To ask for your advice on what to do with my knackered car?!

[BadBadBeans]

I have exhausted Google so I am turning to the wisdom of MN for advice here... I really hope someone can help!

I have a BMW 320d, 12 years old, 145k on the clock. We bought it three years ago for £4,750. It was the best car we could afford at the time. Manual advised servicing every 2 years or 20,000 miles. Our mechanic advised every 1 year or 10,000 miles. Which we did... Until this year, when we moved house and things got a bit chaotic and, let's be honest, I was totally disorganised and lost track of when it should be serviced.

So I realised two weeks ago that it was overdue a service - last serviced 17 months and 17,000 miles ago. That was its last oil change as well. We have been topping up with oil over the last six months though, as it was using more oil than usual (YES this should have been a BIG FAT WARNING SIGN to me and it wasn't.)

This week my husband was driving it and the turbo died. We had it recovered to a garage. Garage say that repacing the turbo is something they don't do, but they called a local specialist for a quote. Specialist said anywhere between £700 - £1000. But with the caveat that it may not fix the problem - if the turbo failed because it was starved of oil (my suspicion is this is exactly what happened) then they will do their best to clean out / replace the pipes etc, but there apparently are some inside the engine that they won't be able to clean or replace, and if they're blocked then the new turbo will just fail again.

Car is only worth about £2000 in perfect working order, we reckon.

So our options are thus:

1. Scrap the car (the thought of which makes me want to cry at the waste)
2. Sell the car broken (but how? And who the hell would buy it?)
3. Part exchange the broken car for another car.
4. Fix the car and hope to god it lasts long enough to make the expenditure worth it.

So I guess I'm asking advice on the following:

a) Do you think it's worth fixing the car and taking a punt on the fix working? Do any of you have any similar experience with a happy outcome?!
b) If not, should I sell it or scrap it?
c) WHERE THE HELL DO I SELL IT?!
d) There is also the not inconsiderable issue that the car is currently at the garage, but in order to sell / scrap / fix it, I would presumably need to get it moved, which would presumably cost me. A lot? I have no idea!

Please help!

Also (sorry to drip feed) we have just bought another (much nicer) car with all the cash we calculated we could afford to spare. We could part-x for another old (read: cheap) car, but we have limited savings and don't really want to spend out if we can help it. We live with family who have offered to have a go at car sharing with us and see if we can make it work with 3 cars between 4 adults (we are v v rural so are dependent on cars).

Another option could be to have the car brought to our home and take it off the road while we decide what to do?

If you have enough money for a £1000 repair bill, you could buy a cheap run around, and scrap the bmw? I wouldn't pay out that much with no guarantee it will fix anything!

You could try putting it on somewhere like ebay/facebook/gumtree as whatever cars go under, spares/repairs or something? have a look what stuff like that goes for with a note they have to collect of course! bmw parts might go for a bit?

or maybe that we buy any car website? dont know if they take cars that don't currently run though

or just google your local scrap merchant and ask them if they want it, you wouldnt get anything then though, maybe even have to pay them?

2. Sell the car broken (but how? And who the hell would buy it?)

We've sold two broken cars on eBay for about £500. One had failed its MOT and the repairs were in excess of the car's value. It got exported to Africa. The other had a clutch failure and it was bought by someone for parts.

Paying a grand and risking it not even solving the problem would put me off tbh.

You can list non-runners on Autotrader, though I don't know what price you'd get, you'd have to browse current listings. Someone who's willing to fix it themselves or even plans on putting in a different engine altogether might buy it.

Put it on Gumtree for spares or repair and buy something else. It's not worth £2k working. Get something cheaper to run. We've just sold a beautiful Saab convertible and only got £1100 for a 2004 with 90k and full history.

Part exchange for scrappage allowance scheme?

We buy any car? I got a quote for my car, and they weren’t far short of the price I was going to get for part exchange with Mercedes. That I was surprised at.

Take it to your local car auction, you mihgt be surprised how much it might go dor.

For not dor

Sell it on gumtree or Facebook market place for spares/parts or part ex......a long shot but do you have an AA membership with breakdown repair cover? I forgot I had it until I had an issue last month

I'd get rid, sorry. BMW parts are hellish expensive and at that mileage, other things are going to go wrong soon. My dads old BMW was a writeoff when the windscreen wipers failed!!
Get a cheap runaround from a make with cheap parts and lots of garages that can fit them. Or look at leasing/buying on finance m a small new car then you know you will have no expensive repair bills. It might be more affordable than you think. I have bought an electric car and the monthly payment is the same as I spent on petrol for my old gas guzzler.

Also, 3 years motoring for £5k is probably not that bad-the depreciation on a newer car would have been more. So I wouldn't feel totally ripped off.

Be aware that there are new stricter MOT rules coming in... Or have they already?
It could end up costing a whole lot more again within the next year. Sounds like it's time to cut your losses. :(

Sell it for spares or repairs, with 'sold as seen' on the advert on auto trader for about a grand. It's not worth fixing. With the money and your spare cash buy a cheap runaround (and dear god do NOT buy another bmw or anything with such a high mileage, get something Japanese as new as possible with less than 12000 miles per year on the clock).

I would never advise anybody to buy a used bmw, mercedes or Audi that old with such high mileage as they're just not bloody worth it, and cost a lot to repair when they inevitably go wrong.

By the way, in a former life I ran a used car dealership

Thanks so much for your responses everyone.

So the general consensus seems to be:

1. Fixing it seems like it would be a bad idea!

2. Either sell it for spares or part exchange it

3. Either way, get shot of it and use any value it still has to get myself a cheap runaround.

I must admit, the last time I bought a car I didn't have a kid. Now I do have a toddler and it scares the bejeebus out of me to buy a safe enough car...

I have a trusty old car (trusty rusty according to my very reliable local garage). However it is a Ford not a BMW and despite being 12 years old it only has 55000 miles on the clock. It costs me next to nothing to run (sailed through mot) and therefore is far more cost effective than all my friend's new cars on some kind of finance. However when running an old car there becomes a point when you have to accept it is no longer cost effective. An old BMW is a money pit when it starts to go wrong. Get rid of it and stop investing money. Try and sell to someone who knows enough about cars to keep it on the road themselves. Maybe gumtree, ebay, autotrader etc as spares or repair. Then either invest in another reliable old car or (throw money away) on a financed car.

Hm. Just spoke to the husband and he reckons we should just get shot of it and not buy anything else until we've seen how the car share plan works out.

That obviously rules out the part-exchange option, leaving me with selling for parts or scrapping.

Isn't it a bit risky to put cars on eBay / Gumtree etc? In that people might 'buy them for parts' but actually fix them up and fail to re-register them and run up speeding tickets etc. in my name? What's my responsiblity in terms of ensuring that the new owner registers the car in their name?

To be honest, even if you do fix it then the high mileage means chances are it’s going to start requiring regular maintenance costs.

Diesel cars can do a higher mileage yes, and the engines can keep going, but other parts of the car will still need replacing.

I got rid of my 2009 Golf TDI earlier this year with 142k on the clock. As above, the engine was fine but it just seems that every other month there was something that needed fixed / replacing.

Our neighbour has a 3 series which is 21 years old. I think there’s 180k on the clock, but he spends about £700 a year maintaining it.

I’d sell it on eBay as an auction type listing, clearly describing it as spares and repairs. You will get a few quid for it, most likely £500 +

Once you have notified the DVLA that you are no longer the owner/registered keeper of the car, you should technically be free of any liability for anything that happens after that date. I can't see how anyone else can run up tickets etc for a vehicle the government acknowledges you don't own any more.

Also: I definitely can't do a financed car due to my employment status! Husband can't either.

@willstarttomorrow Good to know that there are some trusty rusty cars out there! Think my Beamer would have been one of them had I not neglected it these last few months... Although maybe the turbo would have failed anyway. Who knows? I won't ever know now, will I?! Kicking myself...

PS you should be able to get a recovery truck to take it back to your house for £40 ish if it’s not that far. The garage should be able to organise it if you ask.

@19lottie82 very sensible advice, thank you.

@Mybabystolemysanity thank you, that is reassuring.

You can other tell the DVLA online here DVLA that you’ve sold it or write to them telling them you’ve sold the car. They should treat that as notice you’ve disposed of the car.

We’ve just had the same dilemma as DH’s beloved car failed its MOT after 16 years. He sold it to someone who was going to do it up.

The new MOT laws came out at the beginning of May and they are MUCH stricter, way to many to list on here , Id take it to a mot place and ask for a pretest so you can figure out what / if there are any more issues , one of the new things is the depth of tread on the tyre so if yours are near the limit you need to consider how much 5 new tyers will cost plus the repair to the turbo and anything else it needs .
Is it worth spending a bomb on a car that may fail its test or repairs not work .
I would get rid , selling on Face book / gum tree / ebay etc means you will have to field lots of random calls and stupid questions .
Auto trader tends to weed out the real numptys but you will still have lots of calls to answer, Auctions tend to give you a lower price but at least you do not have to put up with the calls / tyre kickers.

If you do sell it via FB etc make sure there is at least one more adult at home with you so you do not get intimidated to reduce the price.
Have all the paper work to hand and take it out to them , dont let them in the house ( a scam used to check out if you are worth burgling )
Dont let them take it for a test drive unless both you and your friend /DH are in the car to and then only on roads you know well.

Thanks everyone. I spoke to a specialist yesterday who seemed more optimistic about its chances of surviving a turbo replacement, but who also quite realistically said that nothing could be guaranteed, and it might die again anyway. He also pointed out (as many of you have) that as it's an older car something else might go in the next few months and cost us even more money. We've decided we are definitely not going to throw money at it. We're cutting our losses and selling it. We've found a national company who have offered £500 for it and they will collect.

In a not-so-hilarious twist, I actually only sent my VC5 off for an address change last Tuesday, and it's not back yet so I can't sell until I have it. The garage are only letting us park it on their forecourt until this coming Tuesday, and say we need to move it after that. The DVLA say that my VC5 was sent off yesterday, so I'm hoping like mad it arrives Monday so that I can arrange collection by this company for the next day. Otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do!!!!