Continued: Ten signs that you need a NEW car

Family growing in size

As time goes on, priorities change & so does the family size. So your small hatchback that suits all your needs mayn’t be practical enough to transport you, your wife, your kids, your parents & in-laws. So if you see that your family size has grown or is about to grow, you may want to get a bigger car rather than squeezing people into the same car (which is illegal & could also cause a tyre burst if the car is heavily overloaded & driven for long distances).

Ergonomics not adding up

So you’ve been driving for a while now and you have grown a little older. Gone are the times when you were so desperate to get behind the wheel that you would drive whatever was available to you. Now with the evolving times, you want more comforts. Features like adjustable steering wheel & height adjustable seats are needed to get more comfortable or say you need an automatic transmission to deal with the rapid growth in traffic. Unfortunately such things cannot be added in the aftermarket world in a reliable manner & hence you would be better off buying a new car that suits your needs.

Impacted by bans

Going by the current situation in the country, you might soon be impacted by these bans. So if you have a diesel car that is nearing the 10 year mark or a petrol car that is nearing the 15 year mark, chances for getting a new fitness certificate are very slim. Some places like Delhi NCR & Kerala will not allow you to run a diesel car that is older than 10 years old, even if it is meeting all the requirements.

Though this may not impact you now, soon more and more states are going to adopt these policies and you will end up getting stuck. So if you see yourself getting impacted by these bans, you will have no option but to buy a new car.

Spending more time at fuel stations

As they say the only permanent thing in life is ‘change’. When you bought your car, your commute may not have been very much. But say your commute has drastically increased and you end up spending a lot of time in pumps to fill up. This can get very irritating and can also cause a deep hole in your pocket. So when you arrive at such a situation, you should consider getting a new car. Also as the car becomes older, its efficiency will start dropping, however well the car has been maintained.

There could be alternatives like choosing CNG/LPG (for a petrol car), but that will again require you to go to the fuel station regularly & not to mention wait in the long lines to fill up. I have a car that I have been using for over 10 years now & the car has been serving me very well. However when my commute increased from 30 kms a day to 120 kms a day, I realized that factors like fuel economy & fuel tank capacity which I had never cared about became very important as I ended up having to go to the pumps every other day.

You’re driving an obsolete model

Now this brings us to the last aspect, your insurance. As the vehicle becomes older & older, the IDV (Insured Declared Value) decreases. Some insurers may reduce the IDV a lot if the model has been discontinued. They will continue to provide you insurance, however incase of any theft or accident, you end up loosing a lot. Let me narrate an incident a colleague went through.

My colleague owned a Yamaha bike which was running in good shape. However the company decided to discontinue the model after a few years. Now when he went to get his 4 year old bike insured, the insurer said that since the bike has been discontinued, he is only entitled to an IDV of Rs 5,000 & would have to pay a premium of Rs 1,500 for that. He would however still be eligible for the third party insurance. Now in normal circumstances, that is okay. But had he met with an accident or had his bike got stolen, he would have only been entitled to get Rs 5,000, which would have been much lesser than the resale value of the bike.

So if you are in a similar situation, its wiser to sell the vehicle and move on to getting a newer one.

Image source: 6 ,  7