Bangernomics is the name attributed to buying an old wreck of a car for not much money, and running it in to the ground, and then beginning the cycle again.<\/p>\n
I tried my hand at Bangernomics a good dozen-or-so years ago.<\/p>\n
I went to several car auctions.<\/p>\n
I studied form (such as the form of cars is a thing that can be studied).<\/p>\n
Eventually I bought a Rover at an auction.<\/p>\n
It had a valid MOT.<\/p>\n
I insured it, put some tax on it, and ran around Somerset and Bath for a few months.<\/p>\n
One day, just after\u00a0a torrential downpour, I noticed, when I parked up, that the carpet beneath my feet was damp.<\/p>\n
I peeled back the carpet and discovered that the floor had rusted right through.<\/p>\n
I took the car to a garage for a once-over.<\/p>\n
They declared it a loss.<\/p>\n
It wouldn’t pass an MOT.<\/p>\n
It was mostly held together by fibreglass and resin stuffed with newspaper, and spray-painted over.<\/p>\n
That was my first and only deliberate venture in to the experience of bangernomics.<\/p>\n
Having got the motorbike bug back – and the itch is worse\/better than it ever was – I discarded the notion of having a car as my main form of transport.<\/p>\n
I sold my Vectra, and trundled around the countryside on my two-wheeled transports, and thoroughly enjoyed every single mile.<\/p>\n
The winter of 2013\/14 threatened to be a bit grim.<\/p>\n
My commute, at that time, involved a fairly short, but infamous stretch of the M1 motorway.<\/p>\n
Leicester services, and J21a.<\/p>\n
I decided to buy a car.<\/p>\n
In October 2013 I found the Jaguar.<\/p>\n
I went to see what could possibly be wrong with a ten-year old car of that marque, that it was on the market for such a small amount of money.<\/p>\n
The brakes didn’t feel quite right. And there was a suspension-related knock from the offside rear.<\/p>\n
I paid \u00a31,500 for the car.<\/p>\n
I found a decent independent garage who confirmed it needed new discs all round, and that it was the brushes that needed attention in the offside rear suspension.<\/p>\n
The total price for all of the work brought the overall purchase price of the car to just under \u00a32,000.<\/p>\n
That was about 18 months ago.<\/p>\n
This winter the car has had much more use than last.<\/p>\n
My week-long commute is a touch under 350 miles, but 320 of those miles is divided between my Monday morning trip to work, and my Friday evening trip back home.<\/p>\n
And the weather, this winter, has been sub-zero for a long stretch.<\/p>\n
With snow and\/or heavy rain thrown in.<\/p>\n
So the bikes have stayed in the garage, and the Jag has been copping all the mileage.<\/p>\n
A couple of months ago the car needed a new offside front main\/dip bulb.<\/p>\n
The old one, I discovered, had burnt out and had melted part of the plastic connector.<\/p>\n
A mobile vehicle electrician sorted that out for me.<\/p>\n
Today I noticed that the same light has stopped working again.<\/p>\n
I’ll replace the bulb – probably this weekend – even though it’s a right bitch of a job, and involves having to remove the car battery to create sufficient space to do the job.<\/p>\n
But I reckon the writing is on the wall for the Jag.<\/p>\n
My plan is to nurse the car through what’s left of the winter, and get back on the bikes.<\/p>\n
I’ll sell the car for around \u00a31,000 as soon as the weather becomes bike-commutable.<\/p>\n
And maybe buy another one as the winter of 2015\/16 approaches.<\/p>\n
I saw a lovely-looking, one previous owner, full dealer service history X-Type on Autotrader earlier this evening.<\/p>\n
I think it was on for \u00a31,500.<\/p>\n
Who knew that Jags were so cheap?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bangernomics is the name attributed to buying an old wreck of a car for not much money, and running it in to the ground, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}