Advice on changing

Lord Derpington

Hi all,

I have been thinking about changing my car and it's come to crunch time.

Currently I'm driving a '04 mk5 1.9tdi Vw Golf with 170k miles on the clock, estimated to be worth €3-3.5k

At present the tax is due tomorrow, all 4 tires are just about 3mm or less and I'm due a timing belt in a few K miles.


I was thinking of changing for a few reasons,
1) I would like a change, I've had the car 2 years it's my second golf and a change would be nice.

2)The milage on the car is getting very high and I'm concerned about the ability to resell in the future, I'm doing 30k per year.

3)The infamous tax conundrum, €200 for 3 months instead of €280 or so for a year 08+


I don't want to take out a huge loan for the car so was considering something around the 8k range, it would need to have good mpg.
The first thing that came to mind was a 1.6tdci focus.

However, there is a dealer in Carlow with a '08 focus 1.6tdci with 140k miles on it for 6k.
Would this option be crazy?


Is there an better option that I'm missing or should I just keep the golf I have?

Thanks,

seamonkey92

Hardly be able to trade the Golf in to take the price down a bit on the Focus?

seanbarrow

Golf should stay going for years more provided its looked after. Id keep it

Lord Derpington

seamonkey92 wrote: »

Hardly be able to trade the Golf in to take the price down a bit on the Focus?

The advice from the garage was to sell it private as i would get more, but considering the tyres etc I can't imagine there would be much of a difference.
If I was a cash buyer on the focus I'm sure I could get a better deal as 6k is the asking price.

Idbatterim

3)The infamous tax conundrum, €200 for 3 months instead of €280 or so for a year 08+. Its E673 for the year or E190 by the quarter. Just bear in mind depreciation and loan interest (if applicable) you are not saving anything. It one thing if you want to change, but its certainly not a money saving exercise... You could always thow it up on donedeal and see what kind of offers you get, but would an 04 with that mileage actually achieve 3-3.5k?!

Lord Derpington

Granted 3.5k is on the ambitious side, but there are a bunch advertised for more on donedeal http://goo.gl/KvXm8k, I know advertising and getting are two totally different things, but the car is in good nick besides what I have stated above.

JohnBoy26

The Golf is an old car now, not being smart but if you were worried about resale value you should of offloaded it years ago tbh.

your golf is fitted with a very robust and reliable 1.9tdi engine that's capable of very high mileage.

Your changing it for a focus that has a 1.6 hdi engine fitted to it. This engine doesn't have a great reliability rep and is known for its turbo failure and oil sludge issues.

You could end up far worse off changing to a focus tbh.

Lord Derpington

Good points JohnBoy, I guess the thing that I keep coming back to is that I don't really want to spend €1k between, tax tyres and timing belt.
I know this is all wear and tear and part and parcel of ownership, but in relation to a car worth 3k it's a hard pill to swallow.
I was wondering if it would be a good idea, and better late than never to change now when all the bills are due/around the corner

Bpmull

Lord Derpington wrote: »

The first thing that came to mind was a 1.6tdci focus.

However, there is a dealer in Carlow with a '08 focus 1.6tdci with 140k miles on it for 6k.
Would this option be crazy?


Is there an better option that I'm missing or should I just keep the golf I have?

Thanks,

Its ironic that your worried about the golf becoming unreliable so your going to sell it and buy a high mileage 1.6tdci focus. Please don't. I'm talking from experience I had a 07 focus 1.6tdci up until a month ago with only 85k miles on it. I changed it to a 07 1.9tdi golf and I can tell you there is no comparison the golf Is better in everyway. But aside from that the biggest issue is that the 1.6tdci engine in that car will break your heart. They are seriously unreliable and don't take my word for it google 1.6 tdci/ hdi/ Psa engine problems. I genuinely wouldn't take one if someone gave me one for free after the experiences I had with mine.

Lord Derpington

Thank you all for the opinions and comments, it has become very clear to me that's a 1.6tdci focus is a definite no no.

In relation to changing car or staying with the golf, is there anything anyone would recommend as a better option?

Bpmull

Lord Derpington wrote: »

Thank you all for the opinions and comments, it has become very clear to me that's a 1.6tdci focus is a definite no no.

In relation to changing car or staying with the golf, is there anything anyone would recommend as a better option?

If you like the car it would be well worth keeping. You need to forget about resale value. It will never be cheaper to change your car. a car worth 8k is going to loss more than a your golf is every year. In 3 years time your golf will probably still worth over 2k so depreciation is small.
As for the work that needs doing. Tyres around 300 euro and a timming belt is 350ish euros it's money that's well worth spending on the car.

Supergurrier

A standard diesel golf is a much better proposition than a diesel focus.

If you must have a diesel focus 1.8 or 2 litre are the way to go

Idbatterim

If you like the car it would be well worth keeping. You need to forget about resale value. It will never be cheaper to change your car. a car worth 8k is going to loss more than a your golf is every year. In 3 years time your golf will probably still worth over 2k so depreciation is small.
As for the work that needs doing. Tyres around 300 euro and a timming belt is 350ish euros it's money that's well worth spending on the car.

exactly, with the figures usually bandied about here, my 2-3k car to "upgrade" to 8-10k ish. Unless the tax or mileage is huge on current car, i.e. 3L or plus or depreciation on current car is massive, your certainly not changing to save money...

bazz26

OP, you say you drive 30k miles a year and are worried about the Golf because it has 170k miles and you want to change it because the mileage is high. But the Focus has 140k miles on it now so you will be back to square one this time next year. Don't see the point really, the money you have to spend on the Golf is routine maintenance, you could be spending a lot more than that in potential repairs on another car you don't know the history of.

Lord Derpington

Thanks all, at present it's clear now that my best option with the preference of a small loan/no loan is to keep the golf.

Thanks for all the help