Have been looking at the car ownership thing myself and have come to the personal conclusion that I am going the old car route.
My reasoning’s are such, to explain and some of them will rule some people out of a similar path, but I have done much research into this.
1 - Sadly I am a car enthusiast
2 - Singapore is a difficult place for a car enthusiast unless you have deep pockets.
3 - I am handy with a spanner
4 - Because I had nowhere to keep the stuff back in the UK I have all my car tools with me (including an engine hoist !!!)
5 - I am reasonably handy with a spanner
6 - Nothing predigest, I have just never owned a Pacific Rim car and they have never appealed to me (at least not the daily driver stuff)
These points have got me looking at mid 90's BMW 3 and 5 Series and Merc E class.
There are some complete lemons out there bit some good stuff too, I am now just being very fussy. But for under $20k you can have a BMW 520i (E34 from 1993) with COE till 2012!
Basically that’s Whats Left of the COE + Scrap / Export value. I.E. Bangernomics Singapore style.
You do need to know what you are looking at however and I have walked away from some complete nightmares!