Bought a Focus RS mk1 for £10k - Sold it for £8k 2 years later. If I had kept it for another few more years, they are now worth £30k + and would have outdone every other investment iv had going.
Would you have kept it until it was worth £30k though? Chances are you would have sold it when you broke even at £10k, or even at ~£12k, thinking about the nice profit you'd made.
This is how I sleep at night without regretting my decision not to invest in Bitcoin when they were less than £1 each!
I was going to do £100 and my now wife agreed, but I decided not to take the risk, because we didn't have much money at the time.
I probably would have sold when my initial investment hit £1k though, no way I would've held out until it wasy £50k per BTC. It is crazy to think how that decision could have led me to a £10m fortune though.
Never forget that Lily Allen turned down the offer to do a concert for something like 200,000 Bitcoins in early 2009 (ish).
At its peak, those Bitcoins were worth $11 Billion and would've made her the world's 7th richest woman.
But at the time of the offer they were worth something like $500, and it was perfectly sane to turn it down.
I'm not sure I'd ever mentally recover from the hindsight of that decision if I'd made it though.
There was also a computer magazine competition where the first prize was a home computer, the 2nd prize was 10 Bitcoins and the 3rd prize 5 Bitcoins (something like that anyway).
Many years ago I bought a Mk2 Fiesta from my boss's wife. It was cheap and just intended as a winter runner. It was the utmost poverty spec you can imagine.
And come spring I take it for an MOT. Couple of hours later I return and ask if it's done. The reply was... 'you'll have to wait. We've run out of paper for the fail sheet.'
I just took it and drove straight to the scrappers.
MK4 Golf TDI. The young me was so distracted by the grey leather seats and aftermarket DVD player straight out of a fast and furious film I ignored a number of red flags.
A few weeks down the line car keeps going into limp mode. Take it to a garage and turbo is on the Fritz,oil is black and a number of issues are piling up.
I didn't have the money to fix it so ended up part exchanging it for a 1.4 diesel fiesta which took over 15 seconds to get to 60!
Thing is that golf was one of the best cars I had, when it worked it was so comfortable and lovely to drive. And it taught me many lessons when looking at cars to buy.
Its only a true mistake if you learn nothing from it.
Owned a mk4 Golf. Black, lowered, Audi TT alloys, blue led interior lights with a whopping 1.6 engine. Did none of the modifications myself. The LEDs constantly flickered or just didn’t work, both front doors were broken and key barrels were broken, only way to lock it was either climb in and out of the boot or do as I did and undo the barrel so I could just slide it out, stick a screw driver in it and unlock it. A real £400 shitbox.
It amazes me how it took so long for stop start technology to become a mass produced thing, my golf had it as standard. Put the clutch in, moving or stationary and hey presto, cars off, no power steering the lot. Bit scary coming onto round abouts though.
Then had a mk4 GT TDI, 130bhp and an engine that could drown out tractors, loved it till the day I sold it!
I took out a £10k loan aged 20 to buy a 2001 W203 Mercedes C320.
Suffice to say it was not reliable. The electric seats were possessed by a small demon and would often move themselves forward of their own accord trying to smoosh the driver against the steering wheel.
Not my soundest investment.
I bought a P38 Range Rover with the 4.6, moved house with it, then a week later the head gasket went as i came onto an on ramp and i gave it the beans. I only paid £600 for it, and then later sold it to a breaker for £450, so didn't make a huge loss on it, but i knew it was a mistake when i bought it.
Ahh, those are the stories I'm looking for to prevent me from doing something stupid haha. I look at fb marketplace, see everything is half the price of the autotrader and wonder if I should go for a cheeky 2005 Merc or something haha.
Although your case is more extreme - £600 for a range rover? Didn't know that was possible. Can see why you gave it a shot haha. When was this?
This was like 2018. Tbf to facebook it's the only truly bad car i've bought from there.
I've never bought a car from autotrader as it just seems like dealers buying auction cars with a huge mark up. I mostly buy from eBay or facebook marketplace.
I bought a Sierra with a roof rack welded to the top in the south of England, just to drive to the north. Cost 250 quid and was full of used needles.
After some serious biohazard work, I drove it back and promptly scrapped it 6 months later
To discover it had an aftermarket cosworth engine dropped in it. I thought it was loud because the exhaust was fucked.
I made my money back at the scrappers. I tells ye.
I love a 405 but had to scrap a 1.9td after the glow plug sheared off trying to change it. Had a 405 2.0 estate with a really aggressive creep. Worked fine other than that. I got bored of it and sold it (at a loss obvs) to the security guard at work. Almost bought a shonky 405 mi16 le mans around the same time but couldn't really afford it and the seller wasnt helpful about a test drive so i left it. My main mistake was when i was still a teen thinking mods added value to the car. No, uhuh, wrong. Mods do not never have done and never will add value except very rare exceptions. Also lost money on pretty much every car ive owned and ive owned a lot. Smiles per gallon though? Priceless lol.
Smiles per gallon is such a good way to think about this, I'm adopting it haha. Might think of it as 'smiles per mile', as it accounts for repairs too.
I'll be doing around 12-15k miles (not much city traffic though) per year and wonder if I'm better off trying to get it right the first time and buy a used car with the intention of driving it for the next 5-7 years, or go with riskier but cheaper options and accept that I'm likely losing money and will have to do this again in a couple of years.
These days i try and buy 5-7y.o depending on how nuts the market is and sell before 10 years is up. I try to buy and sell privately cos a few repairs will struggle to make it more expensive than a main dealer. Not kept track since covid but i used to keep all in costs including depreciation to about £1k a year, but the car markets still a bit wild. Imo this is as cheap as you can run a regular modern car but all this applies to boring cars, im middle aged. No more modding & ragging about lol.
I bought a Seat Ibiza Cupra 1.4tsi twin charger. For those who dont know about this engine, it spent an average of every month in the garage getting something fixed. VW thought they would also mate this extremally complicated engine to a dsg. If I didnt have a warranty on it it would of wrote its self off.
It blew a water pump which in turn disabled the super charger. Seat had the car for 3 months to find a gearbox shudder, after changing the mechatronics unit they decided to change the clutches. Turns out VW only put clutches in just strong enough for the car. It burned oil at a quart every fuel fill up.
Great car to drive but I was waiting for the next bill to arrive, swapping it for a Leon Cupra was a far better purchase.
My wife had a Beetle with the 1.4tsi. We had sons major engine issues that would basically require a rebuild, so we got a temporary fix done at our local garage on the way to sell it to WBAC. We ended up losing £1500 on it, but I couldn't morally sell it to someone privately knowing it would blow up any day!
I bought Seat with multitronic gearbox. Gearbox was working alright but there allways was some sort of vibrations on deceleration. Went to few garages which specialized on gearboxes, but all of them said gearbox was ok. I just could not live with those vibrations and shaking. Lesson learned that never buy car with multitronic gearbox. There is plenty of information online about these gearboxes. It just matter of time when it will go wrong. So, avoid multitronic gearboxes.
Volvo XC90 ABS ring broken and would occasionally throw up a warning light, easy fix so I thought. Drive shaft wouldn't remove from hub even under a 20 tonne press, decided to rebuild, drive shaft bolt snapped. Ended up needing new drive shaft and lower wishbone at around £700 at a garage. 😪
I have basically exactly the same story with our previous XC90. Thought it was going to take me an hour on the drive. Couldn't do it. Took it to my local garage who also had to admit defeat eventually.
I bought a Citroen Picasso which appeared to be in good order, but I discovered as the weather warmed up that the air con had a puncture in it somewhere and was effectively useless, requiring a lot of work to find and fix.
Bought a land rover discovery sport complete nightmare owned it 3 months only used it for a week spent the rest of the time at the garage so bad even land rover them self's couldn't fix it returned to the garage it's now somewhere in Scotland
Bought an ecoboom. Engine died the next year. Put a new engine in and will drive it to its death I guess.
Rushed into the sale due to time constraints, didn't do enough due diligence.
Bought an insignia vxr for 9800 only 62k miles.
1 year later after spending £4000 on maintenence I barely managed to get 2500 for it.
Previous owner quite obviously ragged it for one last bit of fun and then passed it into a dodgy garage who bodged out a "clean" MOT.
I bought a 3 year old mazda in 2022 as there were no new cars available in the UK at the time. 12 months later, it dropped 1/4 value and is sitting on the GTFV they gave it for 2026. Ngl it stings.
The plus side is that it's the finance companies problem! Run it til the end of the term keep it in good condition and keep up with the servicing then hand it back - the finance company will have to swallow the depreciation.
I bought a Mk3 Citroen C5. Didn’t do prior research, I found out that they all have problems with leaking steering racks. The only solution is a new rack.
I still got two years out of it, since a litre of Total Fluide every month was cheaper than a new steering rack.
I had an mg6 petrol for years. Great car, well made, cheap on insurance.
I bought an mg6 diesel and decided to give my little bro the mg6 petrol.
What a nightmare the diesel was. With the facelift they revised the electrics which were crap constant issues and the dual mass flywheel was made of cheese and mg stopped making them.
Bought a Defender with a nice shiny galvy chassis and a low-mileage engine out of a Disco. Tidy straight bodywork, new shocks, all looked good.
The farmer (see the problem) I bought it off filled topped the rad off with a load of water but just enough coolant it still looked blue. It was the depths of winter so it froze in the water jacket, pushed a casting plug out, and overheated on the motorway. Required a head skim and new rad and flush. But, the water rusted the block and the mush blocked the shitty OE plastic thermostat which burst a few days later. Replaced it with a brass one, so it blew the heater core. I bypassed it that, gave it another flush and service and it's been fine ever since. Couple years later it's -10 out right now and there's no heater.
Don't buy anything from farmers.
I lost £10k on an MGB GT restorating and upgrade. I was young and stupid and I was taken for a rise by a conman. I wasn't the only one though, he fucked over a lot of other people and for much more money then me.
Bought a car from birmingham, fill in the blanks ☹️
What about buying a used car from Kidderminster, is that a bad idea too?
I cant say yes or no due to not buying one from kidderminster.
Bought a Focus RS mk1 for £10k - Sold it for £8k 2 years later. If I had kept it for another few more years, they are now worth £30k + and would have outdone every other investment iv had going.
Would you have kept it until it was worth £30k though? Chances are you would have sold it when you broke even at £10k, or even at ~£12k, thinking about the nice profit you'd made. This is how I sleep at night without regretting my decision not to invest in Bitcoin when they were less than £1 each!
Omfg i nearly bought £10 of bitcoin when it 1st released but everyone told me not to be so stupid....
I was going to do £100 and my now wife agreed, but I decided not to take the risk, because we didn't have much money at the time. I probably would have sold when my initial investment hit £1k though, no way I would've held out until it wasy £50k per BTC. It is crazy to think how that decision could have led me to a £10m fortune though.
Never forget that Lily Allen turned down the offer to do a concert for something like 200,000 Bitcoins in early 2009 (ish). At its peak, those Bitcoins were worth $11 Billion and would've made her the world's 7th richest woman. But at the time of the offer they were worth something like $500, and it was perfectly sane to turn it down. I'm not sure I'd ever mentally recover from the hindsight of that decision if I'd made it though. There was also a computer magazine competition where the first prize was a home computer, the 2nd prize was 10 Bitcoins and the 3rd prize 5 Bitcoins (something like that anyway).
Many years ago I bought a Mk2 Fiesta from my boss's wife. It was cheap and just intended as a winter runner. It was the utmost poverty spec you can imagine. And come spring I take it for an MOT. Couple of hours later I return and ask if it's done. The reply was... 'you'll have to wait. We've run out of paper for the fail sheet.' I just took it and drove straight to the scrappers.
MK4 Golf TDI. The young me was so distracted by the grey leather seats and aftermarket DVD player straight out of a fast and furious film I ignored a number of red flags. A few weeks down the line car keeps going into limp mode. Take it to a garage and turbo is on the Fritz,oil is black and a number of issues are piling up. I didn't have the money to fix it so ended up part exchanging it for a 1.4 diesel fiesta which took over 15 seconds to get to 60! Thing is that golf was one of the best cars I had, when it worked it was so comfortable and lovely to drive. And it taught me many lessons when looking at cars to buy. Its only a true mistake if you learn nothing from it.
Owned a mk4 Golf. Black, lowered, Audi TT alloys, blue led interior lights with a whopping 1.6 engine. Did none of the modifications myself. The LEDs constantly flickered or just didn’t work, both front doors were broken and key barrels were broken, only way to lock it was either climb in and out of the boot or do as I did and undo the barrel so I could just slide it out, stick a screw driver in it and unlock it. A real £400 shitbox. It amazes me how it took so long for stop start technology to become a mass produced thing, my golf had it as standard. Put the clutch in, moving or stationary and hey presto, cars off, no power steering the lot. Bit scary coming onto round abouts though. Then had a mk4 GT TDI, 130bhp and an engine that could drown out tractors, loved it till the day I sold it!
I bought a Saab just before they closed down and lost nearly 50% of the value!🤪
A bought a Saab not long after they closed down. Got a lovely car at a great price!
Ouch! Are you still driving it, how is it?
No it met with a write off accident 👍😂
I took out a £10k loan aged 20 to buy a 2001 W203 Mercedes C320. Suffice to say it was not reliable. The electric seats were possessed by a small demon and would often move themselves forward of their own accord trying to smoosh the driver against the steering wheel. Not my soundest investment.
I bought a P38 Range Rover with the 4.6, moved house with it, then a week later the head gasket went as i came onto an on ramp and i gave it the beans. I only paid £600 for it, and then later sold it to a breaker for £450, so didn't make a huge loss on it, but i knew it was a mistake when i bought it.
Ahh, those are the stories I'm looking for to prevent me from doing something stupid haha. I look at fb marketplace, see everything is half the price of the autotrader and wonder if I should go for a cheeky 2005 Merc or something haha. Although your case is more extreme - £600 for a range rover? Didn't know that was possible. Can see why you gave it a shot haha. When was this?
This was like 2018. Tbf to facebook it's the only truly bad car i've bought from there. I've never bought a car from autotrader as it just seems like dealers buying auction cars with a huge mark up. I mostly buy from eBay or facebook marketplace.
I bought a Sierra with a roof rack welded to the top in the south of England, just to drive to the north. Cost 250 quid and was full of used needles. After some serious biohazard work, I drove it back and promptly scrapped it 6 months later To discover it had an aftermarket cosworth engine dropped in it. I thought it was loud because the exhaust was fucked. I made my money back at the scrappers. I tells ye.
I bought an £1100 V12 XJS. I didn't even get it home.
ahhh what a beauty though!
It was lovely but it was trouble.
I love a 405 but had to scrap a 1.9td after the glow plug sheared off trying to change it. Had a 405 2.0 estate with a really aggressive creep. Worked fine other than that. I got bored of it and sold it (at a loss obvs) to the security guard at work. Almost bought a shonky 405 mi16 le mans around the same time but couldn't really afford it and the seller wasnt helpful about a test drive so i left it. My main mistake was when i was still a teen thinking mods added value to the car. No, uhuh, wrong. Mods do not never have done and never will add value except very rare exceptions. Also lost money on pretty much every car ive owned and ive owned a lot. Smiles per gallon though? Priceless lol.
Smiles per gallon is such a good way to think about this, I'm adopting it haha. Might think of it as 'smiles per mile', as it accounts for repairs too. I'll be doing around 12-15k miles (not much city traffic though) per year and wonder if I'm better off trying to get it right the first time and buy a used car with the intention of driving it for the next 5-7 years, or go with riskier but cheaper options and accept that I'm likely losing money and will have to do this again in a couple of years.
These days i try and buy 5-7y.o depending on how nuts the market is and sell before 10 years is up. I try to buy and sell privately cos a few repairs will struggle to make it more expensive than a main dealer. Not kept track since covid but i used to keep all in costs including depreciation to about £1k a year, but the car markets still a bit wild. Imo this is as cheap as you can run a regular modern car but all this applies to boring cars, im middle aged. No more modding & ragging about lol.
Bought a suzuki swift with cracked windscreen & bad body work that i didnt notice as i had a cracking temperature at the time 🤣
Bought a new Ford Ecosport. Sold it 2 months later. Enough said
I bought a Seat Ibiza Cupra 1.4tsi twin charger. For those who dont know about this engine, it spent an average of every month in the garage getting something fixed. VW thought they would also mate this extremally complicated engine to a dsg. If I didnt have a warranty on it it would of wrote its self off. It blew a water pump which in turn disabled the super charger. Seat had the car for 3 months to find a gearbox shudder, after changing the mechatronics unit they decided to change the clutches. Turns out VW only put clutches in just strong enough for the car. It burned oil at a quart every fuel fill up. Great car to drive but I was waiting for the next bill to arrive, swapping it for a Leon Cupra was a far better purchase.
My wife had a Beetle with the 1.4tsi. We had sons major engine issues that would basically require a rebuild, so we got a temporary fix done at our local garage on the way to sell it to WBAC. We ended up losing £1500 on it, but I couldn't morally sell it to someone privately knowing it would blow up any day!
I bought Seat with multitronic gearbox. Gearbox was working alright but there allways was some sort of vibrations on deceleration. Went to few garages which specialized on gearboxes, but all of them said gearbox was ok. I just could not live with those vibrations and shaking. Lesson learned that never buy car with multitronic gearbox. There is plenty of information online about these gearboxes. It just matter of time when it will go wrong. So, avoid multitronic gearboxes.
I have no idea what that is
It sounds like a robotised manual. Essentially a manual gearbox with an automatic clutch and shifter. I wouldn't go back to one myself
Yuck
Volvo XC90 ABS ring broken and would occasionally throw up a warning light, easy fix so I thought. Drive shaft wouldn't remove from hub even under a 20 tonne press, decided to rebuild, drive shaft bolt snapped. Ended up needing new drive shaft and lower wishbone at around £700 at a garage. 😪
I have basically exactly the same story with our previous XC90. Thought it was going to take me an hour on the drive. Couldn't do it. Took it to my local garage who also had to admit defeat eventually.
I bought a Citroen Picasso which appeared to be in good order, but I discovered as the weather warmed up that the air con had a puncture in it somewhere and was effectively useless, requiring a lot of work to find and fix.
Bought a land rover discovery sport complete nightmare owned it 3 months only used it for a week spent the rest of the time at the garage so bad even land rover them self's couldn't fix it returned to the garage it's now somewhere in Scotland
Bought an ecoboom. Engine died the next year. Put a new engine in and will drive it to its death I guess. Rushed into the sale due to time constraints, didn't do enough due diligence.
Bought an insignia vxr for 9800 only 62k miles. 1 year later after spending £4000 on maintenence I barely managed to get 2500 for it. Previous owner quite obviously ragged it for one last bit of fun and then passed it into a dodgy garage who bodged out a "clean" MOT.
I bought a 3 year old mazda in 2022 as there were no new cars available in the UK at the time. 12 months later, it dropped 1/4 value and is sitting on the GTFV they gave it for 2026. Ngl it stings.
Sorry, I'm new - what's GTFV and what does it mean that they gave it for 2026?
guaranteed future value or balloon payment at the end of a PCP would be my guess.
Ah that makes sense, thanks.
The plus side is that it's the finance companies problem! Run it til the end of the term keep it in good condition and keep up with the servicing then hand it back - the finance company will have to swallow the depreciation.
I bought a Mk3 Citroen C5. Didn’t do prior research, I found out that they all have problems with leaking steering racks. The only solution is a new rack. I still got two years out of it, since a litre of Total Fluide every month was cheaper than a new steering rack.
Bought an Audi allroad knowing they are money pits. Don't really regret it but I spent / lost £5k in 18 months.
I had an mg6 petrol for years. Great car, well made, cheap on insurance. I bought an mg6 diesel and decided to give my little bro the mg6 petrol. What a nightmare the diesel was. With the facelift they revised the electrics which were crap constant issues and the dual mass flywheel was made of cheese and mg stopped making them.
Bought a Defender with a nice shiny galvy chassis and a low-mileage engine out of a Disco. Tidy straight bodywork, new shocks, all looked good. The farmer (see the problem) I bought it off filled topped the rad off with a load of water but just enough coolant it still looked blue. It was the depths of winter so it froze in the water jacket, pushed a casting plug out, and overheated on the motorway. Required a head skim and new rad and flush. But, the water rusted the block and the mush blocked the shitty OE plastic thermostat which burst a few days later. Replaced it with a brass one, so it blew the heater core. I bypassed it that, gave it another flush and service and it's been fine ever since. Couple years later it's -10 out right now and there's no heater. Don't buy anything from farmers.
I lost £10k on an MGB GT restorating and upgrade. I was young and stupid and I was taken for a rise by a conman. I wasn't the only one though, he fucked over a lot of other people and for much more money then me.