A Bit of a Pickle

Alright Internet friends I need your advice.

Here are the facts:

Chris and I have a car that we paid £300.00 for a year ago. It has been a great car and we've not had any problems with it. It has around 84,000 miles on it, which is quite good considering it is a car made around 1994.

I finally got my license and right now we are tying to get the car up and running. So far we've paid £109.00 for a new exhaust for it and today we got back from the mechanics and we are looking at another £300.00 to fix it before it can be taxed (tax is £66.00).

The lovely mechanic said that he'd do us a payment plan (£40.00 a week) until paid off.

So we could pay to get the car fixed (more than we paid for it and HEFTY weekly repayments)

OR...

We could go down to the car dealership, trade in the car we have now for parts and get a newer car for LESS than we would be paying to sort out the car.

This means we'd be in debt for the car and add to our budget another chunk of money.

So what do you think? Should we pay to fix the car we have now, or should we cut our losses and get a newer car with less repairs??

What do you think?