I know people who never buy used cars, but I like a car that’s
been around the block a few times and has lost two-thirds of its original
value.
I made an exception for the Ford Ka. It was the second brand new
car I’d bought (after the VW Polo) and I bought it using a new finance package
(now quite common) called PCP – personal contract purchase.
It was an idea dreamed up by motor manufacturers to allow people
to buy new cars with minimal deposit and to be able to change the car every
three years without having to stump up another lump sum.
They were so keen to persuade people to try this new-fangled thing
that there were lots of low-interest deals or even interest-free deals. I think
my interest awakened at the words “interest free” and I bought a Ford Ka – a
little red one for Margaret to use. I may also have had one eye on Tom and Sam
being able to drive it, or at least learn/practise in it.
PCP works by asking for a low deposit (typically only a couple of
hundred quid), you then pay a monthly sum for three years and you then have
three options:
·
Hand the car back.
·
Buy it for a pre-agreed sum.
- Trade it in and take out a new PCP agreement
on a new car.
I’d driven a few Ka models and I quite liked the car. It was
small, easy to drive and it looked quite stylish. We got a bright red one in
1998 (S-reg). Ours had the dark grey plastic bumpers.
The Ka had good headroom and plenty of room for the two in the
front. The rear seats were tight (just two of them) but we did go four-up quite
often. The car handled OK, a bit nose heavy, but there was power steering
(quite rare then on a supermini), which was great.
What wasn’t great was the engine. It used a 1.3-litre pushrod
engine, which (although much updated and revised) could be traced back to the
Ford Anglia. This has decent mid-range torque, but wouldn’t rev, so coupled
with high gearing to improve refinement and economy, the result was very
sluggish performance.
It would trundle along happily at an illegal 80mph on the motorway, but hills took their toll and overtaking needed good judgment.
I didn’t trade it in for a new one after three years, I bought it
for the pre-agreed sum. I’d used it to go to Bristol and few times and the
mileage was way over the allowance. Tom and Sam did drive the car and Sam used
it quite a lot, including to get to school. It had a couple of scrapes, not
down to the kids, and we had to have a new door skin fitted after a supermarket
car park incident. Annoyingly, while it was parked outside King’s School,
someone scratched the side quite badly with a key, a deliberate act of damage
(possibly they were annoyed by schoolkids parking in their street all day).
It didn’t give much trouble. The exhaust failed really quickly
(around three years) and, in later life, the sump leaked a bit of oil (it had
gone porous according to Andy Bunyan), but we still managed to sell it for a
thousand pounds to a girl who had just passed her test.
By then, the Ka had lost some of its style, it was looking a bit
everyday. Tom and Sam will have happy memories of the Ka.
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