WHY BUY EURO? (PART TWO)

Ihad a good old whine last month about those Euro cars and their expensive fixes. The 70,000km BMW with $8K’ worth of oil- and water-leak repairs; the BMW with the $2500 alternator fix; the $5K bill for the Alfa that had to have the engine pulled out to replace the cam belt; and the $6K bill for the Audi that similarly had to have its engine removed to replace the cam-chain tensioner. Then there were the Range Rovers and Land Rovers that have become such a high risk for mechanical warranty providers that some have put them into their own category. And so on. I could regale you with tales of woe and despair about European cars for some time. But have you ever heard stories of ludicrously low-mileage breakdowns and correspondingly horrific repair costs on a good old five-litre or LS-series V8 Commodore? Or a solid true-blue V8 Falcon? I’ve had a dozen or more Commodores over the years and have had nothing but a faultless and entirely satisfying run, aside from an ABS issue on a VY SS, and a wheel bearing on an old five-litre VN that had done over 300,000km. For all of the hair-raising problems that are commonly associated with European cars, I didn’t even get started on depreciation — an aspect of European cars that is even worse than the repairs. A friend who has a real passion for European cars has quite a dilemma each morning when looking at his two sets of car keys hanging on the hook. Which car to take to work today? The usual dailydriver is an eight-year-old C63 Mercedes-Benz, but sitting beside it is a 10-year-old Aston Martin Vantage. Both cars are stunning. The Merc is a factory hot rod — stiff suspension, bigger brakes than most circuit cars, and a naturally aspirated 6.3-litre AMG V8 engine producing over 500hp. This car does low 12-second quarters straight off the showroom floor. The Aston is — even for an American-car purist such as myself — nothing less than sex on wheels, and would be one of the first cars to arrive in my dream garage if I landed that big Lotto win. V8, manual, hand-stitched leather, and utterly gorgeous. My friend had a moment recently when he contemplated selling the cars (both of which he bought brand new) and upgrading to newer cars. “How much?” I asked out of curiosity. “And what did you pay for them new?” Hang onto your colostomy bag while you read this. Let’s start with the Merc: before driving it out of the Mercedes-Benz showroom eight years ago, he paid $155K. Now, 140,000km later, impeccably serviced and in immaculate condition — $25K will take it. Think that’s bad? The Aston cost $275K 10 years ago. It’s been garaged every night of its life, has done only 45,000km, and it is so immaculate that you’d believe it if you were told it had done a tenth of that mileage. Now? He’d be happy with $65K. That’s a depreciation of $210K on the Aston over 10 years, and $130K on the Merc over eight years — for both, this works out at $38K for every year that he’s owned them. Which, of course, is more money each year than many New Zealanders earn in that time. The most intriguing part of this repair bill and depreciation story is how a lot of these Euro car fans don’t seem to notice these pretty bloody obvious shortcomings and look down their noses at our good old Commodores and Falcons — which they disparagingly refer to as old ‘taxis’. Maybe they should ponder for a moment just why they’re used as taxis. Because, unlike those vehicles that I’ve just been bemoaning — as any Australian taxi driver will tell you — the good old Commodore taxis will go over 500,000km without needing the engine touched. And, when something happens, the fix is simple and cheap. And our old taxis are still worth a few bob after we’ve used them up. My last Commodore was a beautiful six-litre VE Calais with 80,000km on it that we bought for $23K, ran for two years, taking the odometer up to 150,000km, during which time we did nothing but service it and tip gas into it — and then sold it again for $23K. Sure, we were lucky on that one, and everything depreciates, no argument there. But Euro cars?! Holy shit! It staggers me how big a hit some people take. I guess if you’ve got a profitable-enough business it’s one way to reduce your taxable income, but it still seems like an awfully big pile of money down the shitter to me. However, rather than choking on the depreciation costs of European cars, perhaps we should take a moment to consider the other side of depreciation. What I mean is that those of us whose income and lifestyle dictates that we drive second-hand cars, those which depreciate the most dramatically can in fact provide us with the best value for our hardearned money. Linda and I have had a number of V8 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overlands in our lives over the past eight years, and now we wouldn’t be without one. We’re on our fifth, and, interestingly, it’s the old 2002–2005 model with the 4.7-litre V8 that’s our favourite type. We’re really hooked on these great machines. They’re American, as luxurious as a Lexus, comfortable on long hauls, tow brilliantly, and they get us in and out of home when we’ve got two feet of snow on the ground. This is a case in point of the ‘their-loss-our-gain’ scenario; our current Grand Cherokee that we bought just a few weeks ago is a 2004 4.7-litre V8, in immaculate condition with just on 100,000km on the clock. It cost us $9500. It cost the previous owner $95K. So, for skinflints like me, perhaps depreciation is, in fact, our friend. It enables us to buy a car that we’d never be able, or prepared, to buy new — but which can give us all the benefits of a martini for the price of a lemonade. And that, perhaps, is the very thought that could be our undoing.

Depreciation ... can give us all the benefits of a martini for the price of a lemonade