About trying to buy a new car?

[EssentialHummus]

Is it just me or has buying a car gotten a million times harder over the past decade?

We need a new car because we're a few months off being a family of five, all being well, and there's no way to fit a 3yo and newborn twins and their car seats and all the stuff in our perfectly lovely sedan, that we'd otherwise have kept until it croaked.

So far I've learnt:

• You can buy a car in cash, on credit, or with two different kinds of lease schemes, and (counterintuitively) buying upfront won't get you the better deal.
• You may be buying a Citroen which is actually the same model as a Peugeot and a Vauxhall, or a Nissan with a Renault engine, made in the same factory in much the way that Aldi muesli rolls off the same production line as branded muesli but gets packaged and priced differently.
• Engine size is utterly irrelevant, it's all about horsepower. There are cars branded (say) 1.8 which actually have 1.6l engines, because horsepower.
• ULEZ and emissions standards. I'm happy that environmental protection is becoming a higher priority, but it seems to mean that lots of perfectly good cars, which have already been produced and generated a lot of carbon in production, are now no-go in London and will need to be scrapped.
• Absolutely no correlation between brand, price and service quality. Our current car is a Mercedes, and trying to book a test drive of a new one or clarify information is like trying to climb up Mount Doom. Meanwhile over at Vauxhall it's one phone call and you can borrow whatever car you like for a weekend-long test drive and they'll drop it to your door and collect it after.
• Every brand has its own models and acronyms, which in and of themselves don't mean anything - is "Feel" better than "Flair"? "S" or "SE"? Cue 20 minutes of digging.

And so on.

I'm not a yokel. I'm a moderately literate person wanting to spend not too much of our family's money on a car that suits us and will last a good while. I'm a bit of an inverse snob and loved having an £800 banger (sadly gone now) when friends were eyeing up each other's Range Rovers. If it’s not too much to ask I’d also like a car that doesn’t disable the radio every time I put my handbag on the passenger seat, apparently because it thinks my handbag is an untethered small child.

It's very much first world problems but, really, does it have to be so difficult?

YANBU OP I much prefer older cars because I can’t be arsed with any of what you describe! Also don’t have time to learn to use latest unnecessary gadgets, whistles and bells on new cars. I’ve a 15 year old road atlas, a set of jump leads and a squeegee that have fulfilled all my motoring needs to date.

In your shoes I’d probably look for a ~10 year old E class 7 seater, unless you’re in London in which case I’ve no useful suggestions!

Your post made me laugh OP
I’m looking at the moment, too, and I really resent the time I need to put in to compare the specifics of cars and deals.
Why do car dealerships and websites require your entire life story before allowing access to potential purchases?
In the olden days people seemed happy to buy second hand from friends and family, according to their needs at the time. Seems much simpler.

Currently driving a 15 year old Seat Alhambra. Cost me £350 last year 😂
I couldn’t care less about cars and your post reminded me why!

Just got a new car on lease, I don't think I would ever buy new, the car I have would have been £25,000 to buy and probably worth half that after driving ot out the garage, is it worth £25,000? No way. The bonus of having on lease means I get free tax, insurance and warranty (free repears) and in 3 years I just swap it for a new one. Im not sure why i haven't done this sooner after owning 2nd hand cars all my life and spending a fortune on repears.

I have swerved all of this by only driving cars that other people are keen to get rid of cheaply or for free. First car - bought from DSis's FIL for £400. Second was given to me for free from PIL who were desperate to upgrade. Third and current car handed down from DH, after we bought a new family car. He enjoyed driving the new one and I don't give a shit, so I swapped him for his old runaround. I firmly believe that old bangers have more character.

Absolutely OP, I sympathise, you have summarised it well. We are looking to buy a second car and have been thinking and looking fro 6 months. Too many options so we still haven't actually bought / leased one

I'm with you. DH and I have a very equal view on division of labour. But car buying ... I happily leave to him. I just can't be arsed. I just want something that isn't going to break down, that is safe and has a decent sized boot. Oh and doesn't cost ££££.

Maybe we should start a mumsnet dealership 😂

We are in London, so sadly it’s ULEZ compliant or bust. There’s an exemption for classic cars (pre-1980?) and I’m wondering if that’s an idea to pursue .

@Lovemusic33 we may end up going that way, because the finances stack up. But I suppose my idea of a car is “buy good brand a few years old, drive it forever” not “lease something for a couple of years, then get another new one”. I’m not an environmentalist in the slightest, I’m your average consumer I think, but it makes cars seem disposable somehow in a way that I feel uncomfortable with. Like, it’s fine that all these electronic features will stop working in a few years, because by then your car will have been scrapped anyway? It seems to be how car buying/ownership is set up now, but it feels wrong. There’s a disincentive to repair , think long term etc.

Oh OP. Classics exemption. Now you’re talking my language 😂
ebay.us/Erf1LM

Yeah, all a bit tedious. We just picked a make fairly at random to narrow it down first. We bought a Honda just because FIL knew someone at our nearest dealer.

Then we needed a 2nd car after moving so went to the nearest dealer which happened to be a Kia. Asked what they had available 2nd hand in their smallest model and they had two to choose from so got one of them. A very quick way to reduce the insane number of options!

@BeastOfBODMAS I think I'm going to buy this (1979) and just keep having children, it's the only sane response.

I drove one in Johannesburg for two years. It was absolutely delightful. At some point one of the wheels came off on the motorway and it just kept going.

Apologies - the long wheelbase model. We'll want a dog sooner or later.

You need the company me and my husband own...we source cars for our customers... They call us having an idea what they want. We help them narrow it down and then we find it for them. Deliver it to your door. Nice and easy. You don't have to do anything! 👌

@EssentialHummus it’s so beautiful! Please get a 70s G-Unit as your city car! I can quite believe that about the wheel falling off (same thing happed with one of my Mercs about a week after I gave it to DBro)

Unless of course you end up with multiple dogs and want to consider the
Unimog

Can I also put in a special mention for the Japanese Ambulance spec Toyota Hiace. I was once bullied up and down a mountain by one in New Zealand. It was indecently quick.

I found it a minefield too. Visited every single car salesroom there is, each one a completely different experience. I was often pushed to take out finance, but their finance offers were 6.9 - 13% and so I took out a personal loan for less than 2% instead.

Considered new cars, HP and PCP, but in the end we decided to buy a 4 year old car that was the top model at the time (Skoda Octavia Laurent and Klement). The previous owner must have upgraded after their contract ended, but as they had invested in the top end version we knew they'd have taken good care of it (well that was our theory!)

Cost us £6.5k and turned out to be an amazing investment! Negotiated a 12 month warranty on it which was amazing as it developed an engine fault that required a brand new engine after a few months, and this was covered!

We are about to have out third and although they will all be able to fit in this car, we are going to be upgrading to a slightly bigger car in the near future. Not looking forward to the whole process again!

You are in London, so would it really be that difficult to keep the car and carry less 'stuff'?

@newnortherner111 it’s down to convenience, isn’t it? In a typical week we use the car three-four times - taking DD to a class which is badly connected by public transport, for example, or driving to the shops and back when it’s pissing down. I’m not ready to live life with a 3yo and newborn twins and no car. Doable, certainly, but I think it’d make life more difficult. I remember when DD was tiny how frustr

That’s my other hesitation with buying a car new - it’s going to live a very charmed life sitting outside our building a lot of the time, doing maybe 5000 miles a year. So something old and simple would, bloody ulez aside, be ideal for us.

*frustrating it was - sorry - waiting for a bus to get to an activity on time, then the bus came and there were already three prams on so you’d be waiting for the next one. With a double buggy? Urgh.

I'd go something with sliding doors. I love my zafira but back seats are a pain to access.

@Hankunamatata we’re sort of leaning that way. If you draw a kind of Venn diagram of “cars that can fit three car seats in a row” and “sliding doors” you get, afaik, a choice of a Berlingo or a VW Touran. Which will at least save me some decision-making, I guess!

I’m also London and having to replace my beautiful (non ULEZ compliant) Mercedes SLK. I love my car, I really resent having to sell it and all the hassle and expense it entails. I keep putting it off because I’m dreading it.

I don't think there are many that fit 3 car seats across, especially if you want them all rear facing. There are often restrictions on the kinds of seats that can go in each position even in bigger cars. So that should make it easier to choose!
The emissions thing sounds like a pain. Luckily 2 litre diesels are still fine round here.
I would just decide what model you want and put it into auto trader, get an older car with decent service history that fits with the insurance bracket and emissions profile that you want. Auto trader tells you how the price compares as well so you don't feel ripped off

I had a Honda FRV when I had 3 car seats. They stopped making them ages ago but if you want a cheap, oldish, car then they are v. Practical. I have non idea about the ULEZ thing though.

I want to know
A - how many seats
B - fuel economy

You have to dig for hours to find this info. I’m looking for a smallish suv on autotrader and I’ve given up. Too much work. I’m just going to keep my enormous banger until dcs move out and get a Yaris.

I have a theory about cars, having researched the topic extensively: any make or model in any price bracket can be unreliable/shit/hassle. It’s all luck. So go with gut, spend as little as possible, and don’t be fussy. It works for us.

I once spent 4K on a nice Nissan xtrail with low miles, only for it to develop an Unfixable electrical fault which resulted in my having to scrap it when it was perfect except for one irreplaceable circuit board in the throttle. Now I spend no more than £800 per vehicle. They are never more of a pain than the xtrail.

You do need to be patient, opportunistic and decisive though.

@eeek88 and @Shadedog the ULEZ thing means that petrol cars registered before 2006 and diesel ones pre-2015 (I think) will be charged a daily fee to drive into the ULEZ zone. From this October the ULEZ zone is extending into the bit of south London I live in. So we can buy used in a way that fits the ULEZ requirements, but it's (imo) the era in which cars get more electronic features which are likely to fail even if the car is mechanically ok. There's also a little footnote about diesel particulate filters and how our limited mileage means petrol is more suitable for us, but really no one wants to hear about it over their breakfast.

So £800 bangers are out - you either spend quite a lot of money on something used that has a high likelihood of needing pricey repairs soon, or you buy new.

It is, as I said in the OP, first world problems. I'm just irritated that it's so effing difficult. There are old Mercs with 500,000km on the clock being used as taxis in Morocco, but I'm sitting here with a dozen tabs open about isofix car seats, slidey doors and whether a 1.2 Citroen has a better power to weight ratio than a VW that looks like a pint of milk on wheels.