Mega-mileage cars are better value – and tell better stories

I need to come clean at the start: I don’t practise what I’m about to preach. It was my pain after buying an 80,000-mile Fiat Panda 100HP with bigger chasms in its bodywork than Cheddar Gorge that pushed me to sell it and finance a nearly new Mazda MX-5 instead.

So I’m not a proprietor of high-milers, but I love them nonetheless. High mileage is a sweet attribute that makes a desirable model normally priced beyond your reach look affordable. For instance, searching for a first car for my brother, we found a 2015 Suzuki Swift Sport that was cheap enough to land in our tight budget – because it had lapped the earth six times so was viewed widely as undesirable.