waste wrote:Gday,
I'm a uni student from brisbane (just to let you know of my situation, heh) and I was interested in buying an FTO. I was looking at spending around 13,000 max on a car and I was wondering how expensive they were to maintain and fix, parts wise and stuff. Also insurance heh..
Bryan,
Well you'll probably be able to pick up a car for around that but it's either going to be a GR Tiptronic or maybe a GPX with lots of k's on it. To be brutally honest, I'd save up some more money, it could save you some hassles in the long run.
Parts are generally pretty good but it depends on what goes wrong on the car. Servicing, I would recommend Nihon down the Gold Coast. Parts I would recommend Mark Gibbs Panel House at Slacks Creek.
As for insurance, depends on your age and NCB obviously. For me as an over 25, rating 1 driver, it's between $1000-$1100. I'd probably add a couple of hundred for each year and rating under.
Rego will be ~$800 and of course there's stamp duty when you buy it. You'll want to use 98RON fuel which given the current price of fuel, can be a significant cost. Luckily the FTO is very fuel efficient
To give you an example, I purchased a 94 Manual GPX from a private seller in Sydney for $16,900. Including insurance, I will have spent around $21,000 to get the car back to a mechanically sound condition. I had her serviced, suspension replaced, guard liners replaced, CV and steering dust boots replaced and in my case, the tyres are shot so I'm replacing them too. The suspension is me being picky but most needed to be done.
Definitely get an RACQ check on any car you're looking to buy, even better if you have an FTO owner look over the car. There's all sorts of little tricks to look for to establish whether it's a good car or not
