Where do Britlopponauts buy their cars online?

"anonsagainstanonymous" (anonsagainstanonymous) 10/17/2013 at 12:51 • Filed to: newbie questions

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Alright, so there's some 60 million people living in the UK and I assume there should be quite a lot of cars, all shapes, ages and sizes for sale at any given time. However, I am stuggling to find them. Autotrader seems to be referenced as the biggest site, but they don't have many cars older than ca. 2000. Ebay has some, but these are mostly cars sold by enthusiasts i.e they're often overpirzed and/or chavved out. Gumtree has a few, preloved has a few, Car and Classics have quite a bit, but their focus lies in classics. Craigslist has some, but it doesn't differentiate between Manchester, UK and Manchester, USA.

Basically what I am saying is, where are all the late 80's and 90's cars hiding? There seems to be a gap in my searches here.

davedave1111 > anonsagainstanonymous 10/17/2013 at 12:55

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Thanks to our batshit old-car scrappage scheme a few years ago, combined with strict emissions/safety testing and extremely high taxes on old cars, we really don't have that many left on the road. A sadly high number went for scrap, a lot of others were exported.

Keep scanning ebay and gumtree.

Oh yes, nearly forgot. Another thing to remember is that the early nineties was Europe's malaise era, so a lot of that junk was gladly scrapped early.

anonsagainstanonymous > davedave1111 10/17/2013 at 13:00

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Oh man! That stinks! Fuck. Thanks anyway, mate.

Gimmi-Sagan-Om-Draken > davedave1111 10/17/2013 at 13:01

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Its just like here in Japan, they export the old ones to China ect.. and you have to pay a bit more to keep older cars that haven't been classified as a classic.

davedave1111 > anonsagainstanonymous 10/17/2013 at 13:03

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Were you after anything in particular?

dieselwagon > anonsagainstanonymous 10/17/2013 at 13:05

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They don't exist anymore. Davedave mentioned a very important reason, the scrapping schemes. As he also mentions, a lot of the 80's and 90's being junk too didn't help.

There's also the consumer culture in this country, and I made a point a few weeks ago now that I rarely see a car registered before 2001 in commuter traffic, most are registered after 2004.

Car culture is very different in the UK and people do not make any effort to keep cars on the road, repair costs very quickly total far more than the market value for such vehicles. Most people in the UK also don't have space for multiple vehicles, personally I have to park two or three streets away sometimes. A project or second older vehicle is just not an option for millions of people like me.

Older, more interesting vehicles are a hard sell often too, with gas being $8+ a gallon here, the sheer expense of keeping such vehicles on the road can be prohibitive. After that, insurance, tax, storage and sourcing parts. Then you have the yearly roadworthy/emissions tests to contend with, and pay for.

davedave1111 > Gimmi-Sagan-Om-Draken 10/17/2013 at 13:09

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Yeah, and try and work out whether that's a good thing economically or not :)

It's interesting how the import laws vary around the world. Third world places seem to import junkers from Europe, whereas developing nations tend to ban imports of anything more than a few years old, so get a lot of Japanese cars that would require the 3 year(?) inspection.

anonsagainstanonymous > dieselwagon 10/17/2013 at 13:22

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Holy flying trucknuts of east anglia! What is up with these insurance prices? I genuinely thought an old E30 touring or a 940 would be cheaper to insure than a 2006 WRX. So much for those dreams..

I wasn't looking for a project car as such, but I really didn't think taxes and insurance would be higher than a sodding subie!

Well, that changes things a bit, then.

anonsagainstanonymous > davedave1111 10/17/2013 at 13:24

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Bloody hell this is madness.

davedave1111 > dieselwagon 10/17/2013 at 13:25

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It's not a cultural thing, or even a working-on-cars thing, so much as a regulatory issue. It's just too expensive to keep a lot of old cars running in the UK - too expensive to make any sense. When you can buy another car with tax and MOT for maybe £5-600, and tax and MOT on yours will cost £250ish already, there doesn't need to be much work needed at all before it's just not economic.

The only car I've ever scrapped was a mid-nineties Toyota Carina E. I felt bad about it, but I got £250 for it as scrap, tax was another £200, and an MOT was £50 or so. It only needed bits and pieces to pass, but they added up to another £150 or so - doing the work myself - and the total was more than the cost of another, slightly better condition example. I'm pretty sure that one went off to Africa, and has been running fine ever since without the work having been done...

dieselwagon > davedave1111 10/17/2013 at 13:47

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I don't disagree at all. I just think it's a mix of things. The economics are a result of the culture to an extent, the government schemes run in tandem with that.

Anecdotally, no one I know wants a car that's on less than a 5* something plate, it's always about having something newer or better than the neighbor, there's also a paranoia with anything with more than 70,000 on it. This is part of the reason why it's uneconomical to fix older vehicles, as we both mentioned. People don't want older vehicles, so they're not willing to pay good money for them, so used values go down, so the subsequent buyer is even less likely to put good money into fixing them.

This is exactly why I got rid of my 2000 Honda Accord with 94k on it a couple years ago. I bough it for £995, was worth about £750 two years later. Had suspension issues, needed a new front sub frame, new rubber all around. It wasn't economically viable to keep it, certainly not to pay someone to do the work. The engine and gearbox were absolutely perfect, but that didn't save it.

davedave1111 > dieselwagon 10/17/2013 at 14:48

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I wouldn't argue with anything you're saying, I'm just looking a bit further into it. Our system is particularly screwed up at the moment because the legislation has been changed significantly and frequently for a good while, so people haven't worked out the right ways to respond to all the changes yet. Demand for cheap cars has dropped as people who would drive htem have been priced out of the market by the regulations, insurance, and so-on - so as a result we have a glut, depressing prices, etc etc.

dieselwagon > davedave1111 10/17/2013 at 18:51

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Spot on, thanks for that response. I think we covered all bases in this little conversation as regards to the original question.

davedave1111 > dieselwagon 10/17/2013 at 19:07

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Yes. It's still really bizarre when a conversation on the internet ends like that.

SpeedSix > anonsagainstanonymous 10/18/2013 at 01:25

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If you're in Britain, you can always check out Goo-Net for your favorite recent Japanese car and try to import it, since it's already RHD. The Japanese car market, which favors replacing your car with a new one every few years, produces many used cars which are usually exported to Russia, Australia and New Zealand, etc.

anonsagainstanonymous > SpeedSix 10/18/2013 at 09:30

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Must.. not... Legacy... GT...