Billionaires who drive astonishingly cheap cars

If you're a billionaire, you can afford the best of everything - and as many of them as you fancy. But while some of the super-rich indulge in their passion for buying super-cars until they need more houses to keep them in, there are others who are quite happy in decidedly less flash motors - and one who is proud to drive an old banger. We reveal five frugal billionaires who cut back on motoring costs.

Your typical billionaire drives something worth a figure with a few zeros on the end of it. Carlos Slim Helu, for example, drives a Bentley Continental Flying Spur worth about £178,000.

However, there are some billionaires with far cheaper tastes. We don't know whether they have a fleet of swankier cars hidden away in their enormous garages, but going on the cars they have been seen out and about in, many of them drive the kinds of cars that cost roughly the same as a typical family MPV.

Warren Buffett

Investor Warren Buffett only just makes the list. He famously lives very frugally, but when he felt General Motors needed all the help it could get, he invested in a Cadillac DTS. It is out of most normal family budgets, costing around £27,000, but when you keep in mind the fact that Buffett is the third richest billionaire in the world - worth an astonishing £40 billion - he could clearly afford to be driving something a great deal flashier.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is said to be worth about £20 billion, but doesn't waste much on fancy toys. He gives generously to charity (and has pledged to give away half his wealth), invested in property, and ploughed money into start-ups. He's far less bothered about the car he drives - which explains why he's the owner of a black Acura TSX - worth about £18,000.

Eric Schmidt

Google chairman Eric Schmidt is worth around £5 billion. At the moment he has selected a Toyota Prius which set him back £16,500. However, with Google on the cutting edge of developing self-driving cars he will doubtless be happy to spend a great deal more on one of them as soon as development is complete.

Steve Ballmer

The former CEO of Microsoft, meanwhile hit the headlines for spending around £1.2 billion of his £12.5 billion fortune earlier this year. His indulgence was the Los Angeles Clippers, an NBA franchise, which cost him roughly the sum that Roman Abramovich has ploughed into Chelsea over the years. However, Ballmer doesn't have the same spendthrift approach to cars. He drives a Ford Hybrid Fusion - worth around £15,000

Ingvard Kamprad

But the hands-down winner of the prize for the most modest motor driven by a billionaire goes to the 1993 Volvo 240 driven by Ingvard Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, who is worth around £17 billion. It's thought to be worth less than £900. This chimes perfectly with his incredibly frugal lifestyle. Kamprad lives in a modest bungalow, only ever flies economy class, and likes to take the bus.

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