As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.
Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.
Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.
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Skyline GTR mistake...
The info on the Skyline is incorrect... the R33 GTR's are making at least £25k these days. The one you refer to for around the 10k mark aren't GTR's, they are GTST or GTT models, which have the 2.5 engine and single turbo, and are rear wheel drive only with no "fancy stuff" that makes the GTR the special car it is. All of those 2.5 engine'd ones are imports, as the Skylines only officially sold in this side of the world from the R33 upwards in GTR spec only.
The GTR is full blown 2.6 twin turbo, 4WD with the complex system to make it insanely fast. It's as different to the GTST as a Golf R is to a regular diesel Golf... or maybe moreso!!
In any case, the only Skyline GTR you'll get for 10k will be bent in two!
Responsiblity?
If you're being a responsible journalists you should also cover the costs of repairs on these, even at discounted specialists.
Do a search for 335i in the USA and how many people are only able to keep them running by doing DIY repairs. Repairs that BMW simply have kicked in to the long grass in the hope they didn't have to fix the problem. There's a bunch of "Lemons" being sold on too, tens of thousands of cars BMW had to buy back because of faulty fuel pumps and injectors. Those cars are still running with a potential repair bill which would dwarf the value of the car!
Supermini money might just be what you need to repair these! It might be why someone has decided they've had enough and decided to buy a supermini!
Symanski wrote:
You should also consider that the substantial saving, compared to the cost of buying a new car if you are looking for something quick and/or big, plus the tiny loss on depreciation, covers a lot of additional costs. Just take great care when you buy.
No fault breakages.
That's one of the problems. You can look after the car as well as anybody can, servicing at BMW etc, and still end up with a broken car and repair bills that are larger than the car is worth.
BMW tell you not to use biofuel in some of their cars. Tell me where you can buy petrol or diesel now that doesn't have some biofuel in it? You can't. So through no fault of youself you can't meet BMW's requirements. In fact, effectively BMW were selling cars which were not fit for market because they couldn't work with modern fuels (see the 335i where they themselves blamed it on ethanol in the fuel).
Responsibility?
I'm reminded of an article in, I think, Edmunds. They purchsed S63 second hand and kept it for a year. Their costs for repairs meant that it would have been cheaper to lease a brand new Merc. The car was sold on with yet more repairs looming in the near future. The purchase price is often the cheapest component of total costs of operation.