How far can a £500 car take you?
A modest investment can reap considerable rewards
Fully operational Fiat Puntos from 2004 start at £400
Here’s some interesting reader feedback from Gary, who enjoyed the piece on cockroach cars: “I was never a fan of Bangernomics (a bit of a snob) until my 20-year-old Punto went bang last year.”
If I can interject right there, surely keeping a Punto alive at that age is fairly impressive in itself. I always thought it was nice to drive, a popular first car with free insurance incentives. Head gaskets could go and a decade-old one a friend had recently needed a lot of persuasion to keep going because bits kept breaking. I think early ones without the grille will have a following, but try and find one that works. I saw a few from the early 2000s that had issues and no MOT, but below £200.
If you can stomach the stick-on moustache-like grille of the facelift cars then there are loads to choose from. Fully operational ones from 2004 seem to start at £400, but I’d prefer a prettier Grande Punto from 2006 for very similar money, especially with an off-centre stripe.
Anyway, let’s get back to Gary. “Needing a car quickly, I took a punt on a 53-plate Vauxhall Astra SXI for £500 and with a year’s MOT,” he says. “The car was beautiful not only to look at but also to drive. It went like a rocket.”
Gary liked it, then. Astras really are great workhorse motors, both spacious and really practical, and £500 isn’t an outrageous amount of money to spend. Indeed, a quick check of classifieds soon turned up a 2009 1.6 Life with 126,000 miles. That’s fairly nippy and may not have the SXI bits, but I would junk the plastic wheel trims and revel in the basic honesty of it all. The big question is though, are Astras reliable? Well, Gary can help us there.
“When the time came for an MOT, blow me, it sailed through with no advisories,” he says. “So now I had to keep it for another year.
“A year later it sailed through its next MOT, and now I had to make a decision: do I keep it or trade? I decide to keep it, my £500 investment looking really good now. The third year it went through again, but I was warned it would need work for the next one. Then the thrust bearing went and it made a horrible noise, and the cost was almost what the car was worth, so I traded it.”
Sadly no picture, so it doesn’t make reader’s ride, but have £500 and you can certainly travel, often for three trouble-free years. If you are proud of your motor, whatever it cost, send me a picture and a few words and we will celebrate its wonderfulness.