Bought and ran my own cars for over 20 years, didn’t spend anymore than £5k buying the car and total costs over the 3 years was less than my allowance. It ment at the end if the 3 years I could have scraped it and still been in profit…down side is I never drove a brand new car and any mechanical issues I had to deal with.
Personal choice but I did own some fantastic cars that wouldn’t be available on the scheme and also back then the deposits were ridiculously high and I still had to pay for my own hand controls ?