Petrol or Diesel

daveyjp

Up until March this year I've had diesels on and off since 1996 - only gap was a 1999 petrol Focus - but my last one was my last ever diesel I'll have. My short town hops were killing a modern DPF equipped diesel. It suffered EGR problems after a few thousand miles and I could tell it didn't like town work - it took about 10 miles for the temp gauge to get anywhere to operating temp and it required a service every 6-8,000 miles.

I went back to petrol, I'm getting 40mpg round town, it's warm inside within a mile and up to full operating temp withing 2 miles and the 15,000 service interval does me just fine.

ROY47

Basic rules

Do you like the car your looking at ?
Will it suit your needs?
how much do you have to pay to buy it ?
Is it less cost to part exchange your current car or pay cash
If you pay cash ,what you going to do with old car?

Petrol or diesel?

my daughter has a petrol fiesta 1.25 it does at a squeeze driving like a granny 32 mpg all around town driving

wife now has 1.4 diesel fiesta which does 54 mpg driving around town like a granny (she used to have a 206 1.4 diesel with same engine and same mpg )

daughter spends roughly £150 a month on petrol
wife spends roughly £75 a month on diesel if we're unlucky !!

so that's £75 a month saved to start with

please note figures a rough guide only !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

daughter does close to 7000 miles a year
wife does roughly same mileage

daughter paid 3500 for her 54 plate car last year
wife paid 4900 for 07 reg car this year ,(a petrol one was £500 less than her car )

wifes car is £30 tax ,daughters £125 tax

all this talk of having to do 15000 miles a year to get a saving is bul....t

I or we have had diesel since 1996 and would never ever have petrol again purely for the mpg

yes it does take longer to warm up from cold but it did ok in the big freeze earlier this year

yes it may get clogged up with soot in the exhaust etc.

but a little bit of right foot to floor once a month clears it out !!

daughter only had petrol because of insurance costs

waynedance

Diesel ........ got a 2.2 and goes like the clappers with over 40mpg. and that's not trying. same power from petrol would be in the high 20`s early 30's mpg.

goosander

Depends. On an older cheap car I'd go petrol as diesels can be very expensive to fix, on a younger car diesel if its a large heavy car or if the petrol option is uninspiring. If you can afford a modern turbo petrol, I'd go for that unless doing high miles.

My own car: 1.8 turbo petrol, 200hp loads of torque, pulls hard from 1500 to 6000 rpm, 35mpg normal driving, 40mpg possible, goes like a stabbed rat! Cost thousands less than a diesel with similar performance.

xbrenx

sunshinetours wrote: »

As this is MSE I would say to OP do you definitely need a people carrier? Would a good size estate or hatchback provide what you need with a roof box for holidays for example?

I don't want a people carrier, I have one already... just put that in the original post to include as much info as possible, sorry to confuse you.

Actually I'm leaning towards Ford Focus Estate at the moment

This has certainly been an interesting discussion and I've learnt loads, thanks to everyone.