M3 to Quattroporte financial suicide?

[davidjames84]

Hi
I know normal rule of thumb is if you have to ask you can’t afford it but its a itch I have so longed to scratch.

I currently have a fleet of cars that only I use.
I have a
E36 m3 evolution
Clio 172 cup
Lexus gs430
Now I do about 3k a year and getting old, think a one car does it all would be best.

I pay around 1k on insurance for the 3 cars
£900 tax for the three, 500-1.5k servicing for all three.
Zero depreciation in fact makes me money.
So fuel not included 3k plus fuel to run a QP?
Price wise il have around 17-20k to buy one with
Am I miles of having deep enough pockets?

[Nano2nd]

without knowing your financial situation its difficult to say, worst case is it'll depreciate £20k (but unlikely), i did the best part of £15k on a brand new M4, okay it sucks but not exactly financial suicide.. but all depends on your situation... i personally doubt the running costs would be much more than they 3 cars you already have, probably less in reality.

[Yipper]

Think Nottingham Maserati have been doing good lease deals on a brandnew QP. That fixes the cost and gives a warranty back-up if anything goes badly wrong.

[jakesmith]

The problem with these cars are that even using an indi and pattern parts, the maintenance is really costly.

Just to give you some idea of this, I bought a good one, got it inspected with little fault found.

This last 12 months I have had on a similar pedigree car: (2007 Granturismo)

• Service + brake fluid change = £600
• a coolant pipe burst = £800 as involved taking some parts off the engine such as inlet manifold etc off to access the £25 part
• Brakes disks and pads all round - used EBC yellow stuff & pattern parts. Pads £300, discs £500 parts only. That's getting on for double what I paid for my 997 and the pads have way less friction material to start, for a car that weighs a lot more. New handbrake shoes, sorted tracking out, greased ARBs to stop squeeking & repaired bumper that I damaged on the forecourt opps

This last list cost £2500 all in. Can't see it costing more than half that on my old 997
So £3900 in a year spent fixing 1 fault and addressing some basic service items, all at an indi

Also...

• Some early cars (Granturismos and QPs) can have an engine issue due to a part that wasn't well designed from the start. Whilst it was fixed on later cars, if your early GT / QP has it, the bill can be in the £3k-£4k range as a one off fix when the problem arises, variators
• The bushes / ball joints are not strong enough and wear out, requiring a rebush for about £2.3k or maybe £500 more to replace the entire wishbones which then gives you a new ball joint too

If you were unlucky an older car could in theory need nearly £10k on it to refresh / renew / address some or all of these things ... and you don't want to be driving with the suspension knocking etc. Even if you can change parts yourself, the wishbone kits are still £1600 including VAT. It's a bit crazy TBH

Although you can in theory use one as a daily, they do stop feeling special, are too big to park anywhere, can't get up the ramp to the upper car park level at my local Waitrose which means I can't go there in busy times, they can't be hussled down lanes and a pain on narrow urban streets, and the 18mpg running costs per mile and price of components are really high, making me buy a Smart car for some of my business milage or assorted trips. Never had need for 2 cars before, when I drove Boxsters / 911

I can see your milage is low, and they are beautiful looking & sounding cars no doubt but you'd need to be happy forking out £2k-£3k a year to keep on top of maintenance and even then it's not a brilliant daily driver

Edited by jakesmith on Monday 4th December 04:30

Edited by jakesmith on Monday 4th December 04:35

[MDL111]

Yipper said:

Think Nottingham Maserati have been doing good lease deals on a brandnew QP. That fixes the cost and gives a warranty back-up if anything goes badly wrong.

mmh but the new one is imo much much less attractive than the older model (engine, fact they do Diesel engines now, design etc)

[Murph7355]

davidjames84 said:

Hi
I know normal rule of thumb is if you have to ask you can’t afford it but its a itch I have so longed to scratch.

I currently have a fleet of cars that only I use.
I have a
E36 m3 evolution
Clio 172 cup
Lexus gs430
Now I do about 3k a year and getting old, think a one car does it all would be best.

I pay around 1k on insurance for the 3 cars
£900 tax for the three, 500-1.5k servicing for all three.
Zero depreciation in fact makes me money.
So fuel not included 3k plus fuel to run a QP?
Price wise il have around 17-20k to buy one with
Am I miles of having deep enough pockets?

If you get a buzz from all 3 of those I don't see a QP replacing them all successfully.

[jakesmith]

Murph7355 said:

davidjames84 said:

Hi
I know normal rule of thumb is if you have to ask you can’t afford it but its a itch I have so longed to scratch.

I currently have a fleet of cars that only I use.
I have a
E36 m3 evolution
Clio 172 cup
Lexus gs430
Now I do about 3k a year and getting old, think a one car does it all would be best.

I pay around 1k on insurance for the 3 cars
£900 tax for the three, 500-1.5k servicing for all three.
Zero depreciation in fact makes me money.
So fuel not included 3k plus fuel to run a QP?
Price wise il have around 17-20k to buy one with
Am I miles of having deep enough pockets?

If you get a buzz from all 3 of those I don't see a QP replacing them all successfully.

Tru dat
My Smart Brabus is more fun to chuck about than the Masser