[john.wigley]

I'm a bit of an anorak when it comes to my motoring costs and largely agree with the case postulated by 'L.S.' with one exception. Being married to an accountant, I've never paid anything like £30K for a Volvo.

Instead, when we were running these cars in period, we looked for low mileage / ownership examples around 10 years old with a FSH. Our last 740 was typical. It was 11 years old, with 4 owners and 98K miles up when we bought it for £1750. It was therefore already approaching the bottom of the depreciation curve and this was reflected in our running costs.

Cars like 740 Volvos can never be run for Mini costs, but they need not be expensive and will almost always reward conscientious maintenance with value for money motoring.

Out of interest, my actual costs from 01/01/01 to 22/01/16 were as follows. (Not included are loss of interest on capital or an escalation factor for inflation over the period covered.)

Mileage: 62746
Petrol: 10442.82 litres at a cost of £10807. This equates to 27.3148 MPG or 17.22 pence/mile and represented 57.0% of my total running costs.
Repairs: cost £1576.05, or 2.51 pence/mile and 8.3% of the total.
Servicing: £705.87, representing 1.12 pence and 3.7%.
Fixed: £5875.65, 9.36 pence and 31.0%.
Total: £18964.57 or 30.22 pence per mile driven.

Depreciation accounted for another 2.35 pence, bringing the total cost per mile to 32.58 pence.

To me, as 'L.S.' said, costs such as these, which apply to all cars, are costs of ownership and cannot therefore legitimately be included in the value of any car offered for sale. An example with a good service history and evidence of repairs carried out may be more saleable than one without, but they do not add value per se. Conversely, evidence of inadequate servicing or the need for repairs may detract from the value of any car.

Regards, John.