Buying advice

[tucker266]

Hi - have been scouring the website for the last few weeks - its a brilliant resource.

This is a slightly pathetic post from a grown man who can make up his own mind...

Currently own a 2006 VW T5 which we self converted. Its got 200,000 miles on it - and while its been brilliant fun the GF is now totally out of love with it - its hard work to drive, not so easy on the eye and generally not that practical since we've moved back to London. I'm clinging onto the camper dream and think a plush T6 Beach might be the only thing the GF will accept as a substitute for a clean quite comfortable car.

Question is - can we afford it - how should we finance it and how much should we expect it to cost us in depreciation and cost of lending if we decided to sell in 3-4 years - compared to something more conventional.

Expect to recover 6k from sale of the T5. Option 1 would be to put that towards a nearly new BMW 1 series or similar, finance the rest and settle for a life of comfortably affordable urban dreariness.

Option two is to put the 6k towards an ex-demo T6 beach costing no more than £40k to be paid off over the next four years. By London standards we're comfortable but far from rich (combined salary of ~£100k) with no other massive out-goings - although will be starting a family in the next few years). Having under-used the sink/hob in our current camper I'm convinced that Beach is the right answer and makes the numbers stack up a little better too.

T6 would smash all the normal guidelines about what to spend on a vehicle in ratio to salary - but would be much more than a normal vehicle. Whats it going to be worth in 4 years time? How much extra is the T6 dream going to cost over a conventional car?

All wisdom/ compelling arguments for the GF much appreciated.

Tucker.

 

[zerofour]

Only you can decide on how much you feel comfortable spending and on what vehicle. One thing I would say is that my kids are 11 and 13 and although I don't quite yet own a T6 I wish I'd made the purchase 5 or 6 years ago so that they could have got more out of it.

 

[Hotel California]

Welcome , can't give advice on finance but i think i know the answer the most here on the forum (if not all) will give you ....if you can affort one follow your hart and go for a Beach.

 

[larrylamb]

You mention recently moving back to London, will a campervan be used to it's full potential. If you are not going to get away in it as much as you used to you could just hire one for breaks and holidays??

 

[MattBW]

The VW finance is not very good value for money, when I did the sums it didn't add up (well it did but not for me). They can probably bring your monthly down but you will pay a lot for the van over a long period.

To give you an idea I got a Beach Demo last year for about £33k, this was for a model that probably would have been close to 40k new by it's spec and extras. It had only done 300 miles when I got it. Literally around the block a few times.

I think I put about 12k down and borrowed the rest, even with the best deal I could find it's over £430 a month over 5 years, in fact its more than my mortgage.

That sounds quite bad at first glance but I generally accounted for about £300 a month for my cars anyway, so it wasn't too big a jump but still pretty expensive and I did think twice, maybe three times. It is my daily driver and car for work etc and my partner has a smaller car for the local trips.

There are plenty of articles on depreciation and the Cali is very good. Mine was worth more than I paid for a while after I bought it. However with the current political landscape who knows how diesels will be treated in future, even the very clean euro 6 ones.

 

[Lewis]

Hi - have been scouring the website for the last few weeks - its a brilliant resource.

This is a slightly pathetic post from a grown man who can make up his own mind...

Currently own a 2006 VW T5 which we self converted. Its got 200,000 miles on it - and while its been brilliant fun the GF is now totally out of love with it - its hard work to drive, not so easy on the eye and generally not that practical since we've moved back to London. I'm clinging onto the camper dream and think a plush T6 Beach might be the only thing the GF will accept as a substitute for a clean quite comfortable car.

Question is - can we afford it - how should we finance it and how much should we expect it to cost us in depreciation and cost of lending if we decided to sell in 3-4 years - compared to something more conventional.

Expect to recover 6k from sale of the T5. Option 1 would be to put that towards a nearly new BMW 1 series or similar, finance the rest and settle for a life of comfortably affordable urban dreariness.

Option two is to put the 6k towards an ex-demo T6 beach costing no more than £40k to be paid off over the next four years. By London standards we're comfortable but far from rich (combined salary of ~£100k) with no other massive out-goings - although will be starting a family in the next few years). Having under-used the sink/hob in our current camper I'm convinced that Beach is the right answer and makes the numbers stack up a little better too.

T6 would smash all the normal guidelines about what to spend on a vehicle in ratio to salary - but would be much more than a normal vehicle. Whats it going to be worth in 4 years time? How much extra is the T6 dream going to cost over a conventional car?

All wisdom/ compelling arguments for the GF much appreciated.

Tucker.

Just one thought given that you've mentioned wanting to start a family soon. £34k over 4yrs is a very large monthly payment - could you afford it if your partner was on maternity leave or went part time after a baby is born?

That being said, you're looking at the very best family vehicles money can buy (had it 4months and our 2yr old is in love). Hope you can find a way to make it work!

Would definitely stick to T6 given that you're in London too - Euro6 will likely buy you more time as pollution penalties hit.