Recommend me a motorway runner

harding1985

Hi all,

I use my car for business use 5 days a week, mileage can vary from 100 a week to 500 a week!! My current car is a BMW 318 1.9 2002 petrol and achieving 33mpg, I really need a motor that can achieve between 45mpg-50mpg.

Now im thinking motorway runner possibly Ford Mondeo TDCI...


Any other suggestion that would be worth considering? :j

No french please!

Cheers

oliverr

What's your budget? What sort of age range are you after?

To achieve that amount of mpg you will want a diesel, which is suited to motorway miles like that. Have a look at the VW Passat, solid reliability and can cover many, many miles easily. The Mondeo is also a good choice.

Might also be worth having a look at the Skoda Octavia, made by VW so is just as reliable, except it costs less as it's got a Skoda badge - not a VW.

All 3 cars will make light work of the motorway miles that you are covering, but have a look round. Best of luck with your search.

harding1985

Hi thanks for your response!

I have roughly 4k to spend, age isn't an issue aslong its the car is reliable.

I will take a look at the Passat's

Cheers

forgotmyname

Any modern diesel, BUT dont forget modern diesels have lots of potentially expensive bills.

Common rail injectors can cost 4x more than normal ones, Dual mass flywheels can push up the cost of a clutch replacement.

Lots of sensors to go wrong.

Spending £4000 to get an extra 10mpg maybe pointless.

oliverr

forgotmyname wrote: »

Spending £4000 to get an extra 10mpg maybe pointless.

While I see your point, you can easily get over 50 mpg doing motorway driving with a diesel, even more.

Paperbird

Or you could stick with BMW and get a 320 or 330 diesel. both will return more than 50 mpg.
If you treat them right most diesels will run for ever. A friend looking for a replacement for his 400,000 mile Mondeo diesel estate bought a BMW 530 diesel estate with 120,00 miles on it, it needed a new injector pump at 250,000 miles and the last time I heard from him it had just passed 500,000 miles and still going strong.

Strider590

Paperbird wrote: »

Or you could stick with BMW and get a 320 or 330 diesel. both will return more than 50 mpg.
If you treat them right most diesels will run for ever. A friend looking for a replacement for his 400,000 mile Mondeo diesel estate bought a BMW 530 diesel estate with 120,00 miles on it, it needed a new injector pump at 250,000 miles and the last time I heard from him it had just passed 500,000 miles and still going strong.

DMFs fail no matter how well you treat them and your talking £1000+ for a replacement. Recent generations of diesels have various expensive things that go wrong once they're more than a few years old.

steve-L

Strider590 wrote: »

DMFs fail no matter how well you treat them and your talking £1000+ for a replacement. Recent generations of diesels have various expensive things that go wrong once they're more than a few years old.

DMF's are not that expensive. I just looked into one for the Honda 2.2 TDCI and its about £450. The sod is the labour.
I got clutch+DMF+labour for £1011 quoted and even got Honda down to £1300.

Good news on BMW is less labour on RWD for a DMF/Clutch (in general)

Or you could stick with BMW and get a 320 or 330 diesel. both will return more than 50 mpg.
If you treat them right most diesels will run for ever. A friend looking for a replacement for his 400,000 mile Mondeo diesel estate bought a BMW 530 diesel estate with 120,00 miles on it, it needed a new injector pump at 250,000 miles and the last time I heard from him it had just passed 500,000 miles and still going strong.

In the year's he's probably looking at I'd suggest the 3L (2006 on).
I can still get over 60mpg in the 330D driven economically at 70mph! (I rarely do but on a recent trip with a sleeping kid and empty tank from Poole to the end of the M3 near Tesco ) I got 68 mpg.... (AC off/allowing speed to build on downhills and fall off on uphills...)

Driven 'normally' I get mid 40's overall and 30-35 town only and mid 50's on the motorway (really depending how its driven.... if you floor it ... well it will suck fuel through like no tomorrow... however its virtually impossible to floor it for more than 2 seconds anyway.... least on UK motorways/roads!
50mph-110mph happens scarily fast ...(on the odd occasion I tried)

Engine has only 122k on it so expecting another 800k out of it!
Some of the pre-06 turbo's had problems, not just swirl flaps.... but having done my research the 325 and 330 (both identical engine) is the pick of the bunch....

Equally.. stay well away from the ED.... as far as I can see its just a 316D with some extra fuel saving.... (since the 316, 318 and 320 are all the same engine just 'de-tuned' in the 316....)
The ED gets the 320 price and 316 performance .....more of a marketing gimmick I think ????

oldhand

harding1985 wrote: »

Hi all,

I use my car for business use 5 days a week, mileage can vary from 100 a week to 500 a week!! My current car is a BMW 318 1.9 2002 petrol and achieving 33mpg, I really need a motor that can achieve between 45mpg-50mpg.

Now im thinking motorway runner possibly Ford Mondeo TDCI...


Any other suggestion that would be worth considering? :j

No french please!

Cheers

excellent motorway runner.......

jase1

oliverr wrote: »

While I see your point, you can easily get over 50 mpg doing motorway driving with a diesel, even more.

Funnily enough I can get 50mpg doing motorway driving with a 2l petrol.

Granted I never achieve anything like that because I don't annoy everyone pootling along at 55mph, but there you go.

All this "can get x mpg" stuff is irrelevant.

vikingaero

I would go for a Focus TDCI over the Mondeo. For some reason the DMF on Focus(es/ii) don't seem to go as often as on the Mondeo.