Dilemma - Thoughts Wanted

[Prawn]

Hi guys,
I am currently adding miles to my S4 at a very rapid rate as the car is used for business and personal travel, currently about 25K miles per annum.
The car is just about to pop over 90K miles and I am concerned that in the state of tune she is currently keeping this up will be bad news in say 12 months time.
The car is pretty much in A1 nick and I do have a habit of throwing money at it when anything, no matter how minor needs doing.
I do however need a 'family' car due to 3 kids etc.

My thoughts were :

1) Keep the S4 and buy a TVR Cerby(or simular) and split the mileage between the two.

2) Keep the S4 and buy a boring car for the main mileage, ie Mondeo etc (would I ever drive it !)

3) Sell the S4 and buy a cheap people carrier and a TVR/Porsche.

What do you think ?

[SimonS4MTM]

Same situation here, got 81k and doing about 20k/year. Really want to keep another 2 years till the loan is payed off.

Just keeping fingers crossed nothing goes pop

[DavidT]

If you love the car and are happy with the costs, keep it.

You can make lots of repairs to your S4 over then next couple of years for the cost buying and running a reasonable second car.

[TimJMS]

With three kids, then option 3 probably sounds the most attractive.

But you possibly need to keep a very realistic expectation in mind of how far the sale of your 90,000 mile S4 will assist in helping to achieve this objective.

How about an option 4? Keep it and buy a people carrier. The S4 is an excellent fun-when-you-want-it-to-be mileage eater, and would you ever actually enjoy getting in a Mundaneo?

A TVR on the other hand will use up any repairs and maintenance fund in no time at all.

[AFAP18]

I totally agree. It was hard in the beggining, but now I see it´s much better.
Buy a family car (for me 1 year passat would be it), for the day by day. There are places that you go that you don´t want to go with the S4...

[samtheman]

i'd go for option 3, sell it and get a porsche.. but before you do sell it, take off all the good bits, i:e brakes and turbo's and replace them with my standard ones.. [img]images/graemlins/thumb.gif[/img]

[Prawn]

Thanks for your input guys, still no idea what to do.
Another option would be to sell the S4 and get an RS4 which
could do both ie family and biz, but do I want to spend 30K min on a car then put 25K a year on it and it be worthless in two years time.
Also if I do buy a std RS4 I will have to spend an additional 5K min to get it to be as quick etc as the S4 is
now !
I know the TVR would eat money (but then the S4 does) and if I am honest it is more a "I have always wanted one" idea.
The more I think about it the less I want a Porsche, too common and not realy my thing.

[jeffw]

Sell the S4, buy a Passet or A6 TDi for the 25K per year and get a Chimera or Griffith for high days and holidays...

[DavidT]

Have you mad your mind up Shaun ?

[Prawn]

Hi Dave,
No not yet, still mulling it over.
Mrs P has said that she would like to take over the S4 so that may be an option for keeping it (previousley she was adament that she wanted to stick with a small car) as she only does about 5K miles per year.
I have looked at a Noble but can't really justify the £40K price tag.
Still thinking of a Cerby 4.5, especially as my local specialist Austec Racing are now able to chip the Cerby to get back the lost performance from the poor factory mapping.

[DavidT]

That sounds like the ideal solution.

Which car would you do trackdays with though ?

[Prawn]

Hi Dave,
Well that would depend on whether it was wet or dry [img]images/graemlins/thumbs.gif[/img]