Best MPG from these cars...?

StrongWork

What kind of mpg were you getting out of the Mini?

How are you going to fund the new car? I assume you will sell the Mini and put the money to the new purchase? Will you need to spend extra on top of this?

No point in spending thousands to purchase a car that'll only do a few mpg more as it'll be a long time before you make the money back.

Cornucopia

hieveryone wrote: »

I would also like a car that either has very low or nil road tax so not sure whether that affects things or not too.

In which case, you'll be needing this:

http://carfueldata.dft.gov.uk/

The vast majority of low/nil road tax cars are small diesels.

plane_boy2000

I had a Golf 1.6 tdi bluemotion a few weeks back as a hire car. Driven fairly hard over a long journey it returned 68 mpg on the trip - quit good I thought, and a nice car

By contrast my own car is a volvo v60 Drive - book figure is 62 mpg, but never got more than 47, and average since new is around 44

hieveryone

mattyprice4004 wrote: »

I do like the A3 - try test driving one within budget. I've driven a 1.6 and 1.9 TDI, both moved well enough and were very economical.

I'd definitely give anything you're considering a good test drive - they'll be very different to your Mini. I do prefer an A3 (massively) over the Mini.

The Leon has similar engine options to the A3, so it might be worth driving both and seeing which you prefer.

How much do you want to spend?

StrongWork wrote: »

What kind of mpg were you getting out of the Mini?

How are you going to fund the new car? I assume you will sell the Mini and put the money to the new purchase? Will you need to spend extra on top of this?

No point in spending thousands to purchase a car that'll only do a few mpg more as it'll be a long time before you make the money back.

Mattyprice4004 - I have driven both A3's and Golfs and like them both. I am leaning towards the Golf as the lower mileage A3's are very expensive. I am willing to spend up to £12k for the right car.

Strongwork - I estimate the mileage at around 35mpg at the most. I recently put £30 worth of fuel and did a 120mile trip and it was needing fuel again. My current car is on finance, and is currently in negative equity (the right phrase for a car?) and would pay the difference between that and the settlement figure (less than £1k anyway). New car will be on finance - and I have recently been alerted to the PCP (?) plans, where you pay for 3 years then purchase or hand back?

Cornucopia

Bear in mind that with PCPs you pay interest on the residual/balloon/MGFV amount for the duration of the agreement.

Depending on alternative finance options and rates, you may find that straight purchase finance on vehicles that should keep their value may work out cheaper.

redux

If you spend 12k on the car, I think the depreciation and interest will be more significant than the difference between about 9 and 11 pence a mile on fuel that comes from 55 to 70 mpg.

Would you consider a slightly older car for £5 or 6k? My car was £4500 for 4 years old with 24k miles and I've had it 9 years and done 160k.

I'm not in a hurry to replace it to save 2 or 3p a mile on fuel, but when that eventually happens I'll be hoping to keep the next one a while for numbers nearly as good.

hieveryone

Thank you both again.

I don't think I'd consider an 'older' car, as that then comes along with road tax costs, MOT costs, servicing etc, whereas the idea of getting a newer car is to cut down on these too. I also don't want the worry of possibly breaking down somewhere in an older car and being stuck!

chib

Earlier this year when I looked to replace my 2.0 TDI Passat (170HP) I was considering something smaller with similar power and considered the Golf, Leon and A3.

In the end, the cars all drove the exact same (2.0 TDI Common Rail 6-Speed with 170 HP) the Leon was the cheapest but was a little cheaper looking inside and the A3 was clearly much better quality and quieter on the roads.

I decided to go for the Leon, but managed to get the top of the range 'FR' model which looked better than both the A3/Golf and was much cheaper overall. (There is a Cupra/Cupra R model also, but these are petrol engines only)

I've no confidence with the MPG figures though... my Passats quoted/book MPG was 46 and I was getting 46 or higher if on a long journey. With the Leon, the quoted/book figure is 53 but even on a long journey I struggle to get close to this... there are a number of parameters I guess but I've been driving VAG TDI's since 2002 and found this to be the most off one in a while.

The difference of 46MPG vs 53MPG against the two VAG 2.0 TDI's is due to the Leon having the CommonRail engine against the PD one the older Passat had.

That said, I still love the car. Just gets annoying having young drivers tailgating everywhere.