2 cars vs 1 car.

Good grief, you must have a terrible record. I just priced up insurance for a second car, 3rd party F&T was ~$9/fortnight and full cover was ~$17.

bugger that, one person two cars!
kinda helps if you have company vehicle.

Depends on the budget. If you had a reasonable budget you might have a nissan leaf electric and what ever - the Honda Accord manual, a Commodore VYii, Sprt wagon or sedan or awd SUV.(something big enough to pull a small car trailer with winch to load up the leaf if you run out of range some where and need to get back to a charge point)
You might know the days you have to go somewhere after work that would exceed the Leaf's range so you take the ice engine vehicle to work. If you can't recharge at work.

I'll soon be one person with 3 vehicles

Under 25yo driver ~$4000 car. ($9 x 26 = $234, btw, so $300 not too bad)

Ha ha, just reread my first post. That $50 per week is for keeping a car on the road, and includes servicing, registration, warrant and insurance (and tyres, if you drive on the NW motorway in Ak). :) Just not petrol or depreciation.

long distance car i would find a old big mother diesel whom was storaged and serviced all its live with low km no rust and all. 10 liter diesel is what they use , the money you pay on extra fuel and ruc on these diesel gusslers you get back by not having to call the AA to tow you because some onehung-low junk electronic module has crapped it self or god only knows what other small electronic malfunction disabeling the whole vehicle from even starting on this new crap.

We have two cars in our family and because we live in the middle of nowhere and I'm away from home 12 hours a day, having one car would be hopeless. I drive an old Hiace to work and wife has a Vitz which are perfect for our needs and I occasionally buy a doer upper so we often have up to 3 cars.

If your circumstances meant you could afford either one very good low mileage car, OR two old bombs, there might be wisdom in opting for the one very good car.

However we are running two older cars (1999 Ford Falcon stationwagon and 1985 Laser 1300cc) and I would definitely recommend it. There are several benefits.

If you don't have much money and are driving low-value cars like we are, having two cars is great, because it means you are still mobile if one of them fails a warrant (or fails to start/go.)

But the main benefit is that there's just nothing worse than trying to use the wrong tool to do a job.

We live in the Wairarapa so we frequently go out on the open road. On our straight, flat local highways and country lanes the Coon doesn't **seem** to use much more gas than the laser, as long as we drive sensibly, because humming along at a steady 100km/h the laser has to push almost as much air out of its way as the Falcon does. So the coon charges us very little premium over a small car, for the privilege of travelling out of town in a big, comfortable, safe, quiet car with air conditioning and elbow room, that can pass anything easily. And most importantly it provides a tonne and a half of solid Australian steel around my family.
I have almost no need for hire trailers anymore because I can put half a dozen 2.4m long fence posts in it, along with all the timber rails and palings to go on them, and still close the tailgate on it all, and she hardly even settles down on the springs, and there's still room for the dog to go to sleep in the back.

But where the coon does start to cost us, is if we ever spend a day driving around Wellington in it, you can just about see the fuel gauge going down.

So any time I head into the city by myself I drive the Laser. it is noisy and hot and hard work, and you do a lot of rowing keeping it in the right gear all the time, as she has only barely got enough power for 100km/h driving. But I can drive over the Rimutaka hill and spend half a day driving all over Wellington and the Hutt, then head back home over the hill and at the end of all that she will only have drunk about $20 worth of petrol. This is in spite of being a 1980s tech car with a carburettor, and a single cam, and a distributor and brick-like aerodynamics.

Personally I would go slightly bigger than a 3 cylinder Daihatsu for your small town car, those bare minimum little Japanese city cars with bike sized engines are just not strong enough and not safe enough. Get a second car in the Ford laser / Mazda demio / Corolla / Nissan Sunny class. At least those are proper cars capable of doing 100km/h and with a bit more steel around you! Then your small second car will be something you won't mind heading out on the motorway in, if you ever have to.

What? If I was on my own, number of cars would only be limited by garage space.

Yip. Me too.