But just a months salary to get the standard car would suffice. I got rid of this thing as the bloody doors became pain
Unfortunately you need a time machine to buy a new one.
However, I do not think of a car as a monthly or ongoing expense. A car is a depreciating asset... so one best bought with cash. Financing a car makes no sense to me, given my individual goals.
So, I buy only as much car as I need and can afford at the time. All I care about is reliable transportation; style and creature comforts are unimportant to me.
I believe the number of months how long one is ready to work for buying a car is what matters at the end.
So it goes without saying that I don't buy new cars, and that I pay cash for my cars.
My current car cost just under one month's net salary. It's typical of the used car market in Switzerland -- it's a great car with nothing wrong except it's "too old" for a Swiss person, and consequently, it's cheap-as-chips.
It's a fully-loaded European luxury car that was five years old when I bought it; immaculately clean and maintained perfectly by the main agent. It was five years old and had 140k km on it, mostly from motorway driving. It still looks brand new despite being almost nine years old and having 190k km on it, and it hasn't given me any real problems. I look after my cars well -- they get maintained fastidiously, waxed at least twice a year, and kept in a garage, all of which help keep them in good condition.
I will probably replace it next year, and I hope to get back about half of what I paid for it. So there you go -- two week's salary for five years of using a car (not including service and consumables, obviously). I definitely feel like I got my money's worth.
For my next car, I'm tempted by something that costs about three month's salary. But spending that much money on a car is killing me, and I'm dragging my feet...
It always makes me smile to look at my junior colleagues, on half my salary, driving in their brand-new CHF100k Mercedes. They look at me and scratch their heads, wondering why I can't afford a flash new car like they can.
Meanwhile, I look at my savings account and smile. And get into my old car, smug in the knowledge that I'll have the last laugh.
Also, does it matter used or new? Personally, I probably wouldn't buy a new car unless our finances drastically improved (ie we won the lottery) but there are some good used car deals available here, esp. in the more "luxury" market (to me that means an A6 or likewise)
The big luxury cars depreciate the most heavily. This sort of thing ( Audi A8 ) is just the sort of thing I love to buy. Five years old, in mint condition, one lady owner, with every option under the sun. 80k km, which is barely broken in for an Audi. And they'll throw in a 12-month warranty and winter wheels for another couple grand.
It cost the first owner a whopping CHF122k to buy, but it's yours for 25% of the price. How's that for cheap?
So I prefer to stay with my company it secures me at least a free company car park in our garage. Funny thing: Our CEO is one of the best paid managers in Switzerland. Guess what, he is driving a Hyundai Santa Fee. funny huh
I think it depends a great deal on why you want a car. How many hours per week to you expect to be driving it? This will have a strong influence on the degree of comfort you can justify. Does your lifestyle depend on it, or is it just a "nice to have"? This will determine the degree of unreliability you can put up with. How many people and how much stuff do you routinely want to transport? A fine car for a single person or a couple will quite possibly be inadequate for a family of four. What kind of roads to you want to be able to drive on? A good city car might be a rubbish motorway car, a good motorway car might be no good on snow-covered mountain roads.
Also, what proportion of your monthly salary is spent on discretionary things rather than essentials? If, say, after food and rent on an apartment that is only just adequate for your needs, you only have 10% left each month, then your feelings on what you can spend on a car will be quite different to being able to blow 60% of your income every month on having fun without really noticing it.
Some can "afford" 100kchf or more, while others think 10k is too much to spend on "wheeled convenience/laziness".
The OP's original question sounded like an attempt to see how much salary one gets in CH and how much it should be spent on a motorised vehicle which can be argued to be a necessity or a luxury.
I believe the prices of new small cars are coming down from 30k's to 20k's due to the strong CHF.
If you just want to buzz around town, a used SMART is going for 5-7kchf.
If you need a family car, then prepare 15-20kchf for a used one.
A bigger family car can be around 20-30k, used and quite new. You can even get some new ones for under 35kchf in Www.adu.ch
Auto Discount Uster.
In the end, it is a personal choice and nobody is wrong.
It is up to your budget and up to your own reasoning how many months of salary you would pay for your Fiat Punto or your Mercedes AMG500.
Good luck!
PS: Some prefer cash, and others swear by credit....who's right? Both are.
My point was that I tend to buy cheap, older cars that have already done most of their depreciation. To me, this is simply common sense, as in Switzerland you can get a lot of bang-for-your-buck if you don't insist on buying something brand new. Though I could probably afford to buy a more expensive car, it just isn't in my nature.
I had a colleague in the UK. He worked in IT and probably earned about GBP30k a year. But he had a top-of-the-line BMW M3, bought brand new and financed. He was constantly complaining about being skint, as all his money went to pay for the car.
Meanwhile, I drove around a perfectly serviceable car that I'd picked up for about GBP3k. And I had plenty of money to go to the pub.
You pays your money, you make your choice...
Would it not be better taken in context of how much is spent on other things?
For example, everyone whittles on about depreciation and yet will go out buy a pint of beer - at which point the depreciation is 100% (have you tried selling a pint you have just bought????) - and then you destroy it (drink it) - in order to gain pleasure. What if a car is not bought solely to travel from A to B? And that a person gains pleasure from it?
You could apply that to anything - what about the person who buys the beautiful shoes, wears them twice and then bins them (or keeps them in a box and moves them from house to house but never wears them again).
Person A might gain huge pleasure from driving a new, fast and expensive car.
Person B might gain the same pleasure from, each season, filling their wardrobes with fashion stuff (bags? shoes? shirts? suits? etc)
The sensible question is what % of your salary is disposible IE after taking into account living costs, tax, basic transport (to/from work) etc
What an individual spends on something (car, clothes, drugs (alcohol, smoking, narcotics), leisure (sports, visits), holidays, future (investments, pensions), is surely down to their own view and preference.
A not insignificant portion of people in Switzerland including many on this forum can live without one. So why omit them from the survey?