A brief guide to buying used cars from an extinct car maker

It’s not often that an entire make of car sinks beneath the waves. When one does, its vehicles tend to take a knock on the used market – but if you refuse to be daunted by driving a snuffer, there are some very good buys out there.

Now, you’re not about to hear us recommending anything by Sao, Tata, Daewoo, Simca or Plymouth. Or Hummer. No, not even when a minging H2 could ruin your life for not much more than £15k.

What you are about to hear us recommending is that you don’t turn your nose up at Rover. Or MG. We’re talking about the cars made before the company sank in 2005 – of which the 75/ZT remains a cult modern classic, and deservedly so.

Even a 25/ZR can make sense as a cheap runabout, and so can a 45 – though the ZS is a leap of faith, simply because it looks so much like the work of a teenager who’s already spent all his money on Max Power baseball caps. Still, we’re talking less than £500 for a wide choice of what were surprisingly reliable motors.

TVRs, on the other hand, have no reputation at all for being reliable, unless you mean you can rely on them to break. Stick to the models with a Rover V8 engine, though (a Chimaera well give you the most for your money), and track down one that’s been well looked after, and you could have a daily driver that really is going up in value – right now, a Chimaera will cost from about £12k up to something like double that.

But if you want something that’s really out there, an old luxobarge can’t be beaten. Go back a decade and a half and a Daimler was a Jag with a silver cane; the Double Six had the all-important V12 engine and will give you unbeatable kudos for your cash – even a perfect one will only stand you ten large, while hurt-me-bad examples start from a quarter of that.

If that’s not rare enough for you, how about a Maybach? A decade or so back, the name was to Merc as Lexus is to Toyota, if that makes any kind of sense, and a 62 would have cost you about the same money as a typical Cornish fishing village.

Which is about right, as a 62 was about the same size as a typical Cornish fishing village. Anyway, nowadays you could get one for about £60k – a lot, for sure, but if you’re thinking of a new S-Class this alternative would certainly tell the world you’re a risk-taker.