How old dare you go?

tomandkath

My daughter is looking for a corsa as her first car. She knows nothing about car maintenance and needs something in pretty good nick for around £1000. As a general rule of thumb (and I appreciate this thumb might turn out to be as long as a piece of string) how old a registration would you all go for? She doesn't want a "bargain" that turns out to cost a fortune! :eek:

olly300

Well she is going to learn about car maintenance from having her first car.

How old is the daughter?

LandyAndy

A quick trawl of autotrader suggests that you can get a wide choice of Corsas for that money. Typically they are 9-11 years old and have between 50k and 110k miles. I guess you just need to look at a few.

tomandkath

She's 17 and yes, she'll have to learn some stuff, but would prefer not to invest in a money- pit. I can't really advise her, not knowing much more than she does about car maintenance (I'm 50 by the way!)

tomandkath

Thanks LandyAndy

Katie-Kat-Kins

To be honest for a first car better to go older and spend a bit on repairs than new and spend even more on insurance!

Oh and buy her a haynes manual!

My dad wouldn't let me drive at all until I learnt how to change a wheel, inflate the tyres, top up the oil and water etc.

I suggest you insist that she learns to do the same and does these checks, along with checking the lights every two weeks on an old car.

LandyAndy

KatP wrote: »

To be honest for a first car better to go older and spend a bit on repairs than new and spend even more on insurance!

Oh and buy her a haynes manual!

My dad wouldn't let me drive at all until I learnt how to change a wheel, inflate the tyres, top up the oil and water etc.

I suggest you insist that she learns to do the same and does these checks, along with checking the lights every two weeks on an old car.

And make sure she is a member of the RAC / AA / some other breakdown organisation.

bevanuk

Hi,
For £1000 she can't afford to be too fussy. Corsa's are a good choice.
I would look for visible signs of aging, mainly rust (back arches underneath plastic trim, top corners of bonnet, where bonnet meets headlights).
Just go for the lowest mileage, maybe anything below 80k?
With buying any car over a 50k mileage I strongly reccomend getting the cam belt changed (£50 - £80) unless they can prove it has already been done, if that snaps then the repairs to the car would be a fortune!

Ebe_Scrooge

For that sort of money, accept that you're going to have to get an older car and expect some repairs. Not a bad thing, by any means. Something like a Corsa is relatively cheap to insure ( insurance will be the single biggest cost for a new driver ), also it's relatively simple and cheap to repair - whether you choose to do repairs yourself or have them done at a garage. Also, a new driver is quite likely to have minor prangs ( hopefully the "scraping-the-gatepost-on-the-way-into-the-drive" type rather than anything serious ! ), and you're not going to be too worried about that on an older car.

As others have said, a Haynes manual will be a wise investment. I knew nothing about car repairs when I first started out, but learnt pretty quickly by dint of the fact that I couldn't afford to take it to garage all the time !

Finally, make sure you have a really good look over the car - if you have a friend who knows a bit about cars then take him / her along as well. There's nothing basically wrong with buying an older car, you just have to accept that parts do wear out, but lots of repairs can be done fairly cheaply yourself.

totallybonkers

I bought an R Reg Corsa for £700 nearly 2 years go and apart from the usual services and a Cam Belt change and a few patches of rust it drives perfectly but obviously every car is different

steveo3002

not much do with the age at that kind of price , just a matter of finding something thats been looked after and serviced now n then

see if theres anyone in the family that can come and have a look round with you