To think £15K is excessive to spend on a car?

[SunflowerOwl]

DH and I seem to disagree massively over what a 'reasonable' budget is for our new car.

Our requirements are that it will last us a good 10-15 years so not too old (I cant be doing with having to car shop again in a few years time!), is safe and has a big boot as we have a large pram and a dog.

Every car he sends me that he likes seems to be in the region of £15K whereas I was thinking we would need to spend half of that! He tells me I'm out of touch and that's just what decent cars cost these days.

Is this true? Is this really what the average family spend on a family car?!

I've just spent 20k on a 4 year old car that is exactly what I wanted, I think you are out of touch with current prices.

The cheapest Golf estate is £21k new! So £15k for a (newish) second hand one will probably be the least you need

I've had a Range Rover the last few years, and the reliability has been excellent, despite the reputation. I bought it new, in cash, and expect to keep it until they produce a fully electric model with a 300 plus mile range, which doesn't cost a bomb. I would consider another make of car, perhaps a Mercedes, but I love the size and quality of the RR.

Shade17

"Your DH is correct on this one. I’d tend to avoid VW/Seat/Audi/Skoda as reliability is mediocre according to most surveys."

Really?

www.autoexpress.co.uk/skoda/octavia/reliability

www.whatcar.com/skoda/octavia/hatchback/used-review/n851/advice

I have just bought an octavia estate for £12k, its 4 years old but really good condition and reasonable mileage. I would recommend looking at them if you want a good sized boot. I think for £7.5k though you would be looking at something that is already 7 or 8 years old so unlikely to last another 10-15 years.

A few years ago everyone bought people carriers, but now there are few on the market - replaced with more 'stylish' SUVs.

I suspect there are good deals on older (but not ancient) Zafiras, Picassos, S Maxes etc.

We bought a Skoda Fabia Estate earlier this year. Not as big as the Octavia, but still a pretty sizeable boot (530 liter, vs 590 for the Octavia). Bit cheaper as well. Based on your criteria though, even the Fabia Estate will likely cost £11-13k.

It depends on your needs. I bought a 3 year old Ford Focus 4 years ago for £9000, and when I looked at trading it in recently found that I could sell it privately for £6k or part ex it for £4.5-£5k. Besides a replacement timing belt (due to age, recommended to be done after 6 years) and one set of tyres it's served me well and if I didn't need a 7 seater now I wouldn't expect to change it for a while. Still less than 40k miles on the clock and I'm sure I'd get another 3-5 years out of it at least

15k cars are nice, and that's sadly the price range I'm now looking at due to having more children than I bargained for, but not a necessity

I bought a nearly new (4yrs old 20k on the clock) Seat Alhambra for 9k 22yrs ago. Fabulous car and a great workhorse for children, prams, removals etc. It had no major work needed in the 21yrs I drove it. Seriously good value cars.

Really

Yes, but by brand as a whole not specific models. Skoda normally perform better than VW, I think they came 5th in the What Car used reliability table vs 20th for VW. Today’s Which reliability survey has Skoda at joint 10th alongside VW and a few others at what they consider to be a mediocre level. Top 5 are the usual suspects. They’re not terrible by any stretch of the imagination but if you want to buy a car and keep it for 15 years then there are more reliable brands out there.

We bought a 4 year old VW Touran for £15245 last year, that seemed to be around what most were going for.

Laughing at the comment that you cant expect a car to last 10 to 15 years.

Op, do your homework on the make of car you like. Make a note of everything that is problematic in that particular car.

Check disc wear and pads, test the bite in the clutch. Listen for knocks on turning and test drive on uneven roads as well as level good roads. When checking the engine look for signs even tiny ones of oil leaks or moisture in and around engine. Make sure you know the change time of a timing belt on that model and avoid diesel engines with a timing chain. Petrol are OK with chains. I could go on and on, just research as much as possible.

If you want to keep it 10 years I’d definitely pay more for reliability but also check out maintenance costs (it will need work and parts replaced).
You’re unlikely to get much of a bargain anywhere as cars are in short supply currently due to the long factory shut downs and now a shortage of parts (particularly electronics).

Yeah. 8k would be fine for a city car but an estate's gonna cost you more. And a city car isn't ideal for a family with children who need to be in car seats.

Japanese brands and Ford tend to be the most reliable and relatively cheap to repair. BMW/Audi/Merc you'll be paying a premium for cars and French cars mostly have mediocre reliability.

A premium for parts, I meant. Although, for the cars themselves too.

@Dollywilde

I’m afraid I agree with your DH and our last car cost £1650 we didn’t need a family car as we were young and didn’t have DC, so we got a 54 plate Fiesta that a dealership needed to shift as a part Ex.

We’re now looking at a new car (actually the front runner is a nearly new Skoda Scala, so thanks for the recommendation @AnotherEmma!) and I think we’ll be looking at about 16 - 18k. But we’re planning on having it last us for ages, so it’s worth it. The Fiesta was a good bargain, but it’s probably time for it to go to the big car park in the sky....

👍 If you do get a Scala I'd be interested to know how you get on with it!

8 years ago we paid £6k for a 2yo zafira, which is still going strong. Had almost no problems with it at all.

Unfortunately cars are just mega expensive.

Had my previous car for 12 years and paid about £10k for it brand new. Was hoping my new car would cost similar or up to £15k to last the same sort of duration. Turns out even the same car today (latest models) are about 22k. Ended up spending about 25K on a much nicer/bigger car.

It is outrageous money but the options were stick to the same sort of standard and pay 22k or much better for an additional 3k.

I haven't spent more than 1500 on a car in the last 15 years. Ive had 4 of them and bar one, all lasted at least 4 years. Why would you spend 15 grand on a chunk of metal that could breakdown at any time, at least spending a much lower amount lowers the risk. My last car cost me 600 quid and has lasted 18 months so far

4 and a half years ago we spent £7k on an 8 year old S-Max automatic with 80k miles on the clock. It's now worth about £1k and costs us approx £2k per year in repairs - it fails every MOT. So I expect as everyone else has said £15k is about right.

Realistically if you want a car to run for 15 years and be economically viable to maintain for that long then you need to buy new (or nearly new), and yeah a basic new car will be about 15k.

For 7.5k you would probably get a decent car about 5-6 years old, which will be fine, but realistically will only be economically viable to maintain for 5-10 years rather than the 10-15 you want.

My advice would be to buy something about a year pr two old, so it's lost it's 'new car' premium but should still have many years of life left in it.

Why do you want a cat to last that long. You won't need a pram to go in the boot after about 2 years.

[quote andyoldlabour]Shade17

"Your DH is correct on this one. I’d tend to avoid VW/Seat/Audi/Skoda as reliability is mediocre according to most surveys."

Really?

www.autoexpress.co.uk/skoda/octavia/reliability

www.whatcar.com/skoda/octavia/hatchback/used-review/n851/advice[/quote]
The poster is quite right. VAG diesel cars are notorious for injector failures, EGR failures, turbo actuator problems. They also have the habit of tucking many vulnerable parts at the back of the engine bay making changing them much more expensive than it could be.
Luckily for them most other "premium" manufacturers reliability are just as bad.

We’ve had one car for the last five years - cost us £1800 and probably about £700 over that time in things that needed doing for MOT

We are only going to replace it because we need a bigger car.

God bless Volkswagen! My mum had a VW Polo that lasted 13 years when I was a kid 😬

OP if you want VW Passat but want to save some ££ then go Skoda Superb-it’ll be cheaper and it is about the roomiest estate out there (more boot capacity than the Passat)