The other day I picked my car up from the garage, where it had been having its timing chain replaced, something that was noticed when it passed its most recent MOT with just a few advisories. In the last few years, I’ve had the underside cleaned and treated with Dinitrol, both sills patched up and several other repairs. I probably have a repair bill in three figures at least twice a year.

My Jag is 19-years old with 342,000 miles on the clock, of which I’ve been responsible for 15-years of ownership and about 280,000 of those miles, and, if the latest insurance estimate is to be believed, it is only worth about £650. I used to do about 2,500 miles a month until I stopped commuting about 7-years ago. Now I work from home and spend about half the year in The States so I put about 2,500 miles on it in a year.

So why then have I just paid for work which cost about twice what it is supposedly worth?

Let me introduce you to Bangernomics, a different way of looking at the cost of motoring. 

The usual wisdom would say that I should simply replace the car because it isn’t economical to repair. My garage doesn’t suggest that to me anymore, they just give me the price and let me decide. If I was to replace it, what would it be with? I’d want something of a similar level, not an econobox or a car that is screaming its little heart out on the motorway. My Jag happily rolls along at the national speed limit, or thereabouts, doing less than 2,000 revs and has plenty of pull if I need it. So, something like a 3 Series, and not too small an engine. A 325i or something like that. 

Heading over to AutoTrader let’s look for something a good few years newer, a 2012-2014. There’s a 2012 fairly near me with 90,000 on the clock for about £5,000. It’s an automatic, which I’m not keen on, but it looks OK. It may have a full service history but at 14-years old things break, believe me I have the invoices to back that up, and I could easily be buying someone else’s problem. My car has been regularly serviced and maintained, and I know exactly what work has been done on it, and what hasn’t, that wouldn’t be the case with this one, no matter how full the service history may be. So, I’m £5,000 in and I could easily still get a bit bill for something breaking. Vanos anyone?

Right, let’s look at something that is only a couple of years old, that way it ought to be a lot more reliable. My car was 4 years old when I got it so let’s look for a low mileage 2022 3 Series. I found a 320i M Sport with 27,000 miles on it in Borehamwood for a shade under £26,000. It doesn’t say that it has a full service history but it is from a main dealer, so you’d hope that it has been looked after.

They are offering it on a PCP for £463 a month, that’s over 4 years with £2,598 down and a maximum of 10,000 miles a year. Oh, and don’t forget the final payment of £10,845.77. So, after paying £22,000 over four years it’s still not mine unless I shell out another £10k. No thank you, I’ll have a look at hire purchase instead. That’s an eyewatering £628.13 every month for four years. Or, looking at it another way, a new timing chain for my Jag every other month.

An issue that I have with new cars, which you’ll possibly find odd coming from someone who has spent their entire career working with computers, is that there is far too much tech. Far too much “stuff” to go wrong and more big bills when those bit of tech do fail. I do basic maintenance myself and I don’t want to have to break out an Autel when I change the brakes, because you can’t release the electronic parking brake and wind back the pistons in the callipers without it. Electronic parking, or emergency, brakes are another bugbear of mine. In an emergency I want something mechanical, pulling on a steel wire to put the brakes on, and not something that could go fzzt as I’m heading towards trouble. I watch a lot of car videos on YouTube and the concept of having to code a replacement headlight, which could in itself cost up to £1,000, before the car will even acknowledge that it is there really gets my goat. 

Long story short, and it has been a long story, the reason that I just paid £1,300 to repair a car that is worth just half that amount is that it simply makes financial sense. If I get away with just one or two big bills a year, then I’m happy that it’s cheaper than the alternatives.

Not only that but I get it repaired by a garage which is just a 15-minute walk from home, where I’ve built up a relationship with the team and I know that the money I pay for repairs is going into the local economy and not into a corporate.

And here’s another benefit. Because I spend so little on the Jag, compared to the alternatives, I also have a second car sitting on the drive. A 15-yr old Hyundai SUV which I use for trips to the dump with garden waste etc.

And that, is Bangernomics.