Budget banger beats the system

OUR SAAB SHOWS HOW TO STAY MOBILE IN A RECESSION

For many of us, there’s going to have to be some belt tightening over the next couple of years. There’s not much you can do about rent or a mortgage, but that other great expense in life, motoring? Well, that we can do something about.

I once worked at a car magazine with a bloke called James Ruppert. He’d previously been a salesman at a swanky BMW dealership in central London, but his heart wasn’t in it because what he really liked was old bangers.

In about 1990 he came up with the concept of Bangernomics – the art of buying and running a used car on a very tight budget. He then wrote a book on the subject which became very popular and it’s recently been reprinted and entitled Bangernomics Rebooted.

See below for details of how to get hold of a copy. It’ll pay for itself in no time.

A couple of years ago, I pulled out my ragged copy of Bangernomics because my wife wanted a convertible with four seats – either a BMW 3-Series, Audi A4, a Mercedes CLK or, my favourite, a Saab 9-3.

I’ve always like Saabs, although the last economic crisis wrecked it and it disappeared in 2012.

A squint on the internet revealed that Simply Saab in

Bristol looked to have a fine selection of ragtops, including one in Caipirinha green (our preferred colour) with 126,000 miles on the clock for £2,995 (€3,340). Better still it had a petrol engine, which is a more sensible way to go than diesel due to unpredictable legislation about where you can drive them.

A week later and I’d taken the train down to Bristol and was on

If it blows up tomorrow we’ll just scrap it and start again with another

my way home in my Saab, bought for £2,300 (£2,600) after I’d achieved some first class haggling.

The engine is the star element of this car. Light pressure turbo, 175bhp from 2.0 litres. Manual gearbox that’s nice and smooth, no shunt in the driveshafts and only a bit of scuttle shake.

The biggest surprise was the fuel consumption – Bristol to West London with the roof down and I still averaged 43mpg.

Importantly, Mrs Goodwin liked it and it’s her transport to work. I’d already tracked down a local Saab specialist called Chris Mcguinness who had an impeccable CV (ex Saab main dealer) and he’d recommended Simply

Saab in the first place, mentioning that they were also the go-to people for secondhand spares.

We ran the car for 12 months and in July last year we booked it in for a service with Mcguinness. My wife had covered 10,000 miles in the car without a single problem. At least none we knew about.

The service turned out to be rather more comprehensive than we’d bargained for with a new air conditioning compressor required that cost £350 (€390), and two new front tyres. Loads of other little niggles were sorted out as well as the obvious ones such as an oil change and new spark plugs. The bill came to £1,173 (€1,300) which was a bit more than we’d bargained for.

But here’s the thing – the cost of buying the car and that big service together still came to less than the yearly lease costs we were paying before.

Since then the Saab has covered another 10,000 miles and it’s still running perfectly. When the lockdown is over we’ll book it in for this year’s service. It won’t need new tyres or another A/C compressor so it’s likely that it’ll be a cheaper service this time around and we’ll be even further ahead of the game.

We’ve already beaten the system with this car. If it blows up tomorrow, or during the next service a chronic problem is discovered that is heinously expensive to fix, we’ll simply scrap the car and start again with another one.

Hopefully though, we’ll get another few years of affordable motoring out of it. Best of all, Professor of Bangernomics, James Ruppert, totally approves of our soft-top Saab.

Order Bangernomics Rebooted at www.bangernomics.com