used car recommendation

tomstickland

Yes, you have to make your own decisions in the car buying game. Noone makes truly rubbish cars anymore. I know people who are happy to all their own servicing etc and so they run £1000 cars on the cheap. I'm the same myself, I've never spent more than £1200 on a car in 10 years and racked up 15-20K per year.

There's 1000s of suitable vehicles out there and it's just a matter of finding something that meets your own needs, be they financial, image, running costs, driving entertainment, room, comfort etc etc. Hence the many car review mags.

MrSmartprice

You are probably right, no-one makes rubbish cars any more.

Not now that Rover have gone to where they belong!

tomstickland

Weeeeellll, even Rover didn't make rubbish cars.

superscotsman

tomstickland wrote:

Weeeeellll, even Rover didn't make rubbish cars.

They didn't make rubbish cars: they just fitted them in a rubbish way. Funnily enough, I didn't have a Rover automatic box go on me. It was the only part of these cars that didn't go wrong. It was marvellous driving to your next breakdown without having to change gear!

tomstickland

I read a very indepth article recently on the K series engine. Rover had a lot of talent - the K series was a very much optimised engine with a high power to capacity ratio and a high power to weight ratio. Sad really the way it's gone.

jjames_3

The K-series was so well optimised that was half the reason it kept failing ultimately. Truly impressive achievement though that they managed to get 100hp out of a 1.4 engine while Vauxhall were still making 1.4s with 60hp......

Still think Rover will make a return in the not too distant future though. They'll probably come back with imported engines mind. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on your point of view.

"No-one makes bad cars anymore"; can't agree with that. The French cars still have an unfortunate habit of breaking down, Italian ones as well. I guess it's something to do with the fact that we're all, as Europeans, subsidising these partially state-run unionised companies and they've got BL-syndrome. It's the reason I'd never, ever buy a Fiat or Renault, just as I'd never buy a 70s/80s British Leyland car.

Having driven a Kia Sedona Automatic as a hire car with work a couple of weeks ago I will NEVER own an Automatic. Now granted, this probably isnt the best example of an automatic but I just thought that it was dangerous. Everytime I tried to acceralate on the motorway at around 65-70 if needbe it would shift down into 4th gear and lose power. Grrr

Surely changing down from 5th to 4th would increase the power? If you are wanting to overtake it's safer to do so in as low a gear as you can get away with.

tomstickland

I know people who rant about the old Rover 214 engines. Quite a good stealth car option.

Obtaining 100BHP from a 1.4 is not difficult really. The Vauxhall 1.3 8v units from the late 80s managed 75BHP, and I managed to get 95BHP from one via a bit of cam, headwork and the usuall tuning stuff. Ultimately it's just the flow potential of the head along with how well engineered the bottom end is to cope with the rpm needed. Obviouslly the crappier Vauxhall 1.4 single point engines were rpm limited so that they could be made cheaply and last a long time.
So, I suppose I'm agreeing!

jjames_3

To be fair though I'm a great believer in "there's no replacement for displacement", and I'd rather have a larger, 1.6l engine tuned to 100hp as it is over-engineered for the job relative to the 1.4 putting out the same.

It's interesting that some very recent 1.4 engines are putting out 100hp now, it'll be interesting to see how these fare from a durability point of view.

It's one reason I'm a great fan of Nissan's engines (petrol anyway, the diesels have Renault input and have suffered as a result). The 1.5 performs like a typical modern 16-valve 1.4 (90hp), is chain-cam and generously over-engineered, with the result that these engines run for hundreds of thousands of miles, more than most others. They may not be the fastest, most frugal or even the quietest, but they run and run -- and on a second-hand purchase this is exactly what you want. Unfortunately, what makes a good second-hand buy is not the same as what makes a good new purchase (mph, quietness, speed etc) and so they don't sell too well.