Ditch Your Car

By Harvey Jones | 8 July 2008

| 13 Comments

Here's one surefire way to drive down the cost of motoring and save yourself thousands of pounds a year: sell your car.

That's right. Sell it. Put an ad in Exchange & Mart. Get rid. There must be somebody out there who wants to buy it.

Jeremy Clarkson and his ilk might despise you for abandoning car ownership, but ignore him, your bank balance will thank you.

Top Gear, bottom line

Last year, the RAC calculated the average cost of running a Ford Focus was £4,678 while a Peugeot 407 costs £5,996. And those figures were calculated in the days when a barrel of light sweet crude still cost under $100.

If you're spending £6,000 a year, ditching your wheels makes perfect financial sense. Think about it. Six grand is an awful lot -- that's £500 a month, nearly £125 a week -- just imagine what you could do with that kind of money.

I'm being silly, aren't I? You wouldn't consider it for a second. You need a car. You rely on it. You couldn't live without it. It's your pride and joy.

Petrol hedonists

True, if you live in the country where the nearest Tesco is 10 miles away and the once-weekly bus service leaves on Tuesday and returns on Wednesday, then yes, you pretty much need a car.

And if you're trying to squeezing three kids, a pram, the family's weekly shop and a damp golden retriever into the back of a beat-up Volvo estate, no-one is going to take talk you into taking the bus instead.

But everybody else should give it more than a moment's thought. It's not like you have to renounce driving for good, all you are doing is renouncing the hassle and expense of ownership.

Because it is absolutely possible to have access to a car when you need it, without having to squander thousands on road tax, repairs, insurance, breakdown and depreciation. The answer is to sell your car and either rent when you need it, or sign up to a car club instead.

Guzzle

For short periods, hiring a car is pretty affordable. Alamo charges just under £100 to rent a Ford Focus from midday Friday to Monday.

RAC figures show that running a Ford Focus costs £390 a month. So you could rent two weekends a month and still be £200 to the good. And the chances are you won't get round to renting that often, upping your savings even further.

Car clubs, popping up across the country, could make even more sense. Members can book a locally-parked car on a pay-as-you-go basis, either days ahead or with a few minutes' notice. You gain access using a smart card, find the keys in the glovebox and off you go.

You can expect to pay around £5 an hour, while some clubs also charge around 15p per mile. If you drive around 6000 miles annually, a car club could save you more than £1,500 a year. Plus you'll also get some cash from flogging off your old motor.

There are clubs in London, Leeds, Bristol, Edinburgh, Brighton, Liverpool, Manchester, York, Cambridge and beyond (although not necessarily the back of beyond). Visit www.carclubs.org.uk for more info.

Four wheels bad, two wheels good.

There are plenty of other options. You could call a cab to take your shopping bags home from Tesco. Carshare to work. Buy a bike. Walk.

If ditching your gas guzzler really is too much to contemplate, you could downsize instead.

The average family living in London could save up to £6,000 a year by trading down to a more efficient car and renting on the odd occasion when they need something bigger, according to Avis.

At least, they will if they downgrade from a pricey Range Rover Sport 2.7TD, which costs an average £12,475 a year to run, to a Peugeot 107 1.0 Urban 5-door costing just £6,465.

This would save them £6,010 a year, a figure that includes the cost of a 10-day rental of a seven-person people carrier for the family's annual holiday.

Shanks's pony

This isn't about going green. Eco-warriors have manifestly failed to drive people off the roads. People like their cars too much. But what they don't like is filling up with petrol at £1.25 a litre.

Motorists are starting to give this question serious thought. One in 10 are now thinking about scrapping their vehicle altogether, according to research from Insurance.co.uk.

Of course, most of us won't go that far. We can't. Modern society has been built around the car.

But we could always join the one in three drivers who are thinking about buying a more fuel-efficient car, or the one in six downsizing. With oil prices and the UK economy hurtling in different directions, some of us may soon have little choice.

> Five Ways To Cut Your Petrol Bill
> Get a great car insurance quote via Fool.co.uk