| Steve's Transport | |
| After a year
of driving
the Lomax around (see pictures),
I realised I was going to be driving rather more than cycling. The Lomax
is a great car, but in both style and age a bit of a classic, and the daily
thrash to and from Middlesbrough seemed a little cruel to it. It also needs
regular, but thankfully non extreme, maintenance, and I wanted some time
off – just drive and forget.
But I did not want all the cost of car ownership! Depreciation, insurance, fuel, tax, maintenance… Of course, reality is that costs can rarely be avoided, so the search was on to reduce them as much as possible, within the limitations of my brief for reliability etc. If this sounds very considered and proactive, it’s only because I’m writing this in retrospect. The truth is that I saw a cheap car and justified buying it with all the above considerations. I am rather fortunate in not being a car snob, so the prospect of owning the cheapest new car available was not a problem. In short, I’ve ended up with a Fiat Seicento from a non franchised new car discounter just round the corner from here. It was a third off the Fiat price, and twenty percent off the best price a Fiat garage could offer. It’s red, small, nippy and has a CD player. It also has reduced road tax and group one insurance. So far it works just fine and I’ve reclaimed garage space (a car with a lid should live outside) leaving me no excuse for not working on my boat building.
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