Best small car for long distance?

funkycoldribena

OddballJamie wrote: »

Ford seemed to do quite well with slapping an Escort badge on the back of millions of cars

Although the Probe wasn't quite as successful.

Saw quite a few older ladies driving Cougars back in the day....

Weird_Nev

I'd recommend a Skoda fabia 1.4 Tdi.
We ran one for 4 years/50,000 miles and it was a truly excellent car. It returned 60+Mpg across our ownership. If driven carefully it could return over 70Mpg on long journeys. It had a 45 Litre tank, so £50-£60 to fill (seeing as you could never put 45 litres in!) and that would get you at least 500 miles before the next fill up. It was also decent to drive, comfortable, and didn't feel like a "small car".

I certainly wouldn't want to use a city type car for 18k miles a year or on motorways. They're tinny and wearing to spend a lot of time in.

Whoever told you about clutch wear wants a slap! The biggest factor in how much clutch wear a car takes is how you drive it. If you ride the clutch or balance the car on it at junctions, yes, you'll wear it out. If you get your car in 5th on the motorway and keep driving, your clutch would suffer virtually no wear.

Buy a car designed for the kind of use you will be subjecting it to. Diesel, small hatch or low range executive would be my suggestion.

red_eye

silverwhistle wrote: »

Surely that depends on how you drive? Now I admit I don't know much about modern cars as mine is a standard 12 year old hatchback and gets me across Europe, but surely the link between engine size and power has changed a lot since mine was made? If it's motorway driving you might take a little longer to achieve a decent cruising speed, but there's no way you'd be screaming its nuts off..

its all about how much torque it can generate, its does become a problem when there is passengers. for the extra weight the engine has to work harder

lets say it takes 60Nm engine torque to move 4 obese passengers from standstill.

and lets say
1000cc, say max torque is 60Nm @ 5000rpm. this will be revving around 5000rpm

now say a 1600cc has 100Nm @5000rpm this one will be revving around 2000rpm

red_eye

Weird_Nev wrote: »

I'd recommend a Skoda fabia 1.4 Tdi.
We ran one for 4 years/50,000 miles and it was a truly excellent car. It returned 60+Mpg across our ownership. If driven carefully it could return over 70Mpg on long journeys. It had a 45 Litre tank, so £50-£60 to fill (seeing as you could never put 45 litres in!) and that would get you at least 500 miles before the next fill up. It was also decent to drive, comfortable, and didn't feel like a "small car".

I certainly wouldn't want to use a city type car for 18k miles a year or on motorways. They're tinny and wearing to spend a lot of time in.

Whoever told you about clutch wear wants a slap! The biggest factor in how much clutch wear a car takes is how you drive it. If you ride the clutch or balance the car on it at junctions, yes, you'll wear it out. If you get your car in 5th on the motorway and keep driving, your clutch would suffer virtually no wear.

Buy a car designed for the kind of use you will be subjecting it to. Diesel, small hatch or low range executive would be my suggestion.

small cc cars with a load would mean you would need to slip at high revs just to get going, but this is only a problem if it subjected to this on a regular basis