One Huge Mistake

staceydaisy

Hey ! We recentley purchased a Vauxhall Astra petrol 1.8 and what a very beautiful car.

I absolutely love the car its easy to drive but the downside is the amount of petrol it comsumes is ridiculous. The car tax £215 for a year.

We would absolutely love to shop the car for the 1.9 tdci version but unfortunately now the car garages will not give us a good prioce for ours and weve only had it 3 months

Well I suppose you live and learn for next time

Hintza

How many miles do you drive a year? What is your mpg?

Have you had it serviced?

maninthestreet

What MPG are you getting from the Astra?
Is this the new model Astra? Did you buy it new, or is it second hand?

staceydaisy

not the new Astra no 08 reg I thnk we are getting 31 MPG

maninthestreet

31 MPG isn't too bad, depending on the type of driving you are doing - what MPG were you expecting to get from it?
It won't have lost that much money in the 3 months you've owned it.

staceydaisy

to part ex the car gainst the diesel version. They are making out we have lost 3k obviously if we sold private we would get more.

We find we are putting £40 a week in the car and not really going anywhere with that

maninthestreet

staceydaisy wrote: »

We find we are putting £40 a week in the car and not really going anywhere with that

So what MPG were you expecting to get??
£40 a week = about 7.5 gallons, assuming £1.15 per litre.
So, at 31 MPG, that's about 230 miles - how can that be described as 'not really going anywhere'????

Billy-no-Money

I hired a car for a week in the summer - was given a 1.6 Focus. Not only was it sluggish with brakes made out of wood, I barely got 30mpg out of it even on a decent run. It seems that while diesels have become highly efficient (my wife's Kia returns 55mpg+ with no effort), efficiency of petrol-engined cars hasn't moved on since the 80s - or maybe the engines are more efficient but cars are so much heavier now.

I wonder what a modern diesel would return in a typical car of the early 80s?

Kilty_2

Billy-no-Money wrote: »

I hired a car for a week in the summer - was given a 1.6 Focus. Not only was it sluggish with brakes made out of wood, I barely got 30mpg out of it even on a decent run. It seems that while diesels have become highly efficient (my wife's Kia returns 55mpg+ with no effort), efficiency of petrol-engined cars hasn't moved on since the 80s - or maybe the engines are more efficient but cars are so much heavier now.

I wonder what a modern diesel would return in a typical car of the early 80s?

I got 40MPG out of a hired Focus easily, was it close to it's de-fleeting mileage?

Agree on the brakes though, did not like them one bit.

Saying that - Ford engines are all pretty uneconomical compared with other manufacturers. My 1.6 petrol Astra returned 45MPG with ease (2007 56).

I disagree that petrol engines haven't moved on since the 80s - reliability, performance and economy are all greatly improved.

staceydaisy

well maybe im seeing it as poor in comparison to the diesel version

mark5

My 1.8 Focus is in the low 30's for mpg, so very similar to your Astra, i previously had a Mini Cooper and that was only doing about 35mpg. Running a car is never cheap.

My wife drives a Fiesta TDCI and the savings she makes on her weekly Fuel bill compared to Petrol is only about £5-6 per week, not worth changing your car for with the millage you do.

Not to mention I just changed the diesel filter on the Fiesta the part alone cost nearly £50!