to buy a very very cheap car?

[RentANDBills]

A series of unfortunate events has led me to be rather suddenly ousted from my flat in London and living on the floor of my mother's house. At the moment I have no clue what I'm doing with myself, whether I will remain local to my Mum or go back to London to find another job.

My Mum lives in the sticks and realistically I need a car to be here, or else I'm housebound. I have a small unit in the next town that I am keeping most of my things and running my business from - the journey is 10 mins via car, 50-60 minutes via (very expensive) public transport.

There are some cars in the area being sold for £300-500; all of them 15+ years old, most likely with dodgy year long MOTs written by shifty dealers behind a shed somewhere.

I'm tempted to buy one, even if it is just to scrap it once its MOT is up which would potentially be cheaper than the repair bill for something in the next bracket up.
However, I may go back to London, or go travelling, or become a nun or go live in a cave with 50 cats in which case I will no longer need a car - so would possibly want to get my money back (more likely on a more expensive car?) to buy cat food/train tickets/nun hats.

AIBU to buy something so cheap and run the risk of not being able to get rid of it in 2-3 months if necessary? or run the risk of exploding halfway down the motorway

My 18 year old car has a plug in iphone charger too. And the cassette jack things.

Here's one example - www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Car-Audio-Tape-Adapter-for-iPhone-iPod-Mp3-CD-Radio-Nano-3-5mm-Jack-Aux-Hot-/252064531208?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

I had an even ancient-er Merc at one point and this was brilliant!

It's a bit of a lottery. Our last v v cheap car (£350 ford focus) was a complete arsing disaster. It was panic bought because without it dh can't get to work, if he can't get there he doesn't get paid, if he doesn't get paid we go under. But it was dire. It was sold by very dodgy people (I have described them as such on this site before and got quite a negative response, but having since put it towards the price of a replacement car in part exchange and heard what the dealer had to say about the people we bought it from and the fact that it had apparently passed an MOT without advisories mere weeks before we bought it, but less than 4 months later it was fit only for scrap, I'm pretty confident in my description of them) and it was awful. Prior to that though, we'd bought similarly cheap cars and been absolutely fine. If you know enough about cars (or have someone with that knowledge who'll help you out) to be confident in checking carefully before you buy then go for it.

5 mins on gov.uk allows you to check the MoT history, only real ones get on there. 5 more mins and a tenner will give you an HPI, stolen, written off and outstanding finance check.

then you can look at the mechanics.

Last year I was in the market for a cheap car, I knew exactly what I wanted (a specific model Toyota - to minimise repair costs - but under different circumstances I would have considered other very reliable marques e.g. Honda). There were only a handful the right age/price on Auto Trader so I went through every one and checked their MoT histories on the gov.uk website (search for 'Check the MoT history of a vehicle') and found some really offputting advisories in most of them. I did find one with quite a clear MoT history but no service records - but a quick call to the Toyota dealer gave me most of that. So I bought it, and have been very happy with it. It has done over 167,000 miles and still runs beautifully - of course it does, it's a Toyota...

My advice is DO YOUR RESEARCH. If you are after a specific model there might be an owner's club or other info online to tell you common problems or things to look out for when buying.

I sold my last car for £250 53 plate megane, cracking runner but lots of dints on body work. Loved that car!

Speak to your local mechanics that you trust.

I just practically gave away my 15 yr old focus for £100, nobody wanted it, yet it had gone from Manchester to London and back every week like a dream and was still in good condition (although high mileage). It would easily have run another couple of years, I only swopped it because I got offered a cheap 10y old version with low mileage for £1k. (Husband is a mechanic and heard about it from a client..)

I rarely drive anything under 15 years old! Usually big estates or move. Typically pug or citeron 2.0 diesel hdi varients as they get 50 ish mpg. Having said that my wife has had a 1.6 petrol 2001 renault scenic for about three years and whilst I've patched it up now and again it refuses to die! I've had my failures, the worst of all have been fords!

My worst ever was a £400 emergency "pregnant missus with baby imminent" runabout Astra, after the main Astra blew the computer. Scrapyard engine and gearbox shoehorned into an old shell, iffy brakes, horrendous machine. So terrible it was funny. Gearbox was worn out, engine was unwell, couldn't crack 40mph, and wouldn't do hills.

On its 4th run, I brought it here, it refused to stop and drove into the garage wall, at which point I walked away chuckling.

Think my favourite was a Maestro automatic, that I bought from a house clearance, after finding it under the collapsed garage for £500. 24000 miles, one old lady owner, immaculate. Lovely machine.

Just wanted to post about this gadget which was given to me yesterday to solve the car only playing cassettes issue.

It is a hands free Bluetooth FM transmitter thing. You plug it in to the cigarette lighter and it displays a radio frequency - 87.7 for me. Then you tune your car radio to that frequency and when you play something on a Bluetooth enabled device the gadget sends it through the radio.

Neat!

5foot5 my DP has one of them he loves it.
Anyway just came on to say that my old car was a 1999 Polo. Had it five years just got a bigger car recently; it goes like a dream and has always passed its MOT no problem (apart from the cunt who thought I was a mug and told me it needed a new catalytic converter for £350 - it didn't it just needed a good run and some engine cleaning fluid and it passed) I only bought new tyres and windscreen wipers etc for it.

My best buy was an astray for £80. 1Months MOT and a huge hole in the back box. I decided it was cheaper than a rental. A back box latter I drove it for the best part of three years! My worst was a Ford escorts estate £1200 and detonated aftee a few months!

Insurance can be expensive. Our w reg nissan micra costs more to insurance than our new Qashqai. Also

My DH and I did this for about 10 years - buy an old banger for around £500, keep it on average 2 years, get rid for scrap or sell to garage and replace with 'new' old banger. It worked very well - I was reassured that if we got a 'lemon' at least we hadn't spent much on it. In fact, we never had one actually break down on us. We had various kinds - Peugeot (I think) 106, Citroen Saxo, Nissan Micra - the Micra was brilliant, and we only got rid of it after a prang that would have been uneconomical to repair.

Will your insurance be that much? We pay less than that for two of us on a newer (6 years old), large, moderately powerful car, with one (minor) claim in the last 5 years.

Even if a car has passed an MOT, that doesn't guarantee it's great - we had one which passed (legitimately!) every year, but for the last couple of years of its life, needed the accelerator down all the time to keep the engine going until the engine was properly warm. A test drive should show you that, though said car had a range of idiosyncracies, which might have been, erm, disconcerting, for someone who hadn't previously driven some exciting vehicles in developing countries.

I'd definitely recommend old Nissan micras. They last forever and are cheap to repair, easy to get parts. I have a £400 Nissan Micra, 15 years old. Last MOT I needed my headlights lifting and a tyre changing (OH put one on wrong Both things I could have done myself for less than £10.

When we lived in the UK we had a couple £300 cars one after the other. They came with a years tax and MOT and were peanuts to insure.

They catastrophically failed the MOT so we just scrapped them and got £200 for them.

Was the cheapest driving we ever did

Would also recommend a Polo. I had a beautiful little mark 1 as my first car about 12yrs ago. It cost me £300. I ran it for a couple of years and passed it to my Mum when I needed a bigger car to fit the DC. Mum wrote it off and the ins paid £350

I read this as a very very cheap cat... and got stuck wondering what would make a cat so cheap to buy

my dh got his car in 2003, for 500.
its a miracle.

CaptainWarbeck My two very very cheap cats have proved most reliable over the years .

We bought a cheap car 2 years ago for £250 it has just passed its 2nd MOT its a great little runner and makes you feel like you are in a racing car with its sounds (tiny engine so rews up a fair bit) We call it the road runner due to how its beep sound.

To be honest best £250 we ever spent.

We always used to buy new cars ant keep them til they died but have switched to buying cheap older cars with low mileage. Current car is a little Japanese car about 15 years old. It is awesome.

UPDATE
Thanks for all the advice everyone - I've just bought a 2002 Nissan Micra! It was "only" £995, 60k miles on the clock and just one previous owner from new. It is absolutely spotless and has a full service history right from day 1.
It's ugly as sin and I would have preferred to spend less but I'm confident it'll get me from A to B for the next few years!

That sounds like a great choice OP, hope you and the Micra have a happy time together. (Usually the uglier the car the longer it lives, to spite you, IME ).