An acquaintance of mine has a P reg A4 estate Tdi. His annual mileage is only 5k pa, so a petrol replacement would be my prefered choice, but he really likes the driving characteristics of his diesel, and the 55+mpg he averages on the occasional long run.
I argue that his constant short runs would not go down well on a modern diesl, or rather one 3 or 4 years old which he would buy. He would be looking to replace the A4 with one of similar size and cannot be talked into a petrol!
Suitable replacements please...he would probably keep it for 10+ years. Budget...say up to £15k.
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If he does some longer runs a diesel with DPF will be fine. In 12 months of my current VAG I will have done no more than 10k. Some longer runs but lots of short trips. A couple of times I assume a regen of the DPF was in process when I stopped as the fan kept running.
Previous car was a Mazda6 diesel and whilst the oil level would rise and I forced the lease company to do interim oil changes.... no actual issue ever seen.
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What is it he doesn;t like about the current A4?
Simply its age/condition, or is there something else?
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There are plenty of Euro 4 diesels of that age without DPFs; our 08 Toyota 2.2 didn't have one, nor does its 58 MB replacement. Fuel economy is a different matter - neither has lived up to its Combined figure as the old Euro 3 Volvo does - but the Toyota did a lot of short journeys and suffered no adverse consequences.
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Similar story with my good pal who lives in Edinburgh. He drives a newish diesel golf and his wife has a recent model Freelander diesel. They just sort of like the idea that diesels are "economical". Neither are the slightest bit interested in cars and see them as nothing other than transport and neither vehicle strays far from the city limits or travels more than 3000 - 4000 miles in total each year.
Fortunately he is not aware that this is "bad" for them and as such doesn't worry about it. So far anyway, that stategy has worked. He's really pleased with the reliability of both his cars.
I sometimes wonder if those of us who take an unnecessary interest in cars do also suffer from an attendant excess of automotive hypochondria.
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Ignorance is bliss, they say.
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I MUCH prefer the driving characteristics of a diesel car.
I would have bought a diesel Panda, (or similar shopping trolley) if I could have found one within our budget.
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Good point Humph the more you think about the things what go wrong they will.
I do a low mileage in the Focus TDCI no probelms so far touch wood.>;)
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The "fragile" common rail diesel in our Scenic was the one bit of it that never went wrong. The rest of it was the issue.
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Every car has its problems DP.The Focus has cruise control except night time driving you can't see the buttons.It's the simple things what should be put right.
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You won't get 55mpg from most 3/4 year old diesels. There are exceptions . . .
For £14k on Autotrader, you can get a 59 plate Skoda Octavia 1.9 TDI PD ELEGANCE (Estate). 16,500 miles. Good spec, including FULL SIZED SPARE WHEEL. Skoda value and reliability.
Legendary VAG 1.9 diesel. Tough and economical. A tad noisy, but that's all.
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Yep, got one of those - you will get 55 mpg no problem. Reliable too. As you say a bit noisy but hey, turn the radio up.
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12,000 miles per year
Unleaded £1.36pl/£5.98pg
Diesel £1.41pl/£6.20pg
Ford Mondeo
2.0 Petrol combined 36.2 mpg
2.0 diesel combined 48.7mpg
Diesel £1,527.72 p.a.
Petrol £1,982,32 p.a.
Ignoring any other cost, the diesel will save you £454.60 per year. Lets assume you'll own it for 3 years, so you're talking about £1,400. I've no idea what a Mondeo costs, but lets suppose its £20k. So you're talking about 2% of its value per year. ON a car which loses almost that per month in depreciation.
The first thing is, so who cares? That kind of money gets swallowed in whether or not you did a good deal.
The second is, you better not pay a premium to buy a diesel car if its economy you're worried about.
In my opinion there are only two reasons for most of us to choose between petrol and diesel;
- The car you want, or the deal you are offered, is only available on one or the other
- You prefer the driving style inherent to one or the other
That varies if your mileage changes, or if you're driving a specialist vehicle, but I do think we're all unneccessarily knotted up on fuel consumption.
(and if I've screwed up the maths through carelessness, sorry, but the point remains the same).
But then, I don't understand how anybody can see the cost of the annual road fund licence has any kind of relevance when looking at a £20k + purchase.
But it seems people do.
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>> In my opinion there are only two reasons for most of us to choose between
>> petrol and diesel;
Don't you think there's also a reliability question these days ie. if a modern diesel does go wrong, it's going to be a lot harder and/or more expensive to fix than if a petrol goes wrong? That's the impression I get anyway.
EDIT: sorry I should have said 'it might be a lot harder' rather than 'it's going to be a lot harder'
Last edited by: Focus on Sat 1 Sep 12 at 20:32
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I had diesels for around ten years. I gave them up when a Focus pump failure cost me £1200 seven years ago.
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>>Don't you think there's also a reliability question
I guess. My wife has had a couple of diesels, and done quite a few miles. The only things that broke were unrelated to the engine fuel system.
I dislike diesels, I prefer the style of a petrol engine. That's not a value judgement, I just prefer it.
Others prefer diesel. Again, that's up to them.
But so much garbage is spouted about economy it irritates me. I know, it surprises everybody that something trivial would irritate me, but there you go.
I think less knowledgable people, often older folk, make unwise buying decisions driven by a belief that diesel is economically better.
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>>I think less knowledgable people, often older folk, make unwise buying decisions driven by a belief that diesel is economically better.
Older folk should be actively trying to get rid of their money - no use to them when they're dead and help support the economy.
Not many rainy days when you're wormfood.
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>Older folk should be actively trying to get rid of their money - no use to them when they're dead..
>Not many rainy days when you're wormfood.
The Shipman defence?
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"Older folk should be actively trying to get rid of their money"
No need to - the government does it for you.
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Hmmm...in that case, perhaps it will persuade some of the octogenarians in my road to sell their four and five-bedroom houses so that families can live in them.
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If anyone wants to buy a four or five bedroom house there are plenty on the market. Do you mean their houses should be confiscated and the owners evicted? What is their crime - living to 80 and having the prudence to buy their own home?
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>> Do you mean their houses should be confiscated and the owners evicted?
No, but they should be encouraged to sell up and downsize. Dumping inheritance, and capital gains tax on houses should help there.
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There is no shortage of large houses and a considerable shortage of starter homes and affordable small houses. There is no capital gains tax on the property you live in.
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There is a shortage of realistically priced housing.
And we have just lived through 20 years of people expecting banks to lend them money for £100k+ purchases with virtually zero deposit.
eg. a 1-bedroom flat in a reasonable area in Edinburgh is £100k.
That means a single person wishing to buy it needs around £20k for a deposit, and an income of £20k pa to get an £80k loan (which will then cost £300/mth for interest repayments without even touching on the 80 grand capital repayment).
Or you could rent the same property for £450/mth and keep the £20k deposit and not have any responsibility for maintenance, and be able to leave without difficulty if circumstances change.
I think the fetish for buying houses has become a huge economic handicap for the country in managing to move on and compete - what %age of economic activity is simply paying interest to banks for over-inflated house purchases (eg. that £100k flat mentioned above would have been 120-125k in 2007)?
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"Or you could rent the same property for £450/mth and keep the £20k deposit and not have any responsibility for maintenance, and be able to leave without difficulty if circumstances change."
Which is of course true. However what you don't have is any security that you will still be living in the same house in 6 months time or indeed paying the same rent. That might be OK if you are single but not so good if you have a family,
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Don't worry - Dave's onto it now.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19454322
We've no hope :-)
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Ahaa, plan B shows it's face.
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"Mr Cameron said: "A familiar cry goes up - 'yes we want more housing, but no to every development - and not in my backyard'."
I certainly agree with that. A housing development is proposed adjacent to my property. I don't have any problems with it but most of my neighbours are up in arms with petitions and face book pages filled with spurious reasons why it should not go ahead. Has got quite nasty at times as they all assume everyone should agree with them. Nobody speaks to the guy who sold some of their garden to the developers for and access road.
I pointed out to one of the objectors that all the same objections could have been made 20 years ago when our estate was built and he wouldn't now have a house but he told me "that was different" but was unable to explain quite how.
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Time to pop in that application for a new development of "affordable housing" in Dave's community - maybe a CPO for his tennis court so I can get a couple more houses in.
Never seems such an issue in Scotland but I preume that's due to there being more open spaces - perhaps the more congested/city areas have the same NIMBYism as darn sarf.
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If anyone wants to buy a four or five bedroom house there are plenty on the market.
But are there? Plenty are standing but few come up for sale these days, and that shortage of supply inflates the price of those that do. There are many factors, of course: one is the number of children of divorced parents that now have a bedroom in two houses; but another is the number of affluent retired people who, having profited from the unprecedented and probably unrepeatable overvaluation of investments and property in the last 25 years, are now living into their nineties in houses built for five.
Paradoxically, some will argue that they need to keep spare bedrooms for visiting grandchildren, because their own children can't afford a home big enough for them to visit, and so the cycle continues. And the shortage of smaller houses is partly because the market is blocked at the top end, so those in them now can't afford to take what used to be the natural next step.
The 'but we've been prudent!' protest goes only so far. Yes, you've put money aside and into appreciating assets, but crucially you've also been immensely lucky to have lived through a unique period in financial history. Housing, like water and electricity, is too important to be entrusted to an entirely free market, and before we bury great tracts of rural England under new housing, we should look at ways of making better use of what we already have.
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How - forceable eviction? And why the emphasis on elderly people. There are lot of people who have homes bigger than they strictly need for utilitarian purposes. What do you propose, some sort of commissariat that tells you how big a house you are entitled to? Will there be late night searches to check that you do really have a lodger? Brave New World.
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Now you're just being silly, CG. I would suggest the same approach as everywhere else that the government seeks to influence the choices people make: through the tax system. Just as you pay more for your car if it uses more than its share of a finite resource - the atmosphere's capacity for carbon dioxide - so we could load Council Tax on to underoccupied large properties, end the single person discount in the higher bands, and make it more tax-efficient for people to liquidate their properties and downsize while they're still alive, rather than offer perverse incentives to maximize the inheritance of the next generation.
It would make the argument more meaningful if we declared our own interests. I'm mid-forties and have a family-size house in the southeast whose value would probably be diminished by what I'm proposing. I also have an elderly parent in a house that's too big and would house a family, but which I stand to inherit in due course. So the status quo arguably suits me, but I don't think it suits the society I live in, which is why I'm arguing for change.
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What you are effectively saying is that the rich can have as big a house as they like as a bit more council tax won't make much difference to them. However someone who has lived in their family home for years and has a low income should be forced out as they can't afford the extra tax. Sounds very unpleasant to me.
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The majority of people would like to stay in their own home if possible to a old age.We have this obsession leaving property to the children.Would it be better to move out in some decent rented accomodation sell the property and give to the children what you want to give.My late aunty had two properties and ended up selling for health care in her old age.This happened a long time ago in Holland.You have a point Wildebeest I have seen families wanting the money from properties parents lived in.Not very nice.
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If people want to downsize that's fine. There's plenty of financial incentive to do so if theyu so wish. The fact is that a lot of people want to stay where they are despite it not being financially the best option for them. This is called freedom of choice, an alien notion to some. The notion that the state should somehow influence or control the size of house you live in is a deeply unpleasant idea.
At the end of the day if a measure such as WdB was introduced it would need some sort of enforcement. Would the council take my word for the fact that it was fully occupied if it meant a loss of revenue? I think not. There would have to be a bureaucracy with powers of inspection and no doubt there would be neighbours willing to advise the council that my family had moved out.
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My housebound 87 year old FiL has lived in the same 2 bedroom council owse for nigh-on 60 years.
I've often thought he should move his ass n' make room for a younger family with a sprog.
But then why should he, he's well bought the place by now with all the rent he's paid over the decades.
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>> But are there? Plenty are standing but few come up for sale these days, and
>> that shortage of supply inflates the price of those that do.
I've not long ago been through the process of buying a large house. There was a distinct shortage of them in this area.....because.....the gap between the price people are willing to pay and the price a lot of people think it is worth creates a Mexican stand off...and...some have held off selling until the prices improve.
Good old fashioned greed has slowed the market down and created a shortage.
I sold my London house...but...had to drop the initial asking price by 15 per cent. Not unnaturally I expected some sense at the other end. By and large there wasn't.
Estate agents have their role to play as well. They seem reluctant to 'allow' prices to drop. Should be sod all to do with them, they should sensibly advise and let the markets do as they will. Anything will sell at the right price.
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>> There is no capital gains tax on the property you live in.
There is if you want to move out, rent it out and then sell it. Plenty of shortage of larger houses round here for rent or sale. You cant argue its stupid to have one old person rattling around in a badly utilised house.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 2 Sep 12 at 12:59
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"You cant argue its stupid to have one old person rattling around in a badly utilised house."
But you can argue that it is nobody's business but the householders.
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>>But you can argue that it is nobody's business but the householders.
Damn right.
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And you could take a similarly libertarian view of just about anything, but a liberal democracy places certain restrictions on individual liberty for the common good. You might equally have argued in May that it was nobody's business but yours how much water you used, but the magistrates probably wouldn't have been impressed.
My point is that the decisions people make are influenced by the tax consequences. As a society we've made it an expensive luxury to run a bigger car than you need because doing so has consequences for everybody. Underoccupied housing also has consequences for all, so why not reflect that in the taxes people pay?
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>>As a society we've made it an expensive luxury to run a bigger car than you need because doing so has consequences for everybody
That is naive.
We've made it more expensive because the country needs more money and that's where it can be got from.
It may have resulted in a more expensive luxury car, but the first target was a financial one, not any moral responsibility.
But I am taxed when I earn the money, taxed when I spend it on a house, taxed while i won it and taxed when I pass it on.
And why? Because they country can. Not for any higher morality, not for any socially oriented do-good-ness.
Just because the country can and it needs the money.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 2 Sep 12 at 15:29
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>> >>As a society we've made it an expensive luxury to run a bigger car than
>> you need because doing so has consequences for everybody
>>
Green taxation is just a government money making opportunity, they taxed windows as a property tax for 156 years in the past. How long before green taxation is discredited?
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"Under-occupied housing also has consequences for all, so why not reflect that in the taxes people pay?"
If you don't believe that it's none of the states business how big your house is, then simply because it would impossible to administer.
Define "Under-occupied'
How would the state know how many people were occupying a house?
How long would it have to be under occupied to attract tax?
What is to prevent people lying as to the occupancy? There would need to be checks by officials with powers of entry.
Would make the poll tax look like a good idea. No politician with any sense would touch it with a barge pole.
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CG that's piffle. The checking mechanism already exists in the Council Tax system, where we already have to make a binding declaration about how many adults live in the house. There are also records of children's addresses used for Child Benefit and school enrolments. It would be a relatively simple matter to set a benchmark occupancy as part of a Council Tax valuation and then to levy an 'Empty Bedroom Supplement' on homes that failed to match that number.
If you disagree with my suggestion on ideological grounds, fair enough, but I don't accept that it couldn't be done.
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It's all BS.
People can buy 1,000 cars and sit and watch them.
They can buy 100 offices and leave them empty.
But leave a house empty?
Just because the prior Government allowed unrestricted immigration and built no new council housing thus enabling MPs to make a fortune making tax free gains on buying and selling housing is NOT a reason to penalise people who do not occupy houses.
If you really want to utilise houses properly, then of course, you would tax second homes heavily..
There would be fun over the landlords of buy to let property...
It's typical of the economic illiteracy and pure blind stupidity of our politicians that the Lib Dems want to tax house owners with a wealth tax but object to making planning permission easier to obtain for new housing development. **
And all those backing new developments for factories etc (eg London airports) are in full support as long as it's not built in their backyard.
Fact is the UK has some of the most concentrated population areas in the world. (and lots of places no-one wants to live in eg the Highlands). And not enough housing.
The answer is simple: reduce the population growth to nil.
Anyone thought of the Law of Unintended Consequences?
Please do. (Well it will mean a sharp fall in houses being sold. Yes a really great solution)
And remember the politicians are conniving thieving liars. HMRC cannot implement a new property tax in under 5 years due to its current workload (benefit changes etc). So when you read about property taxes solving a housing problem .. think 2018. Then reread the rhetoric. They are pandering to the ignorant.
(which judging by the above debate is?) :-)
** Apologies to any LD supporters but really your Party has two feet firmly in the clouds on taxation
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>>madf
+1
(I'd +1,000,000 if I could).
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>> >>I think less knowledgable people, often older folk, make unwise buying decisions driven by a
>> belief that diesel is economically better.
>>
>> Older folk should be actively trying to get rid of their money - no use
>> to them when they're dead and help support the economy.
>>
>> Not many rainy days when you're wormfood.
>>
Too true, I am not keeping cash in the bank for the government or a care home company to take should I need personal care. Our plan is to spend it while we are still fit enough to enjoy it. February's tropical holiday is booked!
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>> >>I think less knowledgable people, often older folk, make unwise buying decisions driven by a
>> belief that diesel is economically better.
>>
>> Older folk should be actively trying to get rid of their money - no use
>> to them when they're dead and help support the economy.
>>
>> Not many rainy days when you're wormfood.
>>
Too true, I am not keeping cash in the bank for the government or a care home company to take should I need personal care. Our plan is to spend it while we are still fit enough to enjoy it. February's tropical holiday is booked!
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A brace of bookings then!
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They will fight over the food.
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We don't all have your standards Zero.
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Don't be too hard on him Martin. He's getting on a bit you know...
:-)
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Best take that bike back then Manatee. Although I reckon they'll not give in easily. Must be well chuffed to have shifted the one in that colour...
:-))
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>>The answer is simple: reduce the population growth to nil.
And the static population gets older and less productive (by virtue of more pensions/healthcare/personal care and less creating the wealth).
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I shall have to sell my body parts in lieu of a pension. Thought I'd start with my hair. You can live quite well without hair I gather.
:-)
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>> I shall have to sell my body parts in lieu of a pension. Thought I'd
>> start with my hair. You can live quite well without hair I gather.
>>
>> :-)
>>
I have a toupee to sell you.
It's currently out in the field being grown but is a very fetching brown colour and is very tough and long lasting. The owners's name is Daisy...
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I am so going to rip the pish out of you when you retire.
The thought will keep me going for years.
Clearly its been pre ordained.
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Low mileage. Prefers diesel - rtj70
