Your best man-mathing

[Frimley111R]

What's the best man maths you've done to get from one car all the way up to a higher spec or more expensive model (that you actually bought)?

[mmm-five]

I went from needing a new set of tyres on a leggy e46 330D, to buying a 3 year old F31 320D.

Man maths said:

• car needs 4 new tyres
• car will need rear arches sorting out soon
• rest of the bodywork could do with some TLC
• gearbox is past its best
• maybe I should use that cash towards a cheap e91
• maybe I should use that cash and a bit more towards a cheap F31
• ooh, that low-milege F31 looks good value

[supacool1]

mmm-five said:

I went from needing a new set of tyres on a leggy e46 330D, to buying a 3 year old F31 320D.

Man maths said:

• car needs 4 new tyres
• car will need rear arches sorting out soon
• rest of the bodywork could do with some TLC
• gearbox is past its best
• maybe I should use that cash towards a cheap e91
• maybe I should use that cash and a bit more towards a cheap F31
• ooh, that low-milege F31 looks good value

That escalated Quickly! You win.

[axel1990chp]

Its not for a car, but my greatest man mathing was for a bike.

I cant afford that yet, I should save, the missus has savings
Can I borrow X amount of money?
- When will you pay me back?
Just don't pay towards the bills until its paid off?
- Sure

Used it to my advantage twice now, I cant see the flaw in it.

[AstonZagato]

Hmm. I'm pretty bad/good at this.
Many years ago, I needed a station car for my daily commute:

• A cheap economical hatchback should do
• I need it to be reliable, so probably a solid German brand
• I'll need to use it through the winter so I'd best get 4WD
• I need to put the dogs in the back so the Audi A3 quattro is too small
• Hmm. The Audi A4 Avant isn't really big enough either
• Oh, the Audi A6 is about to be replaced - not the best time to buy one
• And I do sometimes go off road
• Those Range Rovers are awfully nice and tick all the boxes
• But I do like all the toys - so I should get an Autobiography
• And a bit of performance, so the V8 petrol

So, yes, I ended up buying a top-of-the-line V8 Range Rover as an economical station hatchback.

[vikingaero]

In my single digit age and in my teens I did 1001 crappy jobs to save for my first car, from peeling spuds outside in subzero temperatures to showing my winky to Kim Wooding for 10p. I suspect that if I hadn't bought every single car mag going (Autocar, Motor, AutoExpress, Carweek, Car, Performance Car, What Car etc etc) I would have had more money.

Once I passed my test I looked for a new car. I settled on a Vauxhall Nova SR which would consumed most of my £7k savings (insurance wasn't an issue then). I went to the showroom and brought home some brochures to show my Dad. My Dad erupted with fury: "I'm not having a Vauxhall on my drive!"

At the weekend, he said, "We're going to get you a new car" and we drove down the VW dealer, with me thinking I'd have a Polo or a low rent Golf. Because my Dad was a complete Hyacinth, I drove away (a week later) in a brand new Golf GTi.

[fflump]

-current family PHEV has lots of reliability issues and poor electric only range
-need a replacement family car to go electric only or have better electric only range
-don’t do that many miles so do I really need complexity of an EV of PHEV?
-those EVs and hybrids do depreciate rather a lot.
-I could SAVE money by being on a flatter part of the depreciation curve than an EV
-I could SAVE money by ditching additional complexities of a hybrid.
-That Flying Spur looks like a lot of car for the cash…..

[Scootersp]

my current man maths is a different type...........

I have a friend pcp'ing a 2016 Sports car and he's been paying £460 a month for now nearly the full 48 and has a balloon he's going to pay as it's worth more etc.

I've rounded this up to £500 and so £6,000 a year he's spending, I'm using this to 'man math justify' another £6K car for the fleet!

Balloon is not far off another x2 £6K so that's x6 6K cars I could have for the same outlay, maybe x7 if we compared the residual value of the 6/7 vs the Audi.

Using it to justify x3 £6K cars isn't excessive it's actually sensible!

Edited by Scootersp on Tuesday 1st October 13:12

[Zippee]

I had a 2005 BMW 330i estate. Coil pack started to go, cue lots of intermittent banging frm the engine whilst I was sat in traffic heading to Porcelanosa in Peterborough to look at some tiles.
On way home we drove p[ast the Jeep main dealer. Popped in as getting annoyed with the 3 series. Next minute I'd agreed a deal on a 6 month old Grand Cherokee Overland.

Expensive tiles.

[Rotary Potato]

My old BMW e34 540i started getting a bit unreliable. Finally sprung a leak from somewhere under the inlet manifold.

I could have investigated ... maybe even splashed out for someone to fix it.

Nope ... I bought a high mileage, 10 year old, BMW e39 M5 for £6,400 (this was in 2010).

That car was awesome. Rock solid reliability too. I did 40k miles in it at 22MPG. Probably would have been cheaper to fix the e34 though ...

[Mr.Jimbo]

I bought a car in Germany to drive back to the UK rather than spend 2 weeks quarantining in a hotel on arrival on the (paid for) flight home at the height of COVID if that counts?

The fact that the car was an Imported Impreza STI with a really short gearbox and small fuel tank didn't help although I managed to get work to agree to pay for the fuel eventually.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

One of the wheels on my car is quite badly kerbed and two others have corrosion. I bought another set of wheels from eBay a year or so ago and used two of them on my car so I am thinking.

1)The car is going to need tyres soon anyway
2)Why not get the spare set refurbished
3)And get a set of brand new tyres fitted whilst you are at it, makes sense

So a kerbed wheel that annoys me is going to cost me £700 or £800 pounds.

[scot_aln]

Back in 1999 I started looking at new small hot hatches - Saxo VTS & 106 GTI. I then realised it wasn't that much more expensive for an MX5. Of course that was the base 1.6 which progressed to the 1.8is (which was around £18k). By the time I was there it was only another £4k for an Elise. That was the base mustard one. So by the time I'd made it metallic and paid for various extras like a hole for a radio I'd finished about £27k.

[davek_964]

I'd always been into motorcycles - but when I found myself single it was getting inconvenient going shopping on a bike.

I decided that I needed a cheap car so started looking at Ford Fiesta with a budget of about £1k.
But had no car NCD, and had a motorcycle theft claim about a year before. I got multiple insurance quotes and they were all about £1k! I was just over 30 at the time.

I decided : sod it, if you're going to charge me excessive money for insurance, I'm going to buy an excessive car. So the first car I bought and insured in my own name was a used 911. Cost me £17,500 and ironically only £500 more to insure than the Fiesta quotes!

[LosingGrip]

I got my motorbike so I didn't have to pay for parking at work...for a role I hadn't even applied foe yet.

Parking is £15 a day when I'm on earlies. I can park for free on lates and weekends..

This month from yesterday to the end I would need to pay seven times. Or I could walk 20 minutes each way.

I don't ever think I'll save money...

[Whistle]

Spent some time looking at cheap Porsche caymans.

Ended up setting my mind on a 4.0 GTS around £60k worth.
Just a matter of finding the right one though.

[Robertb]

A friends Mum went to a Land Rover dealer with a warning light on her Freelander to have it fixed, left later that afternoon with a brand new Range Rover Sport SDV8!

[king arthur]

A petrol V8 does about half the mpg of a sensible diesel in the same car.

But, petrol is cheaper than diesel and it probably won't break down as often so it won't cost me all that much more.

[ZX10R NIN]

So I had the bike garage finished now there's space for me to park the daily BUT the garage floor is all laid & min. My daily is exactly that & therefore out in all weathers & will bring muck inside,

So what to do?

I know I'll over pay for a rare last of line CLK55 AMG so I can have the garage full of high day & holiday cars

Now what do I do about the bike garage & acres of space in there?

[Glosphil]

Robertb said:

A friends Mum went to a Land Rover dealer with a warning light on her Freelander to have it fixed, left later that afternoon with a brand new Range Rover Sport SDV8!

My cousin did the opposite. Went to a Nissan dealer to buy a 370Z, but when told the fuel consumption changed her mind & bought a Juke!