Which of these cars should I buy?

Fuel, tyres, servicing, parts, labour.

You can't take a car like an M5 or any high performance car to your normal garage, it has to go to a specialist who knows their ass from their elbow and therefore labour charges reflect that.

A car usually costs 10% a year of its original purchase price to keep it in good condition. An M5 costs £80k new, so budget £8k a year to run it. Minimum.

You can take a 535 to an indy though ? Just M models you can't ?

I never trust any of my cars to a dealer. They all go through very good independents.

But they are not much cheaper than the dealer because you are paying for their experience and knowledge of how a car really works.

Cars are not cheap to run, performance cars are really not cheap to run. As I say, calculate 10% of the original purchase value and that will give you an idea of yearly running costs.

Is that 10% based on 10k miles a year, plus tax and insurance ?

Would be interested to hear the breakdown for £8 grand a year on an M5

Fuel, tyres, servicing, parts, labour.

You can't take a car like an M5 or any high performance car to your normal garage, it has to go to a specialist who knows their ass from their elbow and therefore labour charges reflect that.

A car usually costs 10% a year of its original purchase price to keep it in good condition. An M5 costs £80k new, so budget £8k a year to run it. Minimum.

No including tax, insurance, fuel, tyres, servicing etc, at average mileage which is 12k a year.

It is a guide, not a budget! The breakdown will be different for every single person, car and what you use it for?

Saab is nice, but does it do a better job than a 330i? Not to mention Saab = unreliable

We had a Saab 9-8 convertible, 04 reg, from 2009 til 2013 - there was only one problem that wasn't wear & tear (tyres and stuff like that) and that was our fault - other than that it worked perfectly and it moved and had good cornering. The main problem with Saab nowadays is that recently they were taken over by a Chinese company making electric cars - so you've got to get second hand replacement parts and reprogramme them.

EDIT: Saab's are built to last and are effectively cheap BMW's

I wouldn't buy a Saab because they are unreliable. Your good luck is merely anecdotal in this instance

I wouldn't buy a Saab because they are unreliable. Your good luck is merely anecdotal in this instance

I know lots of other people that can vouch for me - Saab's have always been built to last - there are reports all over the internet saying that if you look after it will easily do 175,000 miles. Some reach 245,000 miles - with original engine, auto transmission and turbo.

They are a lot more reliable than the Vectra The same bits that spoil on them often are the same things that will spoil on a Vectra.

I myself had one many years back, never had any issues with them that couldn't be sorted out during the warranty period.

Every car model will have many cases where they reach mega miles, but the majority of them don't achieve this. Some people got 200 k out of a (Pre VW) Skoda, does that make these reliable too?


I wouldn't be buying one in its warranty period, so that's me out.

Seems a bit excessive. By that logic my MG should be costing me £1200 a year to maintain.
(Which it isn't)

Fuel, tyres, servicing, parts, labour.

You can't take a car like an M5 or any high performance car to your normal garage, it has to go to a specialist who knows their ass from their elbow and therefore labour charges reflect that.

A car usually costs 10% a year of its original purchase price to keep it in good condition. An M5 costs £80k new, so budget £8k a year to run it. Minimum.

Extremely good advice.

It isn't difficult to spend £8k per year on something like an M5. You probably wouldn't want to buy a 2nd hand one that hasn't had that kind of love and care into it either.

Late last year I was browsing for a 2nd hand Nissan GT-R, a common theme with all the ones that are well-kept is indeed a lot of money is spent on them each year and it isn't difficult to spend £8k on such a car annually. Most of these cars especially where its owners state what they do to it on forums are keenly eyed by plenty and usually are sold before even an ad is published.

The 2 I did go view both had over £10k spent on it annually, which wasn't difficult to see why such amounts are spent on it.
4-8 sets of new tyres per year as 6000-8000 miles is the best you could get out of these tyres and many throw the tyres away as soon as 50% is worn, cost around £450-600 per piece depending on brand.

Front brakes are a yearly affair to change if ever you bring it to track, £800 per disc and £400-500 for a set of pads, some take pride that their brake pads are changed twice per year and generally don't wait till it is to the metal to replace it.

Full fluid change, engine oil, differential oil, gearbox fluids, brake fluid and coolant, for 10k miles a good one would have had one done twice per year with the engine oil replaced every 2500 miles. Full fluid change cost around £800 for a very standard quality one inclusive of filters. Labour rates are £70-90 per hour for good independent specialist places and 90% of all GT-Rs are sent to 3 of such specialist or Nissan dealers only.

Suspension parts don't last all that long either, many things start to go in as little as 15-20k miles some even less if you drive it aggressively, they don't come cheap and chances are you don't want the cheap stuff unless in reality you are simply not there yet

Didn't buy either that I was looking at though, 1 the owner changed his mind and decided to keep it while the other was asking a bit of a high price for it and wouldn't take a quid less despite it having a lot of miles but it sold hours after I saw it.

If it is a performance car then 10% of the price will go just for maintenance and upkeep. Fuel, insurance and taxes would be a separate budget.

The above is a poor example. Replacing tyeres and brakes when only half worn, and changing oil after 2.5k miles, is wasteful and will of course push the expenditure un unneccesarily.

And you can't compare the maintance spent on a car that sees tracks days with a car that does not see track days.

Welcome to high performance cars.

If you skimp on maintenance and servicing/general loving then you will ruin the car and depending on what you skimp on, could make the car dangerous. Running a high performance car on cheap Chinese tyres for example rather than a proper, premium, sports orientated tyre.

I wasn't suggesting running an M5 on chinese tyres.

The above suggestion of replacing items 50% of the way through their life is ridiculous.

By definition a part isn't considered "worn" until it is 100% worn.

Even when it is 100% worn, it will still be "usuable", although admitedly not at its optimum perfomance.

An engine might be capable of 200k miles. Does that mean it should be scrapped at 100k?