Words by Marcus Boothby
Despite the fact that I’ve been writing about cars for a couple years now, I’ve never owned my own car until a few weeks ago. Until recently, I’ve been relying on my mum’s Kia Picanto which is fine, but I’ve wanted my own car since passing my driving test in August 2020.
My arguments on not buying my own car as soon as I passed my test were fair enough considering my circumstances at the time. I had immediate access to the Picanto as it was just sitting in the driveway during the first half of 2020 thanks to the current pandemic going on, plus mum wasn’t using it so I started to use it and have enjoyed many thousands of miles driving it since last August. My other reason was that, I had to save up to buy my own car, which also meant finding the right car for me. I’m not the kind of person whose parent’s bought me a brand new car as a gift upon passing my test.
So, I set myself a budget of £1500 and began looking on AutoTrader and Facebook Marketplace. It got to the point where I came to a choice of a BMW 116i, a Mini Cooper and a VW Lupo 1.4. After much consideration, I went with a VW Lupo 1.4 S, which came modified and cost me £850. This is where the problems start.
The car was sitting on a driveway for a good month meaning it had to be jump started, which wasn’t ideal as the day I bought the car, Leicester had a snow storm, which started as soon as I started to take the Lupo back home. I also decided to stop the car and get some fuel, only to come back to it and the battery was completely flat. By this point, the snow was really heavy and hope was wearing thin. Long story short, a new battery was purchased, put it into the semi-abandoned Lupo and it wouldn’t start. Instead of faffing about in a petrol station, the Lupo was towed back home, where the battery was somehow charged en-route and started up fine when I pulled it into the driveway at home.
Fast forward a few weeks, the Lupo is now in a functional condition as it’s had new brakes fitted all-round, new fluids, new battery and a few other small bits done to it. Not much more needs to be done other than painting all the wheels white, removing adhesive gunk from the sides of the car where trim pieces used to be and fixing some other small bits.
So, what have I learnt from this experience? Well first of all, don’t buy a car during a bad snow storm or during a pandemic. If test drives were permitted, I would have known what to replace and fix before towing it back home. Secondly, I need to learn how to negotiate a bit better. The seller originally wanted £1000 for it, but knowing it needed work, I got him down to £850 but I think I could have got him down further to £750 or even £700. This would have made the cost of repairs a bit easier to stomach.
However, I’ve been driving the Lupo for a month or so now, putting just over 300 miles on it and it’s a brilliant little car. Sure, it makes make questionable noises, the head unit is awful and the ride height needs raising up to a comfortable ride height, but I am enjoying driving it to and from work every day.
What’s next for the Lupo then? I have no concrete plans for the car in the long-term, but in the short-term, I would love to make it as nice as possible. This means finishing the paint, clean the adhesive off the sides, fit a new head unit with CarPlay compatibility, and get some bits needed for the engine bay. It won’t be a show car as I need to drive it everyday but I want to make it something I’m proud of.
And of course, progress will be recorded here too. So make sure you stick around if you want to keep up with what’s going on with the Lupo.