£2000 to Spend on an Small Car . Help

jehangir

Hi can anyone please advise me .

Let me say i know very little to nothing about cars but as my ever reliable K reg Peugeot 205 diesels cambelt went around 10 days ago( taking the engine
with it) i am on the look out for another motor .

I have around 1500 - 2000k to spend and do around 10 - 15k miles a year and have been advised an diesel would be best .

I have been looking at peugeot 205 / 307 and Ford focus size cars but i am having trouble finding an genuine one .

i do not know what it is like in the rest of the country but in Birmingham it seems like every private seller is an dealer and even
the small dealers are buying duds from car auctions looking to make a quick buck.

I boot large enough to hold 3 - 4 guitars cases would be great

Any help would be much appreciated.

forgotmyname

Nothing wrong with someone buying a car from the auction and selling it on for a profit. Bought
my car from a dealer that bought 3 or 4 cars at a time.

Why not goto the auctions yourself and buy one, Plenty around the midlands.

Mondeo's are cheaper than Focus's. Running costs are similar though.


Be careful with modern diesels, They can be money pits. Common rail fuel systems
can be costly, DMF's add another £200 or so to the price of a clutch. Sensors for the sensors.

Why does my throttle pedal need 3 sensors? If they worry about it failing why not fit a cable?

jehangir

Thanks for the reply , i do not mind buying off dealers but it is when they pretend to private sellers so they do not have to offer any sort of warranty.

What would be classed as an modern diesel ( i am looking at 2000 - 2003 cars ) as i have always had very basic cars pre 2000 .

I do around 15k a year so would an Diesel be the best bet ?
thanks again

Weird_Nev

I think that at under £2,000 you're best off looking for a petrol car.

My reasons for this are:
1) Everyone assumes that they want a diesel because they are more efficient. However, diesel new car sales only really picked up in the last 5 years, so older cars there are fewer diesels and more people chasing them. This keeps prices high. People who want cheap cars want cheap to run cars, and so cheap diesels are like gold dust.
2) The effect of this is that you get much more car for your money if you stick to a petrol car. You also get more choice.
3) Diesels tend to be more efficient, but how MUCH more efficient? Realistically, a diesel may return 55mpg, but a decent modern petrol car should return 40-45 mpg. Fuel is actually a far smaller proportion of peoples motoring costs than people assume. Take tax, insurance, repairs and other consumables into consideration and suddenly the 15-20% fuel saving on diesel is perhaps 5% saving overall.
4) diesels are more expensive to fix if they do go wrong. They have expensive injectors, fuel pumps and turbos. Petrol cars by and large don't, and any little garage can service a petrol cheaply. more modern diesels are worse in this respect, but they're still out of your price range to be honest. Far MORe importnat than petrol vs diesel is getting a reliable car rather than an unreliable one.

As an example, I did an autotrader search for common car criteria, but leaving out whether it was petrol or diesel. For a less than 7 year old car, under £2,000, with less than 80k miles you get a choice of 1,000 petrol cars or 23 diesels. That speaks volumes about the QUALITY of car you will get for you money petrol vs diesel IMO.

By chosing petrol over diesel you move yourself from a massively seller oriented market into a massively buyer orineted one, and thus you can either choose to save money, or get more for your money.

Here are the results of a search for cars in your viscinity

Anyway, all that said and done, in your position I would be looking for the following:
A Petrol hatchback with a 1.4-1.6 engine (possibly 1.8-2 litre if you do lots of motorway miles)
Full service history and low previous owners

And specifically I'd be looking at things like:
Ford Focuses
Renaul Meganes
Seat Leons
Skoda Fabias
Peugeot 307

I reckon your £2000 could get you a really nicely specified 1.6 Petrol car with lots of toys on a '55 plate or so.
Or it would get you a high milage 8 year old diesel with poor specification....

avantra

Wise words from Weired, this is what I did last week, picked up a one owner ex Motability 2007 Ford fusion 1.4 for £3000 from a Ford dealer with full history , the car is practically new. I do around 8000 miles a year and I can see this car will serve me for a very long time.

I my self had an older diesel up to now (2002 Rover 45) and once you take into account the price of diesel which is around 12p more than petrol, the life of the fuel pump and Turbo (they will fail at one point no doubt) you are much better off with a modern petrol.

rodenal

avantra wrote: »

Wise words from Weired, this is what I did last week, picked up a one owner ex Motability 2007 Ford fusion 1.4 for £3000 from a Ford dealer with full history , the car is practically new. I do around 8000 miles a year and I can see this car will serve me for a very long time.

I my self had an older diesel up to now (2002 Rover 45) and once you take into account the price of diesel which is around 12p more than petrol, the life of the fuel pump and Turbo (they will fail at one point no doubt) you are much better off with a modern petrol.

Where are you buying your fuel!!?? Diesel is about 5-6p more expensive where I am at the moment. Anyway, I agree at this age a petrol car is a better bet. The leon mentioned earlier is a good car that's often forgotten about - if you can handle the taxi driver image the octavia is also a good shout.

mikey72

Our petrol engined car costs about £1000 to £1500 a year more for fuel than our diesel over that sort of mileage.
So another Peugeot diesel or maybe a skoda.
Our last ones all came fron ebay, but we had to travel, usually I look within 70 or 80 miles.

jehangir

Thanks for taking the timeout to reply to my question , the driving i do is mostly motorway but only normally 20 - 30 miles each way ( 60 - 80 miles an day ), would an 1.4 be okay or would it be better to go for somthing slightly bigger ?
thanks again

avantra

jehangir wrote: »

( 60 - 80 miles an day ), would an 1.4 be okay or would it be better to go for somthing slightly bigger ?
thanks again

The size of the engine shouldn't be the critical point, I think what you mean is what output vs car size needed from the engine to cope with 60-80 miles daily usage.

1.4 can come in many shapes and power outputs (I think there are 1.4 supercharged VAG units with 150 horses in their TSI models), 80 to 100 BHP should be just fine and you can find this output in many small petrols.

Basically find yourself an engine you don't need to labor too hard fitted to a reliable make like any of the Japno/Korean/German cars and you will look at cheap motoring in years to come.

I am told by a good mate that the Fiat Panda 1.2 is a mega reliable car and he is doing a 70 miles mixed roads commute everyday.

rodenal

I personally wouldn't want to be driving a 1.4 on a motorway journey everyday unless it was a small car - and then i wouldn't want to drive a small car on motorways every day.

Are there any specific cars you like? Could be worthwhile listing a few as different models have differing "good" engines in the range

jehangir

I have been looking at

Focus
Pegeot 206 , 307
Seat Leons
Honda Civics