I think a few people might need a sit down and a cold towel with what I'm about to reveal!!

Are you ready, sitting comfortably with a beer and a nurse on stand-by?













My figure appears to be coming out at £14k.

I've owned the car since April 2022 and admittedly have done in the region of 40,000 miles on the old girl, but this does NOT include any of the following;

- The cost of purchasing the car
- Road tax
- Insurance
- or the fact that I've fitted my own front springs, brakes, fixed rust and painted the rear quarter, and a few other jobs that avoided the intervention of a garage.

When I get a chance I'll group this into types of spending (i.e. service work, repairs, cosmetic stuff) but the biggest single bill was a £3k transmission rebuild, which to be fair you could classify as a "multiple" year expense i.e. its something that could be seen as a 5 year cost (using a bit of man maths).

So how do I feel about this?

Well I cannot deny that this is more than I anticipated when I got the calculator out. Do I simply look at it as roughly £6k per year? Do I take the transmission rebuild out and think of it as more like £4-5k per year? Or do I factor in the mileage and call it 35p per mile?

Not sure.

What is for sure is that whatever the car has needed it has had. There's probably some small bits missing from this but its about right.

I think the lesson here for anyone considering running one of these older cars, even if as in my case its not my only car and mostly used for the dog, moving old car parts around and travelling into Poland a few times (its been a good work horse) the bills can rack up pretty quickly if you buy one that's been neglected. I'm not sure mine has been as its got 18 services stamped, and plenty of history prior to my ownership, but even with that they still need money spent on them.

I think even if you factored in the cost of buying it and considered depreciation (which I think would be minimal even given its age and mileage) I think I'd still be sitting at around £8k per year all in.

Be interesting what other L322 owners of similar vintages in particular have spent.

I'm off for a lie down and a Thai massage with a happy ending ....................

Jon

Last edited by Scouse Exile on 9th Oct 2024 1:29pm. Edited 1 time in total

Lord. I hope you have many cheaper years of motoring ahead of you!

Nothing good comes easy hey.

My car came with full main dealer service history and I totalled the bills to around £25k (2009-2022) which oddly enough came out at an average just under £2k year - the same it has cost me in maintance the past two years. 2009 pre-facelift 3.6 TDV8.

I may not be the only member to think the way I do - I prefer to remain in blissful ignorance as to my yearly costs, especially as I now own two RR's, my mental health could well be affected if I started counting all the costs.

My daughter's series 1 coupe BMW has now cost £2800 this year, without tax, insurance etc

[quote="JayGee"]Just had a look at mine and it's costing about £13k per year for everything and I'm doing about 15k miles a year so £0.87 per mile.]

Out of interest what’s the yearly Ulez bill? 2009 pre-facelift 3.6 TDV8.

Last edited by KitTheRam on 10th Oct 2024 7:24am. Edited 1 time in total

Good question as I’ve never added it up and assumed £2k based on 3 charges per week but just added it up for the past 12 months and it’s £950 which is another reason to keep it. 2012 TDV8 Vogue (L322)