![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Car replacement
Sep. 29th, 2017 09:56 pmThis morning I did not get far on my way into work before the timing belt snapped in our Vauxhall Astra. It will not be worth repairing. Admittedly I do not off-hand know what the service interval is but, looking back at the records, the timing belt was last changed less than four years ago, though perhaps over 40,000 miles ago which may have been too much. I am wont to count these things more by time so I could indeed have missed that it was due, though if so then I might have liked to imagine that my regular garage may have noticed for me.
Tomorrow we look at a Fiat Panda in Angus that we may buy. It has been SORN'd which makes extended test drives rather awkward but for £1,000 it may be worth the risk if it looks good. (A SORN declaration amounts to that the car is not taxed as it is not on public roads.) With our income two cars may seem excessive but I am reluctant to rely only on our Peugeot 306 given that it is over twenty years old. The Panda would be expected to offer better fuel efficiency and that bears upon cars' dominant cost, at least at UK prices. We bought the Astra just over twenty-five months ago and I save £500 each year toward car replacement so the Panda is the right price. I should separately write more about how I budget.
When we lived in Ohio the state did not require annual safety inspections for cars so we got used to catastrophic failures happening under us: when the Astra abruptly became inoperable on the A90 it was not a very remarkable event. I had mentioned earlier this year how I hardly remember my UK driving test. I noticed today that, although I could recall pulling onto the A90 and how the start of my drive went, I have no memory from after the warning lights came on to when I had safely parked off the side of the road.
Tomorrow we look at a Fiat Panda in Angus that we may buy. It has been SORN'd which makes extended test drives rather awkward but for £1,000 it may be worth the risk if it looks good. (A SORN declaration amounts to that the car is not taxed as it is not on public roads.) With our income two cars may seem excessive but I am reluctant to rely only on our Peugeot 306 given that it is over twenty years old. The Panda would be expected to offer better fuel efficiency and that bears upon cars' dominant cost, at least at UK prices. We bought the Astra just over twenty-five months ago and I save £500 each year toward car replacement so the Panda is the right price. I should separately write more about how I budget.
When we lived in Ohio the state did not require annual safety inspections for cars so we got used to catastrophic failures happening under us: when the Astra abruptly became inoperable on the A90 it was not a very remarkable event. I had mentioned earlier this year how I hardly remember my UK driving test. I noticed today that, although I could recall pulling onto the A90 and how the start of my drive went, I have no memory from after the warning lights came on to when I had safely parked off the side of the road.
