Matthew's Journal

I'd go for a hatchback Ford Mondeo with a diesel engine. Getting a Ghia or Ghia X spec doesn't add much to the second hand cost but throws in toys by the bucketload.

Consider one of the early Focuses, cheaper to insure as it's more of a family-large-hatch than the Mondeo, which are often higher performance than you probably need.

If you're going to buy from a dealership avoid the own-mark authorised dealers, you'll get a much better deal picking up a Ford from a Nissan dealer who's taken it as part-ex than you will from a Ford dealership, and you'll still get a 3 month warranty and similar.

Are you wedded to the Ford idea? The new Skodas which have been around almost a decade now are very good, and the Octavia might bear looking at. What about a Golf? One of the mid-sized Mazda hatches?

Performance on modern new small diesels is very good efficiency wise and they're not all dogs to drive any more, but this has really come through in the last 4 - 5 years maximum, don't know if you're buying older than that.

Erm, if I think of anything else in the meantime I'll let you know.

I previously had an Astra (estate), but from what I hear of the newer models, the visibility isn't great.

I currently have a Toyota Avensis 1.8 T3 (estate), but at the time I bought it, I test drove a Corolla. I love the Toyota to pieces and would have had the Corolla except that the rear seats didn't fold down to a flat load area and the Avensis does. They are extremely comfy to drive. Mine came with a built in satnav, which can be useful, aircon and it has a tape deck *and* CD player.

I think I've chucked the bumph on the new models that came the other week. There's a Toyota garage (and several other makes) at the Tollbar roundabout in Cov, which is where I got mine from.

When you're looking at the different models, check out the VED price for petrol v diesel as well as the fuel economy. I get 40mph from my huge petrol estate. I'd need to get 50mph if it were diesel to make up for the difference in fuel costs alone.

The car that I've liked the most was a Ford Mondeo automatic, which was lovely. The car that I've found most useful for transporting lots of stuff is a Renault Scenic, but it seems to eat brake discs.

What Car will probably be able to give you a valuation for the Fiesta (despite the blurb at the bottom saying it is for cars up to eight years old) and will also give you a short review on any model you are thinking of buying, including MPG figures and insurance group number.

A car data check is fairly essential for buying a used car; HPI is the standard, but don't go direct through them as RAC will do it for a tenner using the same company.

AA and RAC also both offer physical vehicle inspections, but they are pretty expensive (>100 squids).

My car is a 2002 Citroën Xsara LX HDi 2.0 (diesel) and seems to fit most of your requirements. It easily gets over 50mpg on long trips, but if I use a whole tank on footling around town for a couple of miles each trip it struggles to make 40mpg. (This is a bit less optimistic than what the owner's manual will tell you.) Has suffered a couple of minor mechanical failures (a wheel bearing and a handbrake ratchet) but I get the impression it was quite heavily used by the previous owner. Currently has 72K miles on the clock.

I've been very happy with both the Fiat Bravas that I've had. The first one was sufficiently good (albeit a base model) that I bought another one. At three years old the price had dropped from 11K to 5K. It had done 16K, it's now done 96K six years later. I've had no major mechanical failures with it. It's still running on the same exhaust. The biggest problem was that I had to get the fuel injectors replaced a couple of years ago. That was £550 and a pain in the arse. The only real thing it does eat is headlight bulbs; I've replaced them over half a dozen times now, but then I do always drive with my headlights on.

I've had better experience buying from garages than privately. But like others say, avoid dealerships. Get make X from a non-make X garage.

Parkers reckons a 2000 1.3 Fiesta (which may be the next revision after yours?) with 80k on the clock is worth 780 private good condition, 595 PX. As that spec is not too far away from yours, yours is probably worth something in that ballpark. However, the industry normally goes with what's in Glass's guide (but they have to subscribe to it at something like 2k/yr!), and Glass's prices do vary when compared with Parkers.

In my car-buying experience, unless you know you really want something in particular, you're tying yourself down too much by thinking in terms of makes and models. Think instead of the class of car, which you have done :), and then look at the wider market. Browse what's around, if you see something you like then (unless cars are selling like hot cakes, which is unlikely in the current market) you've probably got time to go home and google up some reviews of the model to see how reliable it is, whether it's got any known issues, &c.

The local indie car dealers are probably your best bet for simultaneously getting a non-lemon car with some sort of warranty (depending on how much you paid for it) and not getting ripped off. Go browse some, keeping in mind what you want from a car in terms of size and space, and also get a feel for how well they run their operations, how slimey they feel (the dealers, I mean - some are, some aren't), &c. You'll quickly notice that dealers are different in the stock they carry - some will have cheap old cars, some won't - and see how that affects your confidence in a particular dealer. Do ask any local friends and colleagues for their (dis)recommendations for dealers, too.

(Case in point: My Micra cost me 3300 last year from such a local garage, inc 3 months warranty, and that was close to what Parkers reckoned it was worth. Now it's only worth about 1500; I've been unlucky on that one.)

Unless you're lucky in being able to buy a car from somebody you know and trust to not knacker it, your only other real non-$$$$ option is the low end of the market - bangernomics - in which very few dealers play. It's much more of a crapshoot (like buying out of the back of the local paper), and those dealers who do have such care are less likely to offer a warranty and trade-in, and more likely to be slimier and less professional. (This is a gross generalisation, of course.) Bangernomics may or may not be advisable depending on your own feelings about your car eptitude.

Whatever you do, you absolutely must either pay for an HPI check yourself, or ask to see evidence that one has been carried out. The only exception to this rule is if you are buying from an established dealer with a good name and who poses no risk of flying-by-night in the event that the car turned out to be stolen (or having been an accident write-off &c) and the police took the car from you; of course, you'd have an open-and-shut case to get your money back from the vendor, provided you could find them. Shop around online for an HPI check; it's not expensive, and some providers offer further insurance - of debatable value - against their info turning out to be duff.

When asking about HPI paperwork, do also review the car's service history. Missing a service time interval isn't automatically bad if the recorded mileage at the time isn't excessive for it; the car might have been parked up for a while. Particularly, if the car has spent the past n months being passed from dealer to auction and back again before finding its way to a forecourt, it'll have been hardly used; one regularly sees service histories that were pretty darn good, up until the point where the owner traded the car in, and then there's a big gap of nothing to the present. This is not automatically bad, but you do in that case need the confidence that the car has been properly serviced after the lay-up, particularly the battery condition (lead-acid batteries suffer if deeply discharged; the really good garages will top them up every now and then).

I also had a Renault 19 for 5 years and it was extremely reliable, so I wouldn't write off all Renaults on that basis. (In fact my husband, mother and sister all have Renault Clios and all are very reliable too.) I had Renaults almost the whole 10 years I worked at Warwick and found the fact that the Renault dealer is walking distance from work very handy too.

Buying from a dealer is good if they will offer you a warranty. Naturally this adds a little to the price but it's worth it for any problems to be SEP. My experience is that buying/selling privately can be a bit of a nightmare. Especially when you pay your building society extra for extra-secure paying in of a banker's draft and they lose it.

Astras are hugely reliable, plentiful and cheap. You don't need to go to an authorised dealership; go to a mechanic that you trust and ask him about car dealers near him that he trusts.

If you buy privately, definitely get an HPI check or equivalent. If the car's at all valuable, seriously consider a mechanical inspection, too. How reliable does the car need to be? If you don't want shiny, there's a lot to be said for getting an older, cheaper vehicle and taking your chances. If it turns out to be trouble, offload it quickly for whatever you can get and buy another with some of the money you saved.

Dealers charge much more than private sellers and franchised dealers charge more still. The only things franchised dealers give you over other dealers are (often) a better warranty, (probably) a more thorough going-over before you take the car and (assuming you pick a solvent manufacturer) a better chance of having recourse if things go wrong. A non-franchised dealer offers you warranty, convenience, part-exchange, choice and less chance of dealing with a crook.

So it is worth paying more to buy from a dealer, especially if hassle is money to you. Though obviously they make a profit off you.

But dealers also have much larger haggle margins than private sellers. Usually, especially if you're not asking for £2000 trade-in on a clapped-out old banger, it's possible to talk a dealer down by ten or twenty percent. Never pay the price on the screen unless you have to, especially in a franchised dealership.

As a guide, my last car had a screen price of £12,000. I know (because they foolishly left the paperwork in the folder they let me peruse) that they paid about £8,000 trade-in to the previous owner. However, that previous owner was a company, so they have to add VAT — effectively £9,400. They then gave the car a premature major service, replaced two worn tyres, fixed a defective seat heater, replaced a dud switch and had it inspected by the RAC and checked by HPI — maybe £600 to them, but £1,200 to a customer having to pay to get them done having purchased privately. I beat them down to £11,000. By my reckoning they made £1,000 profit — but would have made £500 of profit anyway if I'd bought it privately then taken it to them to get it fixed.

For the privilege of being able to complain to (or about) Lexus UK rather than "Fred" if anything went wrong I was prepared to pay that extra £500. Your mileage may vary. (-8


As for specific models, a Mondeo is a good bog-standard choice. It's not as reliable as some, but at least you'll never be stuck for a spare part. In the same ballpark are the Skoda Octavia, Nissan Primera, Peugeot 406 and Toyota Avensis, any of which might suit you better for one reason or another (including merely happening to be on sale at the right price). I wouldn't personally go for the Vauxhall Vectra, Renault Laguna, Citroen Xantia/C5. The Honda Accord leaves me ambivalent, so a Mondeo is probably a better choice unless being unusual itself has value. If you really want a Jaguar, remember the X-type is a Mondeo, so the extra you pay is precisely the cost of Jaguarness. (-8

As well as the X-type, the Audi A4, Saab 9-3 and Volvo S40 are other interesting mildly upmarket alternatives. I wouldn't want to pay the premium for a BMW, Mercedes or Lexus badge at that level.

Remember toys depreciate just as much as the basics in a car. You'll probably find it much cheaper to buy something with CD than have it fitted later. If you're anything like me you'll find that getting all manner of diverting amusements is irresistably cheap. (-8

I don't think diesel is nearly as attractive an option as it once was. Although a diesel engine doesn't have to be much larger than its petrol equivalent to perform as well on paper, I personally find the turbo lag and low rev limit together mean a considerably larger engine is needed for the same level of driving satisfaction. And the price disparity between petrol and diesel has become huge recently; a couple of years ago it was just a penny or two per litre.

Maybe you could get a car with an LPG conversion? Provided all the paperwork for the conversion is in order it looks like it's 40% cheaper to run than the petrol equivalent. If the car's already been converted you get to see how tidy a job they made, you don't have the hassle of being without it for a week while the conversion is done and you'll be paying less.

I have been quite happy with our VW polo so far. Only down side is that servicing it is quite expensive, but I could perhaps get that done cheaper somewhere. Perhaps servicing for all cars is expensive if you get expensive servicing who knows. It is a 1.4 turbo diesel and it's nice and fuel efficient. I did research and searched the internet to find a good price and ended up buying it from car giant in London.

If you want an actual recommendation we like our Astra, & I would be prepared to discuss the positives and negatives if it is a vehicle you might be interested in (it'd possibly be a newer model one than ours so then the niggles mightn't be the same anyway although some are manufacturer wide I suppose).