Since getting my recent car which shows your fuel consumption as you drive I have adopted the ‘using gravity’ approach to driving. I was amazed to see that when cruising I’m using around 7 or 8 litres per 100 km but when accelerating you can use in excess of 20 litres per 100, do the […]
With fuel costs rising we chanced on a little diesel Peugeot 205, and the way we drive we get about 59 miles to a gallon. Prius eat your heart out!
Don’t fill your fuel tank right up…driving around with a tank full of fuel your vehicle will weigh more which will reduce fuel economy. [For the record, the average car holds about 55 litres of fuel, and 1 litre weighs about 0.71kg (but varies on type of petrol of temperature). So a full tank of […]
Look for freebies when filling up, like a free glass with every $20 fill. I collected a whole cupboard full of glasses this way. When I filled up with $40 worth of petrol I asked for 2 glasses!
• The biggest cost is resale value (depreciation). Even if you never turn the ignition key you can expect to lose 20% of the car’s value each year. So if you fork out $5,000 for a car, it is likely to lose $1,000 in value in year 1, $800 in year 2, etc. And it […]
Buy the best car you can afford for cash. Old cars don’t depreciate as fast as new ones and sometimes even appreciate in value. I bought an old English car for $505 in 2006. It got another warrant this week (May 09). It still goes really well and is still worth at least $500. In […]
When it has been raining, wipe down your car with an old towel, including the windows. This saves on wash and polish costs. I only need to polish the car before summer and again before winter to preserve it.
Think about colour when buying a car. I read the other day that white cars hold their value best. Greens and maroons are the worst. The study was done by sed-car pricing experts in Britain. It found white cars typically hold about 5 per cent more of their value than the market average for a […]
Buying or keeping a car over 40 years old results in considerably reduced registration fees and insurance is a lot cheaper as well. Depreciation is no longer a factor and if you buy the right type of car the worth may actually be going up. Gas mileages on well maintained cars are usually quite good. […]
Before you go about buying tyres, it might pay to know a little about what you are buying. The tyre has a lot of hieroglyphics actually say something. Here’s an example. The tires on a Toyota Corolla might be labelled: P175/65R14 81H ‘P’ stands for passenger vehicle. 175 – The width of the tire is 175 […]