Philosophical Stuff

I once bought a car costing £16,000 and it depreciated to £6,000 in under 4 years, that is around £3000 a year! I vowed never to waste that much money on a car again.

At petrol stations people laugh at me in the Camaro I also own and say "That must be expensive to run" I also laugh (being a good natured fellow) and point out that the Camaro has made £7,000 in appreciation in 3 years, the Road Fund Licence(RFL) is zero, it costs £30 to service and the insurance costs £98. In contrast their shopping trolley euro hatch has probably lost at least £2,000 + a year in depreciation plus Hire Purchase(HP) and servicing charges. Therefore pumping in unleaded and octane booster to compensate for the 17mpg thirst is no real concern. I think it is the Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) that counts? Hopefully when I sell the Camaro it will have cost me nothing at all, but provided a lot more pleasure than sticking the money in the bank.

I was thinking of buying another car and had been looking at hot-rods and kit cars. When I wrote down what I wanted from my next car I set the following criteria.

1. It had to be an open top car.
2. It must not rust.
3. It had to handle and stop well, and I had to feel confident enough to take it on the odd track day.
4. It had to have super car performance and by that I mean a 0-60mph time of less than 5 seconds and a top speed in excess of 150 mph.
5. It had to cost around £10,000.
6. I wanted it to be comfortable with leather seats .
7. It had to look nice and have a pleasant colour.
8. It had to sound nice.
9. I wanted a good owners club.
10. I wanted to be able to "tinker" on weekends and do most jobs myself.
11. I did not want to have to travel far to purchase it.

After many weeks of investigation the TVR Chimaera seemed to match these criteria nicely and at a cost from around £6000 left scope for further improvement.

I did not want to pay for depreciation, expensive servicing or have an exotic engine that would need a rebuild every 20,ooo miles, or have to travel miles to a specialist dealer.

A couple of days ago my son and I found a couple of school boys looking over the TVR I eventually purchased in the office car park. They were about 12 years old and thought it was a Chevy Corvette! We had a nice chat and they thanked me for letting them look over the car. I was very pleasantly surprised the TVR invoked such a response as I always think they look rather understated?