What Car Should I Buy?

Um.. anywhere from 'that doesn't sound too bad' to 'are you fucking kidding me?!'
http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/87559-stagea-insurance-4.html

Firstly do an online check (HPI and shit) against the reg numbers and VIN.
Perhaps health check in a trusted garage?
Sign some sort of sales agreement, check fella's passport, get the V5's stub - make sure he sends the thing off to the DVLA.
If it has MOT and tax, then you'll need to do an insurance. Do a temporary one first (Aviva provide free weeks of insurance for a newly bought car, but not sure about private sale - then their quote is ridiculous, so you'd have to cancel).

I'm thinking car-yard sale might be safer for my first attempt..

Just don't trust anyone.

I don't.

Good. You've the basics covered then.

That Stagea would probably be around 2k a year to insure, maybe a bit more.

£2000 for insurance? Are you fucking kidding me?

If you buy from the dealers, still insist on checks. Don't trust their HPI checks either - do yours.
I was fnucked around twice - once they provided HPI checks on a car with "misspelled" VIN.

I'm sure my insurance in Oz was less than $500AUD. Okay the car was a piece of shit but still.

£2000 for insurance? Are you fucking kidding me?

You can bring it down with a proper alarm and immobiliser and a garage :-) And some creative form filling.

If you buy from the dealers, still insist on checks. Don't trust their HPI checks either - do yours.
I was fnucked around twice - once they provided HPI checks on a car with "misspelled" VIN.

Yeah. Thing with dealers is they have lots of windows available for breaking in their yards and paint jobs these days are just so expensive, especially when every panel is keyed.. ;)

I will double check their.. what's a HPI anyway?

You can bring it down with a proper alarm and immobiliser and a garage :-) And some creative form filling.

Ok, how long do I have to have some boring piece of shit, 1.1L fucking Puntos hatchcrack before I can buy a real car at decent insurance rates? How much history do you need, generally?

Car history.

Assuming I don't prang into fuckers every second week..

And it's good to know if previous owner paid off their car finance. You can end up having it repossessed.

"You can take my car, but you'll never take my beer!"

Assuming I don't prang into fuckers every second week..

I don't know. I have 5 year no claims bonus and pay even more than before. Every year of discount they just bring the price up anyway and then let me off a bit. All and all it's a fucking flat rate for the last 5 years.

http://www.rac.co.uk/products-services/car-data-checks/

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/BuyingAndSellingAVehicle/AdviceOnBuyingAndSellingAVehicle/DG_4022402

In Australia, registration includes 3rd party insurance. I opted for fire and theft on top of that for $500, say. Fully comp. on a nicer car would be more like $1000

I might flip through an Autotrader and see what's kicking about.. any other pools of vehicles (fuck ebay)?

My insurance is £10 cheaper to go TPFT.

Yeah, this is fucked. I'm going to end up impulse buying some stolen Jap import out of sheer laziness

All this talk of fitting bikes in cars, who would've knew my 63cm track bike fit into the back of an MGB GT with just the front wheel out? was very surprised. practical and pretty.