It really is what you want, all I would say is.....don't waste money! You can drive a number of supercars on a £500 track experience.
If you're worried about replacing the discs on your R then I wouldn't go near owning a 40K Aston, yep it's £40K but it's still the £100K car to maintain......have you looked at the servicing, parts and ownership costs for those?! The £40K purchase is the 'easy part' (4yrs ago they were sub £30K)
e.g this:
- They need an annual service for £600-£1000 depending on which service & where you go
- Then there are a few bits that may or may not fail like door modules & lights, which can be pricey but wouldn't put me off & don't seem to be prolific failures - same on any car really
- The big thing to watch out for are clutches which seem to have varied lifespan depending on usage, if you do mainly longer drive & treat it with sympathy they should be OK for 70-80k but driven badly in heavy traffic & town there are reports of far shorter lifespan. Obviously you can't tell condition on purchase of a manual and you don't know how driven before
- Brake disks & pads are expensive but you don't have to use Aston Martin parts
- There are some issues with paint bubbling especially round door handles on earlier cars and because of the type of car you'd want it to be sorted
- Not good on tax and fuel if these matter, my friend had a 4.3 and got 12-14mpg round town and 18-20 on a run
- Very mileage sensitive, they seem to drop in desirability once mileage is over about 35,000, not a problem if you buy cheap or don't use much
I worked out that to be safe I would need to budget about £2500 a year for service, a few bits, tires and brakes, over say 3-4 years I'd be amazed if this was that far out as inevitably knowing my luck it would need a clutch, about £2.5K. And a Bamford Rose £6k exhaust upgrade!
Supercars.......Yep do the experience day's I did and realised how underwhelming most 'supercars' are to drive, once the initial buzz it was a McLaren, Ferrari or Lambo etc wore off the thought of spending a huge wad for such a car to use on the UK roads was nonsensical (I'm not old, fat, 60 or middle-eastern and want to drive it round at 20-50mph posing, revving it every now and then in front of a load of twats with iphones and cameras) in driving terms I have had more fun and 'connection' in the R, an MGTF, Elise and a VX220 (but I'm bias). I tend to do reverse man maths having worked out the costs, think that is do-able, but then think what does the car actually do or give me in driving terms in return for the amount I'm spending that I don't have or performance I can actually use.......always ends there for me.
Discs for the R are now a snip at circa £700 a set from Fish Bros