Re: Workfare judged illegal : Thu Feb 28, 2013 12:58 pm
Sal Paradise wrote:
Interestingly I was reading an article in MT which was explaining the benefits of extending car lease contracts to five years and how the reliability of correctly maintained vehicles shows little deteriation over the extended period. Now they were mainly talking about high value vehicles.
I accept your explanation of why they use new cars but it doesn't take a huge leap of faith to suggest significant saving could be made with little impact on reliability given the 'clinical nature' of modern cars. If we accept servicing cost will remain reasonably static and 'blown engines etc' could easily be insured against that leaves that pesky residual values. Even you would accept that straight line depreciation is not appropriate for cars then the hit to residual value in years 0-3 is significantly greater than years 4-6 i.e. reducing balance. Based on that the saving even with the 'Car Care' could be significant.
I accept your explanation of why they use new cars but it doesn't take a huge leap of faith to suggest significant saving could be made with little impact on reliability given the 'clinical nature' of modern cars. If we accept servicing cost will remain reasonably static and 'blown engines etc' could easily be insured against that leaves that pesky residual values. Even you would accept that straight line depreciation is not appropriate for cars then the hit to residual value in years 0-3 is significantly greater than years 4-6 i.e. reducing balance. Based on that the saving even with the 'Car Care' could be significant.
That is all true, I've had the wool pulled from my eyes a few years ago - to be precise, when I started to have to pay for my own car instead of the luxury of having the company pay for it.
It was a blinding flash of inspiration when I realised that none, absolutely NONE of the car mechanics I have known over the years have ever owned a brand new car, not even the mechanis I've known who OWNED the bloody garages have ever had a new car, they all buy them at 3+ years and just maintain them for ever.
I have two cars in the family that I pay for myself, one is an Aug 06 with only 36k miles, its needed a new battery in all of that time and three regular service visits, the other is an Aug 05 with 65k miles and it just reaching the point where what you'd call "major" things are going wrong, I replaced the clutch & had the gearbox reconditioned last year and have had a new starter motor fitted none of which will need doing again in its lifetime, total cost last year around £800 for maintenance, sounds a lot but if I'd been running a company lease car still then that would have been between two and three months non-maintained lease cost.
