Despite the pressure to have a new car every couple of years, many of us have held out for the "banger", the cheap, cheerful (and often unreliable) motor, says John Cradden
'Every car built before 1995 should be scrapped," said Jeremy, the insufferably arrogant gynaecologist in the brilliant RTÉ comedy, Paths to Freedom. "It's a safety issue."
Jeremy's comments were within deliberate earshot of a driver of an ancient Ford Fiesta waiting for the car wash while the doctor ordered yet another cycle for his already very clean new Mercedes. In a moment that raised loud cheers in my viewing household, the fuming Fiesta driver grabbed a nearby bucket of water and threw it over him, along with a one-finger salute.
Although a purely fictitious character, the dousing of Jeremy will undoubtedly strike a chord with owners of pre-1995 cars determined to resist increasing peer and social pressure to ditch their perfectly serviceable bangers for a brand-new model.
After all, with Ladas no longer sold here, and Skodas long since elevated to respectibility, 02-plated motorists need something to laugh at (or at least look down on) don't they?
Contrary to popular perception, there are plenty of people for whom driving a banger is an active choice as opposed to badge of involuntary austerity. Furthermore, a closer look at pre-1995 cars for sale shows that cheap doesn't always have to equal rubbish.
"There are people I know earning far less than me who are buying new cars," said Conor Chatten, a technical consultant with software company Adobe and the owner of a black 1995 Fiat Punto. He bought the car from a friend 18 months ago for £2,200 and uses it mainly to cart his young family about at the weekends.
There's even a name for this philosophy. Bangernomics is the title of a well-known (but sadly out of print) book written by UK motoring journalist James Ruppert, formerly a car dealer. According to Ruppert, Bangernomics is the science of running an old car for next to nothing.
The general idea is to look for a vehicle more than seven or eight years old but which needs no major work, run it until it is just about to need big money spending on it, then sell it and buy something else.
While many cash-strapped individuals will have inadvertently followed this science for years, others are embracing it in order to free their hard-earned income for what they consider to be more important purchases in life. "I wanted to pay upfront for my car rather than have to budget for paying the finance on something a lot more expensive," says Lisa Matassa, a freelance journalist who runs a 1993 Nissan Sunny, bought for £1,800 about 18 months ago.
A growing number of motorists are coming to realise that the value of a new car drops like a stone the moment it is driven out of the showroom, whereas the depreciation 'curve' on a seven to eight year old car is as flat as a pancake.
Branding all cars built before 1995 as bangers is throughly unjust in many cases. Mechanically, most of the vehicles that are now creeping into 'bangerdom' are designed to last and in many cases are less likely to break down because they have less of the complex electrical trickery that frequently leads to problems with the latest new models.
The genuine 'old banger' has been a much-curbed species of late, thanks to the successful mid-1990s scrappage scheme and the introduction of the NCT. This is to be welcomed because it ensures that more of the well maintained, looked after and truly roadworthy older cars survive.
So what about the downsides? Well, as Jeremy the gynaecologist said: "It's a safety issue." Older cars may not have useful safety equipment that we now take for granted, such as airbags, ABS and stronger crumple zones.
More recently, the environmental impact of bangers has been used as another stick to beat them with. A car built around 1990 emits up to 30 times more pollution that the same car built in 2000 - so says the AA. It's certainly an argument that carmakers and dealers are keen to propagate: buy a new car and you can help do your bit for the environment.
However, it is estimated that a car uses more energy and produces more pollution in its manufacture and disposal than in the whole of its working life. So by keeping an old car on the road, instead of scrapping it and buying a brand new one, it is reasonable to argue that you are doing the environment a bigger favour.
In any case, the pollution isn't caused by old cars, but by badly maintained ones. Three- or four-year-old cars can pollute more, if badly neglected, than well-maintained older cars. You'd be amazed how much a car can deteriorate in the space of three to four years with little or no proper maintenence or servicing.
Furthermore, there is less incentive to use a banger for unnecessary journeys than a brand new car. New car owners may feel the need to get as much use out of their vehicles as possible for their money because of the sharp depreciation, making them less inclined to take public transport to work, for instance.
But then there's the all-important question of image. Like it not, the kind of car we drive says something about us. Banger drivers may not look as snazzy as the driver of a new MINI or VW Beetle, for instance.
However, there is a certain 'banger chic' associated with a shrewd choice of battered car. This unlikely hipness has been cultivated by alternative rock bands who make a point of shunning ostentatious badges of wealth and celebrity.
Even mega-rock stars drive bangers. For years, Bono drove a battered 60s Humber Super Snipe before graduating to a 70s Mercedes SEL. His wife, Ali, still drives a white 1991 VW Golf diesel.