what used car will give me most mpg?

[css_jay99]

You need to sit down and do some serious calculations, in all honesty neither of the two options make financial sense and it appears that your main concern is finance.

Assuming that you work 50 weeks in the year (which is too much, but possible) at £45 of fuel saved per week that's £2250 saved. Out of that you are proposing to buy a second car, fuel it, tax it, insure it, maintain it and park it while you continue to pay for the costs associated with your X5 assuming you don't take it totally off the road.

The payback period on the purchase price of £4000 at £45/week is 89 weeks (over 18 months) and that excludes any running costs for the second car.

Your best option to save money is to cut your losses, sell the X5 which you admit is a status symbol and an expensive luxury and buy yourself something a lot less expensive to run.

getting rid of the X5 is not an option at all. No point saving all ur money and abandoning all forms of luxury just to drop dead or Knived at a tender young age. you are quite right about the calculations.

Selling the car to my company is just not a good idea at all. The BIK attached will cost me about £6k in tax alone . Why does hmrc have to base the BIK on its list price (£46k!), i bought the damn thing for much less than half of that!

I would try to buy a 4/5yr old Atra/Gold diesel from an Auction. It should pay for itself in the long run rather than basing calculations over a single year.

Will there be a BIK if car is only used for business only? Afterrall, I wont be using it for private use

css_jay99

[Sausage Surprise]

what ? 60mpg on a bmw320?. which version?. I had a 320i E36(J reg) but could only muster 30mpg

It's a new 07 plate 320D SE and for all of those who scoffed and laughed I drove to Edinburgh from Durham last week up the A697 and stuck to the speed limits. MPG indicator said 62.7 mpg for the 130 miles that I drove.

And for Churchill... why the laughter at 177BHP - that's what it is. I didn't make it up

When I worked down in Kent last summer I used to floor it for the 320 miles and it still got well over 50 mpg.

[TykeMerc]

getting rid of the X5 is not an option at all. No point saving all ur money and abandoning all forms of luxury just to drop dead or Knived at a tender young age. you are quite right about the calculations.

Selling the car to my company is just not a good idea at all. The BIK attached will cost me about £6k in tax alone . Why does hmrc have to base the BIK on its list price (£46k!), i bought the damn thing for much less than half of that!

I would try to buy a 4/5yr old Atra/Gold diesel from an Auction. It should pay for itself in the long run rather than basing calculations over a single year.

Will there be a BIK if car is only used for business only? Afterrall, I wont be using it for private use

css_jay99

What the hell is UR supposed to mean? Your? Knived = Knifed incidentally.

Why does hmrc have to base the BIK on its list price (£46k!), i bought the damn thing for much less than half of that!

This is the way that company cars have been taxed for some years, I believe it's intended as a way to stop employees from running round in luxury cars, don't ask me why Government policy works this way, I don't understand it either.

The whole point of your thread appears, at least to me, to be about reducing your transport costs, but when you work out the cold facts your strategy will cost you more than you're paying already.

If you keep your X5 and keep it on the road you will still suffer it depreciating like a rock (all cars are depreciating like mad at the moment including Aston Martin and top Mercs. A BMW chelsea tractor will suffer more than many), you will have to tax, insure, fuel and maintain it plus you will have to purchase, tax, insure, fuel and maintain the alternative vehicle you're discussing. In financial terms the second car will never pay for itself in fact you will be worse off financially than if you just stick with the X5 until it falls to bits.