Real cost of ownership

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Platbrak

Race Dog
Joined
Jul 25, 2007
Messages
1,068
Reaction score
3
Location
Pretoria, South Africa
Bike
Vespa (all models)
Actually I have two questions here.  First is what is the actual price in SA (now) to get an LC/LC Adv?  I am talking about all the farkles that come with the bike too such as BMW boxes, inners for the panniers, GPS, gearshift pro, all the usual options witout which the bike is just not what it should be.  Point is, many of us go for the options, so much so that the dealers hardly import bikes unless they are full spec.  Then there is the fee for registration and plates and other admin.  Add to that the first month of insurance (which should in all likelihood be more than what you paid the previous month for the old bike).  So how much do you eventually put down before you get the keys and head for the distant horison?  I saw somewhere that it could be north of 260k.  Is that possible?  I am not even talking about the finance costs  :eek:

Then there is the cost of ownership.  My last bike I had for 4 years and after calculating every cent spent on it (purchase, insurance, licence, fuel, service, tyres, batteries, the odd farkle minus selling price) it came to R1.90 (exactly) per kilometre.  If would have been even less if I had ridden it more but such is life.

I see somewhere that people are thinking about supplying their own oil for service and perhaps some other things too to keep costs down.  I guess it could get better as soon as the first LCs run out of warranty and people start servicing themselves but it will almost always be more expensive to run an expensive bike than a cheapy - even if you do have some repair work on the cheapy.

What is your experience in this regard?  I know some people can afford anything without blinking an eye but it would be handy to know what the real world experience is.  I am inclined to think that it is usually considerably more than we think, especially if you also consider depreciation.  I know it involves passion and a whole host of things that are difficult to explain of relate to monetary value.  But the bottomline is that most of us have a budget and we should know what we decide, not?
 
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