Ladies & gentlemen I am beating my head against the wall and would very much appreciate your advice on the following conundrum. Currently we are running two cars but need to cut down to one car. However as we live out in the wilds and both myself and my wife must travel to work we still need two vehicles. Unfortunately its too far to cycle and no buses or trains are available nearby. The only solution would be for me to swap my car for a scooter as I have a full motorcycle license I can jump on anything but an X-Max 250 is the desired weapon of choice.

So far so good all makes sense I think but it gets complicated because we must find the best way to pay for the scooter. The Audi I drive is 12yrs old with 135,000mls and worth about £1500 but has had a lot of money spent on it. My wife`s Fiesta 1.2 has 77,000mls and is worth about £1000. I need approx £2500 to fund the scooter but we already have a personal loan with 2yrs to run and 2.5k to pay. It makes more sense I think to keep the Audi as it would make the better family car although it uses more fuel than the Fiesta. So by selling this car I still need to find £1500 but im going round in circles trying to find out if I will save any money bearing in mind I will have to take out additional finance for the £1500.


The road tax on the Fiesta = £165 per year
The road tax on the Audi = £215 per year


Insurance for the Audi is around £300 and around £300 for the Fiesta


We have been doing our best to keep down the fuel spend to around £100 per month on fuel for the Audi and around £80 for the Fiesta.


The current loan repayments are approx £125 per mth.


The scooter will use (approx) £30 per mth in fuel, insurance will be £70 and £35 per year for road tax. But a loan of £1500 over 3yrs would be about £50 per mth.


Of course none of these figures include additional costs for servicing & maintenance.


Im sure all the facts are here but can anyone with better skills than I help to unravel them ?


Many thanks in advance

your figures say to me get rid of the Audi save your self some money and buy a scooter your choice

If you dont want big bills for car repairs, especially welding in the future.... sell the Ford and keep the Audi Fords rust, even newer ones... always have always will.

Thanks I think its obvious guys isnt it one of the cars has to fund the scooter. I suppose in a couple of years once the finance has gone I may be able to save to buy something nicer outright. Ok just need to decide on the Fiesta or the Audi A3.

You should easily find a good (but used) scooter for ~£1000.
I've got a used MBK Doodo for 799€ from a Yam dealer with full warranty. That was 2 years and 12tkm ago. It's still running fine. It can do everything well except highway (97kph top speed, so staying behind the trucks).
If it has to be a XMax 250, consider: you probably won't save much money with a big/expensive scooter.

Tough one,

Me i would keep the Audi and sell the fiesta.
The Fiesta will be easier to sell, as people still want small cars.
Then with the money you get from the Fiesta, use that to buy a Scoot, should be able to get a nice 250 for around £1000.
That way you will be saving money from the off. When your loan ends then see how you are getting on before borrowing more money to buy a newer scoot.

Thing is, the Fiesta is rather small and not especially fast or comfortable, thus its quite limited. Keeping the Audi will enable you to do the occasional longer holiday trip with 2 people and the kitchen sink, so it makes sense generally to keep the Audi. I think in the bigger scheme of things there won't be much difference in running costs between the 2 cars - the biggest single cost is actually depreciation, and both your cars are obviously quite old, so thats no longer an issue, insurance is the same, so its down to fuel and servicing, which are only going to be a couple of hundred £ a year different.
If you want to keep one car for a while, the Audi is probably a better bet as its probably better built. Some cars do go on and on...a colleague bought an ancient Honda Accord 2 ltr for £500 - it already had 160,000 miles on the clock and she used it for a 20 mile each way commute each day and frequent trips to Essex from the NE for at least 2-3 years, so it must have done easily 200,000 miles on by the time she got rid of it... it just wouldn't go wrong and never cost anything to get through its MOT!

One thing to bear in mind is scooter servicing, its not cheap and is frequently required. Make sure you include that in your sums.

We have decided to sell the Audi and keep the fiesta. That will mean a slightly larger budget for the scoot and the fiesta is capable of longer trips as we are only a small family. We can always upgrade the fiesta in a year or two and I am being asked to make the biggest sacrifice if you can call it that. In addition we have a soft spot for the fiesta which has never let us down ever and we have spent next to nothing on it. I can also service the little 1.25 16v motor myself too.

Thanks again to everyone, much appreciated.