Cheapest way to have a car for a year?

[Ozgirl75]

We’re coming back to the U.K. from Australia for a year and we need to have a car for that period. Does anyone have any ideas of the best way to lease/hire etc a car just for a year? Or suggestions of companies to use?
thank you!

It depends where you are going to be living. If in a city could you sign up to something like zip car for when you need it Otherwise I would just phone a well regarded hire car company and ask for what would be the cost for a year.

Hire car is a fortune and we’re living in the countryside so we really need our own car sadly.
We need a year lease really but can’t seem to find anyone that will do that.

Does it have to be a lease? I'd buy used, current MoT, approx 60k miles for around £3k and it would probably still have resale value at the end of the year.

Actually it's about four years since I last did that (car still going strong, was under £2k and a total bargain at the time) and I know used prices went up during covid, so you might need to budget a bit more than £3k. But it would still keep a goid resale value.

One of the biggest issues will be the cost of insurance.

When I moved back to UK after being in Dublin for 10 years I found it difficult to find an insurer who would take into account my no claims history of over 10 years. Most insurers wanted to treat me as a "new" driver.

I eventually found LV who took my no claims into account.

A friend from Spain has a similar experience but didn't realise about LV and unfortunately ended up paying over £1,000/year for a basic small 5 year old car.

I looked at using, but in the end didn’t, using this company for a short term lease to plug a gap while waiting for a new car to be delivered:

flexed.co.uk

In the end I decided it was cheaper to just by a second had car and then sell 6 months later, which is what I did.

But I can see you might have a problem if you don’t have a UK address at which you've lived at for at least 2 or 3 years

That’s a good tip on the insurance - I seem to recall when we moved to Australia we were able to use the no claims from the U.K. but I’ll try LV.
We do have a business in the U.K. so we have a U.K. “presence”, bank accounts etc so hopefully that should help

Just buy a used one and then sell it after the year. Almost certainly cheaper than renting or leasing.