Cars youve owned... the cheapest!

Mattp

Member
Messages
501
A comment in another thread made me smile... Bangernomics... which made me wonder... I'm rolling with the millionaires club here, we all have some association with Maserati, but there is a scary large number of people that seem to have a choice of hand made, exotic weekend toys,

Lets dial it back to simpler days... where whole cars cost less than an oil change! what has been your most cost effective automobile...

Mine is easy! a car I really enjoyed, but which was totally boring - an 80's Volvo 340

I Live in NE Essex, back in the 90's Colchester Car Auctions (as it was known then) had their Thursday night shed night! this was a regular pilgrimage for us cash strapped dreamers - there were some real treats were to be had there! (735i for a couple of hundred quid! but that isn't the car for today)
Towards the end of the night a little white G reg Volvo 340 came rolling in, it had a towbar, MOT and some tax! the bidding started at the heady highs of £50 or so... bidding was far from manic and I ended up buying the car for about £25! after Auction fees I think it workout at between £35-50.

In the cold light of day, the car was amazingly clean, straight and sound, it had sunroof, electric windows and all 4 hubcaps our idea was to utilise the towbar to throw boats in the sea, which it did, It ended up being my daily after my company car went away, the thing just went on and on till one fateful day... someone pulled out of a junction into the side of it - sad times... the insurance man wrote it off for a dent in the door and rear wing. I jumped at the first offer (bad form I know! but it was something ridiculous like £500!) I was also left with the disposal of the thing - the dent was superficial, so it soldiered on for another year or two before, one day, driving along, the engine just stopped working (It had never been serviced in my owernership!) so it went to car heaven, but not before the scrapyard gave me £50! the perfect car circle... I think all in it was several years of driving that actually cost me nothing!


What are your stories?!
 

CatmanV2

Member
Messages
48,547
Citroen Diesel BX Automatic. Great. Stamp the throttle and utterly nothing happened. I think we paid a couple of hundred quid and ran it totally into the ground (we actually had two)

C
 

mjheathcote

Centenary Club
Messages
9,033
Needed deposit for our first house 20 years ago, so the Alfa 33 P4 had to go (but not my Stag!).
Went over to Leeds motor auctions with a mate, just for a look, and bought an immaculate '89 FIAT Panda at 10pm that no one bid on and was a part-ex from a main dealer, for £400, and drove it home that same night!
Thrashed it for 2 years, used it as a mobile skip removing the rear seats while doing up the house.
Sold it for the same £400 after the two years to a colleague at work, that did the same!!
 

safrane

Member
Messages
16,748
Datsun Sunny for £350. Had just bought my first house for £14k and sold my earlier MG Metro for the deposit.
Datsun took me to work and back until I got a newer car some two years later...sold the Datsun to an Asian taxi driver for £340.

That was back in 1989.
 

Zep

Moderator
Messages
9,110
Mk1 Golf CL in brown. Rescued from a scrap yard by a friend, sold it to me for £100. Ran it for 8 months and then the clutch started slipping. Developed a misfire and so lack of power stopped the clutch slipping. After 2 years it was dead so I filled it with rubbish from my mums garage and called the scrap man.

My next car was a Mk1 Scirocco GTI which I got for £350 because the oil pressure light was on. Fitted a new sender but needed a thermo switch for the cooling fan. Went to the scrap year and took it off my old golf, still full of the **** from the garage :)

The golf was cheaper than the skip it became and the Scirocco was hit by a bus and a lorry in the two years I owned it (paid out both times) and then I sold it for £100 for scrap. I actually made a profit on that one.
 

Geo

Member
Messages
616
Anglia 100E bought for £35 complete with a years MOT back in 1969. I sold it for £45 a year later!
 

conaero

Forum Owner
Messages
34,593
Got given a free Toyota Corolla in the early 90’s as it was going to be scrapped. Had 150k on it and rust was taking hold. Bumpers had rusted completely and were falling off.

Drove it from Winchester to Crystal Palace every week day for over a year and put over 30k miles on it and never missed a beat.

Scrapped it and got £75.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
Messages
8,795
My first car was an H Series Vauxhall Viva estate. My uncle (a car dealer) gave it to my father, and my father sold it to me for £100. It ran pretty well for a couple of years, but the engine seized one night when I was doing 95 (downhill) on the M11.

Viva.jpg
 

rockits

Member
Messages
9,167
Never been involved in this area at all funnily enough. My first car was a Mk1 Astra 1300s 1984/B from the an old fella who had it from new for 2400.

Never bought a car for less than that cost since that I can remember until I bought the GTi-6 approx 2 years back for 1250. This is the cheapest car I've ever bought.
 

ChrisH

Junior Member
Messages
89
I once had a Mini that had an MG Metro engine in it... badly installed because they messed up the gearbox (I think you needed to keep a mini box and not the MG one as the final drive was very different due to wheel size) anyway that meant a top speed of about 50mph but wheel spin in every gear... kinda fun. It also had big seats from an Astra or something which were pretty comfortable, but didn't tilt so access to the rear seats was interesting. Milled CNC dash... and 'gorgeous' cream paint work (read terrible cream paintwork). It was a stand in whilst I rebuilt an a fast road engine for a Triumph Spitfire... paid £250 for the mini with about 8 months tax and MOT. Drove it for 8 months spending nothing on it. Almost at the end one of the rotoflex suspension arms cracked so it was effectively not driveable. None the less... someone paid £250 for it and thus my 8 months of driving were completely free. Save for the fuel of-course.
 

hoyin

Member
Messages
1,842
Still got ours. Ford Focus Y reg. bought for £800 5 years ago for my wife when she passed her driving test. Got written off 1.5 years ago. Got given after much haggling £1,400 for it. Bought it back so now I own a car which someone has paid me to keep.

Then someone bust the wing mirror and paid me £100. Managed to fix it for £0.

Just waiting for someone else to crash into it again so I can claim again and make even more money off it.

Money making machine!

I want rid of it. As it is a blight on my drive, but wife loves it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Felonious Crud

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
21,013
£200 for a 1978 Ford Capri 1600 off a mate's brother. Most reliable car I ever had, but the sills had rusted to **** so I filled them with Isopon P38 and P40 to get it through the MOT, but it was so bendy the doors would fly open if you went round a corner too fast (or at all, sometimes).

I can't actually remember what happened to that car. It's possible I left it round someone's house after a heroic night out.
 

Jnismith

Member
Messages
284
£90 for a 1959 or 1960 mini. Drove it into all sorts of things including a lamppost. By the end, both headlamps were held on with masking tape. Sold it for £35 to a guy at school who's Mum was not impressed. Probably would be worth about £10,000 now.
 

D Walker

Member
Messages
9,827
Free, Ford Cortina 2.0 GL, used to do 100 miles to £10 of fuel, used to have half. Pool cue to dip in tank as fuel gauge was knackered, ran it for 2 years then some **** drove into parked In road, got 120 as a do upper. The bloke who hit it, left the scene with me running down the road after him, got reg, no licence, no insurance etc etc, he got ordered to pay court costs etc, I got sweet FA and had to go and buy another car, sweet Ho the system works for law abiding citizens.
 

RSM Masser

Member
Messages
2,437
Paid £30 for a 1976 Mk2 Escort Van 1300, it was from my dads electrical firm, it had no carpets or headlining, I was 17 so it must have been 1983, it had a roof bars and a mattress in the back. Slept in it a few times.
The engine siezed solid one day so I stripped it down to see how it worked.
 

2b1ask1

Special case
Messages
20,220
Well I’ve had too many bangers to recount in one reply but probably the stand out for me is the only Ford I’ve ever bought: My MkIII Cortina in bright orange, a 1600cc auto. Bought it for £40 with a bent half shaft on the rear axle, found a replacement in the scrap yard out of an estate which lowered the gearing so it was flat out at 70 but got there in no time at all, sold it for £140 to get the deposit for our first flat! Silly me didn’t realise you could retain number plates back then as it was worth more than the car VMN8M. Used to sit there rusting away, used as a mobile refuse truck, used to leave it unlocked as nobody would nick it, could unlock it and start it with a lollipop stick anyway. Came out one day to find someone had locked it for me!
 

zagatoes30

Member
Messages
20,759
Cheapest cars both 0, my first Morris Minor - MOT failure given to us by a neighbour when I was 16. Spent 12 mths working on it with my dad, welding it back up and hand painting it. Ran it for 6 months then gave it to my mother in exchange for her Mk1 Escort, Man sold the Moggy 12 mths later and gave me half of the proceeds a massive £75.

Best buy though was a Range Rover 4.6 HSE bought from a friend for £650 including a spare set of wheels and tyres., ran it for 12 months without spending a penny on it then the engine blew. Stuck it on eBay with the standard wheels and got £950, the guy who came to buy it noticed I had the upgrade wheels in the garage and gave me an extra £250 for them as well. So almost doubled my money :)
 

rs48635

Member
Messages
3,181
first car was bought by force for £100, from work mate Gaz Lowes. That red Fiat panda ran on only three cylinders, was rusty as ****, coolant ran a total loss system so carried plenty water. Always got flashed while driving as left indicator was always on due to drooping indicator stalk. Back seat passengers collapsed into the boot over every bump (deck chair style seating). First drive in the car was to collect my newborn daughter from hospital. This began her own dynasty in the Italian car mob.
 

Wack61

Member
Messages
8,764
I'm still running bangernomics , I've decided I don't like depreciation on everyday cars and the thought of £300 a month to rent a Kia fills me with dread so I bought a 2003 TD6 Range Rover with a blown up engine for £1000 , it's fixed now and so far hasn't cost me any money but the main problem is the amount of upgrades available

I like it that much I was considering putting the money from the B class towards a newer one but when I look at the numbers they don't add up , 8-10k gets me a 2008-10 with similar mileage and the one I have has most of the big jobs already done

I have dodged a few bullets over the years though, bought a 56 plate focus 1.6 cheap , had it for 6 months , no problems , my mechanic found a buyer for it , saw it in there 18 months later , it'd had dpf, clutch and flywheel,power steering motor then the engine developed a knock so he PXd it