An old car was seen as something you did out of desperation, or because your uncle Derek insisted that his 1998 diesel estate “still had plenty of life left in it,” despite sounding like a cement mixer full of old cutlery. But something rather curious has been happening across large swathes of Europe, particularly in places where the sun shines, the bureaucracy flows, and common sense prevails. In countries like Portugal, there has been a rebellion against monthly repayments, depreciation curves and the soul-crushing inevitability of finance agreements that outlast most marriages. Welcome to the world of Bangernomics.
Now, for the uninitiated, Bangernomics is the noble art of running a cheap, older car whilst spending as little money on it as humanly possible. All the while, you can smirk at your neighbours who’ve just remortgaged their house to afford a shiny German SUV with more computing power than the Apollo missions.
Mediterranean pastel
In Portugal, for example, the roads are full of cars that would have been ceremoniously scrapped in the UK sometime during the Blair administration. Ancient diesel Peugeots chug along heroically, their paintwork faded to a sort of Mediterranean pastel by decades of relentless sunshine. Old Mercedes saloons glide past like old, retired colonels; dignified, slightly creaky but absolutely unbothered by all the modern nonsense. And nobody bats an eyelid.
Because people here have worked something out. Cars don’t need to be expensive.
This, of course, is heresy in Britain. In the UK, we’ve been conditioned to believe that a car must be either new, nearly new, or financed to within an inch of its life. The moment a vehicle dares to approach six figures on the odometer, we start treating it like it’s contracted a contagious disease. In Blighty, we couldn’t possibly run an old banger because we prefer to clutch our PCP Agreements like security blankets. We kid ourselves that the family runner has to be traded in because something might go wrong. Well, here’s a thought. Something will go wrong. That’s just the nature of machines. And here’s the crucial point: repairs are often still cheaper than spending £400 a month for the privilege of watching a new car lose value faster than a politician’s promise.
Lifestyle statement
In Portugal, folk understand this: A car is a tool, not a lifestyle statement. Not an extension of our personalities or a rolling shrine to our credit scores. It’s something that gets people from A to B, preferably with air conditioning that works most of the time. And because of that mindset, people are far less precious about what they drive. A scratch? Who cares? A dent? Adds character. A mysterious rattle? Turn the radio up. Meanwhile, in Britain, a single stone chip can trigger an existential crisis.
The economics of Bangernomics are, quite frankly, irresistible. Let’s say you spend £1,500 on an old car. It’s not glamorous, it’s not particularly fast, it doesn’t have ambient lighting that can be set to “Arctic Serenity” or whatever nonsense manufacturers are peddling this year. But it does actually work. You can run it for a few years, spend a bit on maintenance and a set of new tyres. Then, when it finally gives up the ghost, you sell it for £300 or scrap it for roughly the price of a decent night out.
Total cost? Peanuts.
Compare that to the average UK motorist, who is locked into a financial arrangement that requires monthly payments roughly equivalent to a small mortgage, plus insurance, plus servicing, plus the creeping dread that comes with knowing you’re never going to actually own the thing. And for what? So you can sit in traffic jams whilst sitting in something with a touchscreen you can barely figure out?
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Modern cars
OK! I know that modern cars are safer, cleaner, and infinitely more efficient. They won’t, in most cases, spontaneously fall apart on the A22 during light drizzle. But they’re also staggeringly expensive and increasingly complicated, which means that when something does go wrong (and it will), you’re not going to be fixing it with a spanner and a bit of optimism. Someone will charge you €100 to connect it into a diagnostic computer whilst you pray that the error code isn’t [DEV:666], which may involve selling a kidney.
Bangernomics, by contrast, is gloriously simple. Older cars tend to be less complicated. Less electronic wizardry means fewer things to go catastrophically wrong. And when they do, the fixes are often straightforward and relatively cheap. There’s also a certain liberation in driving a car that you don’t feel too precious about. You can park it anywhere without performing a risk assessment, you can chuck things into the boot without worrying about scratching the trim. Basically, you can live with it.
So why hasn’t the UK fully embraced this philosophy?
Partly, it’s cultural. We like shiny new things that make us appear successful. You see, there’s a deeply ingrained sense that our cars say something about who we are, even if they suggest that we can’t make sensible financial decisions. You could argue about the small matter of regulation, meaning emission zones, favourable road taxes and insurance perks. All of these can make running an older car in the UK more complicated than it perhaps ought to be. It’s still not impossible, but it might require a bit more thought.
And then there’s the weather. In Portugal, a car can survive for decades without crumbling into a pile of bran flakes. In Britain, a light dusting of salt is enough to send even the hardiest vehicle into an existential spiral. Which means Bangernomics in the UK requires a bit more vigilance and a willingness to embrace the occasional welding bill.
But even with all these challenges, bangernomic logic remains compelling. Why spend a fortune on something that depreciates the moment you drive it off the forecourt, when you could spend a fraction of the depreciation alone on something that’s already taken the hit? Why tie yourself into years of payments for a car that will, ultimately, do the same job as something ten or fifteen years older? Why, in short, are we not all doing this?
Mindset shift
Perhaps it’s because bangernomics requires a slight shift in mindset? A willingness to accept imperfection. To prioritise value over vanity. To embrace the idea that a car is, at its core, just a machine. Once you make that shift, it’s incredibly hard to go back, because there’s something deeply satisfying about beating the system and refusing to play the game as it’s been laid out. Driving past rows of gleaming, financed machinery in something that costs far less than their initial deposit in the knowledge that you’ve actually come out on top is, in itself, completely priceless.
So yes, the Europeans, particularly over here in sun-soaked Portugal, may actually be onto something.
The question is whether the British motorist will ever wake up, smell the proverbial coffee and realise that sometimes, the smartest move isn’t owning a branny, especially if your characterful old-faithful still does the job.
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