I was looking at going private if the kona isn’t suitable for me Micky, and I think you could be in a fairly similar state financially. We could likely pick up a fully loaded 2016-2017 CLA/CLS class or even perhaps 5 series for 20k. We’d have to pay insurance but would own the car at the end. Stretch to 30k+ and we’re in Range Rover sport territory. At the end of the day we picked motability because of the hassle free nature, but if it’s going to nothing but hassle….
If your budget stretches to £30k you could probably get a brand new 5 Series. I went along to our BMW dealers to look at a 12 month old 5 Series M-Sport that they were advertising. The salesperson explained that it had sold but that they could probably get me a brand new one for the same price. I ended up ordering a brand new 5 Series with an on the road price (including options and servicing plan) of just over £40k for an agreed price of £30k. This was for a factory order car built to my exact spec. The discount was a combination of manufacturer, dealer and BMW finance discounts although I paid off the finance a few months after I got the car so that I owned it outright and I didn’t have to repay the discount (this applies to all PCP’s – it’s a loophole that many people exploit). When I sold the car I worked out that even taking account of all running costs (depreciation, insurance, road tax, tyres etc) it had cost no more to run over 3 years than my wife’s Motability Tiguan. It was just as ‘worry free’ as Motability as the car was covered under a manufacturers warranty throughout. Having owned, run or driven hundreds of cars from most manufacturers (including Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, Volvo, Land Rover etc) I can honestly say that the 5 Series was the best of the lot by some margin. I’ve had 3 of them they are that good.