25 (fun, not), ad we need to decide to carry on patching it up (second clutch issue in 5 months, electronics going funny, rattly exhaust); buy something small and cheap while we save up for a decent replacement; or get the replacement on finance.

Sadly I shouldn't think we'll get anything other than scrap value for it, so any replacement needs to be fully funded .

£11k is a lot, what is it? (mileage, make, model)

Leaping, I'd be tempted to get a cheap run around for day to day runs, but we drive a few times a year to central europe so want a reliable and comfortable car for those regular family trips!

The car we're looking at is a Citroen Grand c4 picasso. The reason we like it in particular is the 5/7 seat option as we often have other children staying that it helps to have space in the car for, and when we go to see family in europe, ditto.

We drove one last year (rental) and really liked most things about it. It is our ideal car though, so I guess we could go for a direct replacemnt - another estate (ours is a skoda) which would provide the minimum size we need.

Sorry holidaycrim, forgot mileage- 20k

Bigger cars are more expensive to run. I'm just saying... might make more sense to have minimum size rather than dragging lots of extra unused car around with you most the time.

We were in almost the same position a few years ago, Spink - paid about £3.5K for a 4-yr-old Mondeo diesel estate with about 85K miles.

The clutch packed up fairly soon & the local garage we used fixed it for a few hundred; then it went again & he replaced a couple of major parts for about £1K. I wanted to get rid at that point but he said no, it'll be fine now.

It wasn't - it turned out to be a known issue with Mondeos that age.

He kindly bought it off us for £1K so we only lost about £4K

We then paid £11K for a nearly-new low mileage Kia Ceed with the balance of the 7-year/100,000 mile warranty - the peace of mind was amazing

DH does a lot of miles commuting & after 3 years it was close to 100K miles, so we traded it in for another one (an estate this time)

Really happy with Kias & DH is so glad he doesn't have to worry about anything major going wrong.

they often have 0% finance available on part of the price too

\link{http://m.kia.co.uk/used-cars.aspx\kia approved used cars}

Our Kia Sedona has been a friggin' lemon & money pit. I can't slag that car off enough.

I would look at Galaxy or Sharan if buying a big car today. But mostly I am keen to never use big car if we can help it. I love small cars!

Sedonas were never any good!

Ceeds are brilliant though.

We've decided to get it fixed again for now & hope it lasts another couple of years, while we save in earnest so when we do need to buy we can avoid losing money on finance. 0% finance looks tempting tho...!

I'd love to just have a little car esp as I'm the one who uses it daily for a short commute, but whenever we go out as a family & friends on weekends & hols our current car is a real squish. We obv need a little banger for my commute AND a good quality family car ;)
If only...

Good luck with this repair then, Spink

Thanks, TheOne feeling optimistic.. I think!