Renewed My COE

A picture of my 10 years old debadged 316i

Wanted to record down my thought process for future reference. Renewed my COE(10 years) that is due this month. I paid S$86,677 using last month's PQP to save $7k. PQP is the price of 3 months avg COE price, its the price you pay if you wish to renew your COE, it stabilizes the trend and makes it easy to anticipate for price surge. You can renew one month pass your expiry, but you will need to pay a small fine. I paid cash upfront without taking any loan. $86,677 works out to be $722 of depreciation a month.

After 10 years of usage my mileage is still low at 57k km. As I need to fetch my elder son to and from school on a daily basis now, my usage will ramp up fast. I need a car and renewing COE seems to be the cheapest option. Buying the cheapest jap sedan at current time you need at least 140k. Even buying a second hand car is more expensive as I don't see any option with a montly depreciation of $722 or lower. A Toyota Altis with 5 years of COE left is selling for 55-60k currently(that's a minimum of $916 monthly depreciation). 

A few things to note abt renewing COE. Renewing 10 years gives me an option to renew again when the 10 years is up. If I renew for 5 years only, it has to be scrapped once it expires. So renewing for 10 years is a good hedge against uncertainty. Why? because COE is prorated. Lets say if I notice second hand car market price is crashing, I can easily scrap/sell my current car to get back prorated rate of the COE I paid plus a premium. Alternatively, if COE continues to surge to 200k, I can sell my car at a larger premium overtime. Do note that many Singaporeans who bought their car around 5 years ago are now sitting on paper profit.

The current government policy is crystal clear. In October 2021, LTA announced that it will continue to maintain the existing zero growth rate per annum for cars and motorcycles, and the 0.25 percent growth rate for commercial vehicles until January 2025. 

This means no total quota growth for cars till 2025. They can play around with the numbers but the total quota will not go up till after 2025.

The price of new BMW base 3 series has risen by almost 50% from the time I bought 10 years ago. Likely due to price of COE and inflation. 316i is the last F30 model 3 series that has a 1.6litre 4 cylinder twin turbo engine. The latter base versions are all 1.8litre 3 cylinders(odd). Which means its the last 3 series that is under the Cat A category. This means lowest road tax, and COE. All BMW 3 series now are minimally Cat B. This model of mine is also using the N13 engine(Prince engine) a collaboration between PSA and BMW. So far after 10 years of driving, no engine issues at all. To increase the longevity of the engine, I always drive in Eco Mode and adopt efficient fuel saving techniques. 

This model has a fuel capacity of 60litre, 16.9km per litre of fuel consumption. This means on average the cost of petrol for me is around $100 per school month. Which works out to be close to 1/3 of the pricing of a two way school bus($270).

136 horse power at Cat A is quite decent and rare now in my view. To give a comparison, the new BMW 216i Coupe(Cat A BMW sedan) only has 107 bhp. Aesthetically I like the design of the 2013 F30 compared to the newer versions(G20). It feels more timeless. Another picture of my 316i taken in a petrol kiosk lol:

Took this after filling up my tank, nice sky lol