Information 4 years+ Running costs

Alan_uk

Alan_uk

A2OC Donor
How much does your A2 cost to run?

Here's my actual costs from the last 4 full fiscal years + this year todate.

In all of them I have estimated depreciation at £1,000 pa. I paid £11K for the car and intend to keep it for 11 years (or more). I appreciate that depreciation is not linear. If I had the time I could research the used car price guides but it might be difficult to do that in retrospect.

In Summary:

Year_ _Mls_ _p/ml
05/06 9,772 19 free breakdown insurance
06/07 9,409 25 service
07/08 9,315 29 tyres x 4
08/09 8,032 36 service + cambelt change
09/10 1,886 35 April-July

Note: spreadsheet says Petrol but it's a Diesel (a hang-over from the previous car)

Fuel costs have risen steadily though reduced in this current year. Tyres, Servicing and cambelt costs are the biggest variables. So far there has been no repairs. The current mileage is just over 50,000.
 
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Alan_uk said:
How much does your A2 cost to run?

Here's my actual costs from the last 4 full fiscal years + this year todate.

In all of them I have estimated depreciation at £1,000 pa. I paid £11K for the car and intend to keep it for 11 years (or more). I appreciate that depreciation is not linear. If I had the time I could research the used car price guides but it might be difficult to do that in retrospect.

In Summary:

Year_ _Mls_ _p/ml
05/06 9,772 19 free breakdown insurance
06/07 9,409 25 service
07/08 9,315 29 tyres x 4
08/09 8,032 36 service + cambelt change
09/10 1,886 35 April-July

Note: spreadsheet says Petrol but it's a Diesel (a hang-over from the previous car)

Fuel costs have risen steadily though reduced in this current year. Tyres, Servicing and cambelt costs are the biggest variables. So far there has been no repairs. The current mileage is just over 50,000.
Click to expand...

Can be quite expensive if you take to a garage with all the little things that go wrong. I find this forum pretty helpful for learning how to do stuff yourself and saving a lot of money.

My car gets a major service every year but the only things I get done by a garage usually are the cam-belt, tyres and MOT. Just redeemed my free MOT from Audi the other day and it passed with no advisory notes :) They were even about to wash it inside and out (also for free).
 
alan, you are the spreadsheet master....though £1k depreciation a year is a bit harsh....its a curve after all, these cars are at least 5 yrs old and so should be nearing the bottom of the curve
 
davidkoulakis said:
alan, you are the spreadsheet master....though £1k depreciation a year is a bit harsh....its a curve after all, these cars are at least 5 yrs old and so should be nearing the bottom of the curve
Click to expand...

I know it's a curve but I don't know the curve profile but at a guess I would say 25% on previous year. So if £18K new then 13.5K (after 1yr), 10.1k (2), 7.6k (3), 5.7k (4), 4.3k (5) - Hmm seems a bit harsh. Let's try 20%: 14.4k (1), 10.8k (2), 8.6k (3), 6.9k (4), 5.5k (5). Year 5 years is more reasonable but year 1 seems too high. Now you see why I went for the simplistic figure ;-)

See this article
http://www.eurotaxglass.co.uk/newspublisher/headlines/older/preview_car.asp?Id=91

Anyone know the price of a new 75 TDi Special Ed in March 2004 (I think Acon, fogs, boot cover were standard then).
 
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Wow, you are more of a spreadsheet king than me (who has records of fuel purchases and the MPG from each tank going back 7 years...). Interesting yet not surprising that each year the car gets more expensive to run per mile.

For information, the 'average' UK car owner needs a budget of £2,000 a year just for depreciation, car tax, insurance and servicing (not including fuel).
 
MPG Lover said:
Wow, you are more of a spreadsheet king than me (who has records of fuel purchases and the MPG from each tank going back 7 years...).
Click to expand...

If you count my previous car I have records back to 1993 when I bought my year old company car (a Cavalier) from my VR package. I kept it for another 12 years when I drove it to a scrap yard (rust!) and got £20. Then I bought my A2 (no more rust! - except the some suspension bits I later learnt :-( )

Had to keep records as I was working for myself and one can only claim vat on the business proportion (i.e. % business mileage) of any expenditure.
 
Here's a depreciation curve I knocked up. I gave up trying a single formula so this one the % depreciation is entered for each year. This has the advantage of setting a high year 1 depreciation (more like day 1!). Then it eases off before another steep drop in year 3 when the MOT is due. Then eases off again to year 6 when it starts to pick up.

Of course, over so many years inflation has an effect. Some might argue that at say year 10 a vehicle has a nominal value (say £500) that it keeps thereafter (0 depreciation). But should any major fault or body work need arise then it's off to the scrapie.

Postscript:
Who knows. In 10 years the value of aluminium may be very high and recycling advanced to strip a car and end up with pure metal. How much aluminium by weight has an A2 got? The LME Official Prices (US$/tonne) for 10 Aug 2009 was almost $2,000 http://www.lme.co.uk/aluminium.asp
 
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New Price in March 2004

Alan_uk said:
I know it's a curve but I don't know the curve profile but at a guess I would say 25% on previous year. So if £18K new then 13.5K (after 1yr), 10.1k (2), 7.6k (3), 5.7k (4), 4.3k (5) - Hmm seems a bit harsh. Let's try 20%: 14.4k (1), 10.8k (2), 8.6k (3), 6.9k (4), 5.5k (5). Year 5 years is more reasonable but year 1 seems too high. Now you see why I went for the simplistic figure ;-)

See this article
http://www.eurotaxglass.co.uk/newspublisher/headlines/older/preview_car.asp?Id=91

Anyone know the price of a new 75 TDi Special Ed in March 2004 (I think Acon, fogs, boot cover were standard then).
Click to expand...

List price for the 1.4TDI 75 SE was £14,980.00 according to the price
list published in Feb 2004.
At the time, climate control (air con) was an extra on all models at £800.00
The other items were standard on the SE model.
However, during 2003 and early 2004, a 'special offer' was made on a package including climate control and metallic paint (£500.00 from memory).
However, a lot of dealer stock models (demonstrators) were ordered with climate control, so you often had little choice.
 
GBMSU said:
List price for the 1.4TDI 75 SE was £14,980.00 according to the price list published in Feb 2004. At the time, climate control (air con) was an extra on all models at £800.00. However, during 2003 and early 2004, a 'special offer' was made on a package including climate control and metallic paint (£500.00 from memory). However, a lot of dealer stock models (demonstrators) were ordered with climate control, so you often had little choice.
Click to expand...

Maybe mine must be one of those (new July 04) as it has metallic paint and aircon. So the list was £15k + £0.5k = £15.5k or maybe £15.8k.

Stealer wanted £12k when it was 8 months old ex demo (I hate that term as in reality ex staff car). Knocked them down to £11k after complaining about poor pre-sales service - they kept changing their mind as to which car their advert actually referred to, etc. etc.

I don't know what the dealer margin was but even at £11k I suspect they didn't loose much plus they kept a member of staff happy for 9 months.

4k off on almost £16k over 8 months = 38% first year depreciation.
 
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