Business news and advise

If you love cars and driving, then your choice of automobile and everything that goes with it will be such a matter of individual, personal taste, that it’s really difficult for anyone else to advise you properly.

If, on the other hand, you’re interested in getting round in safety and comfort as cost effectively as possible and don’t have any interest in motoring beyond a desire not to be too embarrassed or embarrassing while you go about it, then there are some easy ways to decide what to do.

I count myself in this group of people who have lost all interest in cars beyond these basic needs.

My hopes, these days are that my car will arrive at where I want to be without me having to do too much – and certainly not by spending too much. And if you look around the web, you’ll read loads of stuff about cars with incredible mpg figures, or eco cars that are ‘must-buys’. But really what you need to do is to buy a really good used car at a really cheap price.

Such a decision blows all other motoring cost considerations out of the water in terms of cash. In other words, most motorists in the developed world are really paying for their own vanity-driven weaknesses in their motoring choices – whilst pretending (maybe even to themselves…) that it’s something else.

The point is often well illustrated when you go on holiday to far distant lands and can’t tell one car from another, no matter what the age or prestige of the vehicles. The fact is that these days, cars tend to last a lot longer. And if you buy a car with a proven tack record for reliability like a Honda, as detailed in the post above, and get it at a cheap second-hand price – you are very likely to enjoy years of trouble-free and cost-effective motoring. So for your pocket’s sake, drop the vanity!