What are you driving?

[Samson]

Damn!
You must understand a lot about auto mechanics then.
A car under 1000€ here would, if you can find something like that for sale, mean many trips to the mechanic!

I know very little about mechanics. My logic is to never spend more than the car cost to fix it, and my cars are mostly under £500, which means almost anything. So I just buy them cheap, drive them for as long as they work, and if something that matters goes wrong get another.

In anglo countries there is a much bigger second hand market than in Latin countries and you can find really cheap used cars in good shape. In Spain, France, Portugal, etc, most people buy new cars and use them for a lot of years until it breaks down.

I am sure this is true, and possibly the UK in particular. If you do not really care what car you drive you can get really cheap cars.

 

[Ordnael]

I know very little about mechanics. My logic is to never spend more than the car cost to fix it, and my cars are mostly under £500, which means almost anything. So I just buy them cheap, drive them for as long as they work, and if something that matters goes wrong get another.

I am sure this is true, and possibly the UK in particular. If you do not really care what car you drive you can get really cheap cars.

That's a very sound logic, but like @Thorgalaeg said we really can't get a functioning car for under 1000€ here...you might get parts of a car, but something like a full fledged family sedan that's not rotten, or leaking, or not missing parts. And if we see something driveable for that price we would get immediately suspicious of a rip off.

 

[Samson]

That's a very sound logic, but like @Thorgalaeg said we really can't get a functioning car for under 1000€ here...you might get parts of a car, but something like a full fledged family sedan that's not rotten, or leaking, or not missing parts. And if we see something driveable for that price we would get immediately suspicious of a rip off.

I have to admit I do not know how the economics works to make it possible for old cars to be so cheap, but it has been like this for decades.

 

[Farm Boy]

I would imagine transport of low value vehicles to a different market requiring shipping is a cumbersome expense?

 

[Ordnael]

Well finished cars have to travel quite a distance from Central and Eastern Europe to reach us here, transportation is getting more and more expensive these days (what isn't getting more expensive!?) and then our government slaps a VAT tax of 23% plus an illegal (Portugal has been paying a fine for ages over the illegality of that extra auto tax to Brussels, it pays of to keep charging that tax) one over that VAT price just for vehicles...and that's why, I guess, a Portuguese AutoEuropa manufactured VW T-ROC starts at over 29k€ at the dealership here

O Configurador Volkswagen

configurador.volkswagen.pt

while in France it starts at over 27k€

https://www.volkswagen.fr/fr/configurateur.html/__app/t-roc.app?---=%7B%22configuration-step-navigation-service%22%3A%22%2F%3FconfigStep%3D%257B%2522context%2522%253A%252230361-34150-T-Roc%2522%252C%2522selectedStep%2522%253A%2522trim%2522%257D%22%7D

...amazing

 

[really]

Ireland and Denmark have extra taxes too. I don't think we are being fined as they are long established.

The cheapest T-ROC on the price list here is 37k...

Pricelists | Pricing & Product Guides | VW Ireland

Access Volkswagen pricelists to find detailed pricing information on all our models. Compare prices and choose the Volkswagen that fits your budget.

www.volkswagen.ie

 

[Thorgalaeg]

+30,000€ for a crappy mini SUV with a mini 1.0 engine. Don't know what is happening with cars but it is crazy. They are not transport machines anymore but stealing machines.

For example, my girlfriend has a stupid Audi Q2 and one of the stupid frontal LED lamps failed, the pirates at the Audi official workshop asked her 1200€ to change it! almost her salary of a month! Fortunately she has a competent boyfriend who did some research in internet and found the failure is usually caused by a small LED switch inside the lamp which can be bought in Amazon for 40€ and replaced with a bit of patience and a long screwdriver.

In any of my pre-2010 cars, if a lamp fails all it gets is a 3€ halogen lightbulb and five minutes to change it.

 

[Ordnael]

the pirates at the Audi official workshop

a very accurate description!

In any of my pre-2010 cars, if a lamp fails all it gets is a 3€ halogen lightbulb and five minutes to change it.

Depends on the car...I got traumatized helping a friend change a lamp on his Renault Modus

Renault Modus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The pirates at the auto mechanic were asking many hundreds euros to change that lamp, so he decided to do it himself and so we learned why it was so expensive to change a frontal lamp on that car, we had to disassemble the bumper out of the car to get to the lamp.
Thanks to that trauma one of the very first things I researched before buying my brand new (at the time) Dacia Sandero was how hard/costly would it get to change a lamp... not expensive for my car

 

[Akka]

I bought my first new car in 2011 - I'm sure I posted about it here, but the thread seems to have disappeared since then - and it looked like this :

(the picture is actually from 2018, but I didn't have a smartphone in 2011, so...)
That's a Peugeot 207 for those who don't recognize it, a pretty well-known car here.

In 2022, I got a significant amount of extra money (we sold the family flats in the city that my father had invested into a few years before his death), and I was itching to get a more "road" car than this "city" one (I'm nearly fully working remotely at home, so I'm rarely using my car for short trips). As such, my gf inherited the one above, and I bought myself this new shiny toy :

Still keeping the same style (Peugeot 308, so same brand but different line). TECHNICALLY not new but close enough to not care (it was an expo vehicle one year old but with only 3700 Km), and it allowed me to get the full GT version for a lower price than the regular one (under 30K €, I'm definitely not going to buy an Audi SUV with a tiny engine at that price @Thorgalaeg ), so I'm not complaining. Pretty comfy I have to say.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

a very accurate description!

Depends on the car...I got traumatized helping a friend change a lamp on his Renault Modus

Renault Modus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The pirates at the auto mechanic were asking many hundreds euros to change that lamp, so he decided to do it himself and so we learned why it was so expensive to change a frontal lamp on that car, we had to disassemble the bumper out of the car to get to the lamp.
Thanks to that trauma one of the very first things I researched before buying my brand new (at the time) Dacia Sandero was how hard/costly would it get to change a lamp... not expensive for my car

Yes, but in you friend case it was about changing the whole lamp because it was broken due to some crash I suppose. In modern cars you have to change the whole lamp because a tiny led, or some little component burns out. It is ridiculous.

 

[Ordnael]

No, no...his car didn't crash, we really had to do all that dissembling just to change a burned out lamp. Probably the auto mechanic had specialized tools to make the work quicker but still...too expensive.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

No, no...his car didn't crash, we really had to do all that dissembling just to change a burned out lamp. Probably the auto mechanic had specialized tools to make the work quicker but still...too expensive.

That is pretty crazy. Some car designers should be hanged of a very tall tree.

 

[Ordnael]

That is pretty crazy. Some car designers should be hanged of a very tall tree.

Each day it's getting more obvious that companies make money by making repair as difficult as possible/near damn impossible for regular Joe.
I remember when engine blocks and fluid access started being blocked by bolted in plates on new cars (not the case of a Dacia) and people were already telling that it was on purpose so regular Joe and next door mechanic hobbyist/small businesses couldn't fix stuff easily. Those plates didn't make it impossible but they sure added more hassle to accessing parts, and then they had the necessity of brand specified tools with proprietary screw heads and bits. I can't be convinced these proprietary "stuff" were added tor the sake of car safety.

 

[Samson]

There is a not very interesting news item about some mechanics who clocked a load of cars, 98 proven and many more suspected. They then sold them on.

I do not understand how that happens. Surely all cars are advertised online, and the first thing you do is check the MOT history with the government. An example of what you get is here from this random car, and it is clear if a car is clocked. Now not everyone will do this, but I would be surprised if less than half of car buyers do this before splashing out thousands. How does anyone get away with clocking cars these days?

Spoiler The critical data from that page :

Date tested
1 December 2023
FAIL
Mileage
137,007 miles

16 November 2022
PASS
Mileage
132,594 miles

Date tested
8 November 2022
FAIL
Mileage
132,556 miles

Date tested
5 May 2021
PASS
Mileage
123,501 miles

Date tested
18 May 2016
PASS
Mileage
105,666 miles

Date tested
16 May 2016
FAIL
Mileage
105,665 miles

Date tested
17 April 2014
PASS
Mileage
99,784 miles

16 April 2014
FAIL
Mileage
99,745 miles

Date tested
26 February 2013
FAIL
Mileage
96,150 miles

Date tested
26 February 2013
PASS
Mileage
96,150 miles

Date tested
8 February 2012
PASS
Mileage
90,996 miles

Date tested
22 February 2011
PASS
Mileage
82,277 miles

Date tested
15 January 2010
PASS
Mileage
70,223 miles
Test location

Date tested
16 December 2008
PASS
Mileage

Date tested
24 January 2008
PASS
Mileage
54,345 miles

Date tested
1 February 2007
PASS
Mileage
47,240 miles

Date tested
31 January 2006
PASS
Mileage
32,092 miles

 

[Ordnael]

Older cars are probably easier to this. In my country you have to pay a small fee to get official state info on a car status, so I believe a lot of fraudsters still get away with vanishing km from the odometer these days. Surely the new computers on wheels will end this fraud...and bring about new inventive types of frauds ... from what I gather battery health stuff is scary and you must be thoroughly knowledgeable in the subject to not get ripped off!

 

[Perfection]

Klein Tools 32557

 

[Samson]

Surely the new computers on wheels will end this fraud

Yeah, 'cos computers are famously hard for fraudsters to run stuff on...

 

[Farm Boy]

Online banking is keeping me safe from the neighborhood mailman stealing my statements.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I bought a used Dodge Charger this year when my Dart went kaput at about 150k miles. The Charger is cool, basically a larger, muscled up version of the Dart

Also Dodge is discontinuing the Charger so if you're in the market you may be able to get a good price for them.