Reccomend A Small Cheap Car Please!!

saintjanet

A micra ,as advised would be an EXCELLENT CHOICE,price,economy and running costs are reasonable or cheap so is insurance.

Ted_Hutchinson

2001 NISSAN MICRA 1.0 S 3dr Hatchback (private)


2001 NISSAN MICRA 1.0 Sport 3dr Hatchback (private)

both these seem reasonably priced.
I've just returned from buying a newish small car from a private seller today. Different price bracket but the same principles apply.

I go to Parkers Price Guide and find out what the "Private Poor" or "Part Exchange" price is then look in Autotrader or Fish4Cars for the model I want using the "Private" only filter and limiting the search to the price range I can afford. AA TELL ME WHAT MY CAR IS WORTH also gives you a good idea of the range of price you should expect to pay.

Admittedly there's no guarantee with a private purchase, but when you go to the persons home you can usually suss out if what they are saying rings true. You can't always rely on a second hand car dealer in the price range you are looking at.

Whatever price is advertised I always offer under that amount. So I'd offer around £1250 for these, that is if I were buying one for my daughter. Unfortunately her boyfriend has written off my last two purchases so I'm getting a bit cheesed off with looking for bargains for him to wreck. However in both cases the insurance actually paid out more for the cars than I'd bought them for so it goes to show you can, if you buy carefully, beat the depreciation trap.

I've also bought at Motability Car Auctions 0r Manheim but the maximum age of these is usually 3 yrs so you probably won't find any in your price range, but for me it's a good source of "automatics".

Bertville

Ford Ka is very cheap to run & insure whilst still being fun to drive and looks pretty good.