If you paid comfortably more than £50,000 for a brand-new car five years ago, and it had covered, say, 25,000 miles, would you be happy if it had issues? 

The vehicle in question has been maintained regardless of cost and also kept it in showroom condition, which explains why its owner is a bit peeved. It's important to point out that the owner has always bought nice cars (always a few years old) and this is the latest in a fairly long line of prestigious motors. 

The thing is that after a stiff £1000 service and repairs bill last year, the price has more than doubled this time around. That’s because the brake discs have warped for the second time in the car's life and there's an MOT issue because a bracket holding the exhaust has rusted through.

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Because the exhaust is a single unit that includes the bracket, the whole thing needs to be replaced. The only option is an independent fabricator to knock something together.

Repairing cars is always expensive. Repairing expensive cars is really, really expensive. So I suppose the simple answer is to run a Shed 7-like vehicle.

Obviously, it would need better paintwork to please an owner who cared about cosmetics, but it sidesteps depreciation and means that money can be ploughed into the running costs. Clearly, this is an expense account car that gets fixed on the company books, so in the real world, without some bodging, it soon becomes obsolete and unsustainable. 

Sorry that I can’t give you any more details – including names, model designations and dates – as this is an ongoing issue for the customer. 

However, I’d be interested to hear about the biggest bill you may have been faced with for a repair, ideally on a car that was still fairly new. Oh, and whether you think five years old is acceptable for the big bills to start mounting up for a car. Any car, posh or not.