Quote Originally Posted by Allez Allez Allez View Post
If you lease a car then be prepared to lease cars for the rest of your life.

I buy a car from new, keep it for 12 years and have 9 years of not having to pay any loan fees or anything else. Never understand why people change perfectly good cars just because they are a bit old, or have as many as 40,000 miles on the clock. My Golf, bought in 2006. 14 years old, 178,000 on the clock. I finished paying for it in 2009. Yes, it is starting to rattle, yes it has knocks and dents, but it gets me from a to b. Drove around Europe in it last August.
That principle works as long as you maintain the car well and it doesn't have any major mechanical issues .
I rent cars on a long term basis to ordinary people , who like you ,have kept their cars longer than they should have .
The cars have had major mechanical issues , which they have repaired and decided to keep the cars a little longer " to get their money back " this has led to further major issues and they will never get their money back .
Modern cars are so complex electrical issues can run into thousands ( I also run a repair workshops) Believe me you can soon be in the position where the repair bill way exceeds the value of the car .
A nice shiny new car for £2-300 a month with no worries as Nick stated seems like a dream after the pain of massive repair bills for a car that is worthless .

Don't get me wrong it's horses for courses .

Sounds like you have been fairly lucky , you don't do many miles despite your trip round Europe.

I have 2 Audi estates we use for courtesy cars , both drive well and customers often comment on how well they drive with their 285,000 and 330,000 miles respectively . Thing is , if they do go wrong ... I own a garage to fix them ...