SIMON GOLDSWORTHY

Editor Email classics.ed@kelsey.co.uk

My son recently sent me details of a pay-asyou-go community car hire scheme which allows members to rent vehicles from locations across the UK on an hourly or daily basis. He lives in a city, doesn’t have a car and usually travels by train, but thought this might be useful for those few occasions when he really did need a car.

I had a look at the various costs and tried to compare them to something like a Citroën C1 or Fiat 500. Their annual road tax of around £20, would equate to club joining fee of £25. The club’s £5 monthly membership fee would add up to roughly the cost of an annual MoT test. Assuming petrol at £6.35 per gallon and 45mpg, a small car costs you 14 pence per mile (ppm) to drive in fuel alone. The smallest rental from the club attracts a 20ppm charge, but that includes fuel, and the extra 6ppm could be offset against tyres and other running costs, so really the ppm figures are comparable.

That just leaves you with the daily rental charge of £40 versus the cost of insurance for your own car. Insurance is obviously a big variable, but something like £400 a year would equate to ten days rental, £600 to 15 days and so on. However, if he bought his own car, that would incur repair costs and depreciation (neither of which can be accurately forecast), and would have to be parked at his expense 365 days a year (he lives in a flat without a parking space). On the flip side, the rental option would be a real pain in the bum to arrange, collect, return etc. So as you would expect, there is no easy or simple answer as to which is best. There is no doubt that having your own car is more convenient – until it breaks down, at which point it becomes more of a liability. So the gamble with owning a car would be the unforeseen and inevitable bills, whereas if you go the rental route you are gambling on how many days a year you need a car, how easy it is to get one and so on.

You are also missing out on the joy of choosing a car, of caring for it, personalising it and bonding with it. That is obviously important for me because when I was young, getting your first car was a rite of passage. It was thrilling, exciting and liberating, and I still remember every detail of the first cars I bought – a Fiat 127 for £100, soon followed by a Triumph Herald 13/60 convertible for £350. I still feel the same passion for cars today, but my kids have other interests. And that is as it should be, because they are living their lives, not mine. I can’t help wondering if they are missing out, but perhaps they feel the same way about me when they see my 12-button Nokia mobile phone. I can’t even run the App you need to book a rental car on that!