Reliable, economical small car for £1500??

hels234

Hi All,

I know little about cars and will need to buy myself a car soon (I currently borrow one). Please can you kind peeps recommend a car for me? Ideally I'd like to spend less than £1500 on it. I currently drive 14 miles a day for work on country roads. I've always had diesels but don't mind petrols either, not sure what would be better?. Reliability is really important to me as are running costs.

Is this possible or realistic? or should I be trying to save more??

Thanks for any help or recommendations.

Marktheshark

It should buy a small petrol car like a 1.2 16v 04 ish Corsa with plenty of mileage left.
Just avoid the Semi Auto version and anything with a ticky engine.
Avoid Diesel in that price range, repairs can be very expensive if it has high miles.
And forget French cars, they suck.

BeenThroughItAll

Yeah, you can easily get a £1500 car which will be decent. For that money, and that mileage, I wouldn't worry about whether it's petrol or diesel (unless it's a DPF equipped diesel, which it *might* be although less likely at that budget).

Take someone who knows what they're looking at too. Whereabouts in the country are you, there may well be people on MSE who can recommend a good local garage in your area that might be trustworthy.

Don't get hung up on mileage either. A well looked after 100K+ car will be better than a mistreated, never serviced 25K one no matter how nice it might look.

I have written the following previously:

A very low mileage car is often not necessarily better than one with average miles – a car which isn’t used much will deteriorate much more quickly sitting around doing nothing than if it’s used regularly. Also, cars that only do very short runs to the shops and back are often not a great buy; because they never get properly warmed up engine and gearbox wear are very high for the mileage. If a car’s been used for mainly under 5 mile journeys the wear rate is likely to be around 5 or 6 times that on a car used for greater than 5 miles at a time. Personally, I’d suggest looking around at ‘low-average’ miles rather than ‘exceptionally low’.

I’d tend to steer clear of anything that’s done less than 4,000 miles a year. It’s less important for cars with tiny engines (1.2 or below) as they warm up much more rapidly (within a mile or two), but move up to a 1.4-1.6 or larger and you’ll find it takes much longer (as much as twice as long) for them to get properly warm. In that ‘cold’ period, the wear on the engine and gearbox is huge. If a car’s done less than 4000 miles a year, it’s likely it’s been a second car and has done shorter trips; even if it were used every day it’d only be doing ten miles a day (probably two 5 mile trips) which means it’ll be ‘cold’ for probably 70+% of the time. That is not good news at all for wear and general reliability, especially on a modern engine.

A more powerful car will be less stressed on longer higher speed runs; that translates into all sorts of benefits including lower wear rates on components, less noise, vibration and harshness in the cabin, and often can mean better fuel economy as you’re using less of the available power to reach and maintain the same speed, whereas in a lower powered car you’ll be using all of its power output. I really wouldn’t worry about mileage too much.

When you’re buying a used car, the general condition and evidence of being looked after are vastly more important than mileage. Age is a big factor – although a car might be five years old with 10,000 miles on, the bodywork, plastics, interior, tyres, brakes etc (which almost certainly will still be the ones it came out of the showroom with) will all be 5 years old; and things like tyres degrade rapidly when not used (and should be changed on age at 5 years irrespective of wear). I’d always say buy newer with higher miles if the condition is good; buying a car is always a compromise, whether on mileage, age, make and model, gadgets fitted, etc.

There’s not a car been built in the last ten years that isn’t more than capable of well over 100,000 miles easily if serviced regularly (at least annually or every 10-12,000 miles normally). There’s a car almost identical to mine on eBay at the moment which has done 418,000 miles with nothing more than routine servicing. You’ll find there are way more options to consider if you work to your maximum budget rather than a particular mileage.

OddballJamie

Same small car I always recommend on here. Nissan Micra 03 onwards, 1.2 should do the trick nicely.

14 miles a day isn't enough to risk having a diesel, unless you get one of the old pre-DPF VAG cars.

Horizon81

Same small car I always recommend on here. 1.0 Yaris VVTi S model (base spec). No central locking, no electric windows, even power steering was an option but most had it (worth checking, as ideally it's something you want). £1500 should get you around the 03 plates.

jimjames

Totally agree that mileage is not relevant - except that high mileage may be better than low mileage if all servicing done on time.

It may be a bit big for you but VW Golf MK4 TDI can take huge mileages without major problems and don't have all the latest DPF gadgets to break.

You'll easily get one within budget of £1500. Mine cost £700, 1 owner and has 245,000 miles on it now. I've done almost 10k of those since purchase and it hasn't let me down - well I had a coolant leak from split hose but that could happen on any 12 year old car and cost £20 to replace.

Strider590

Economical and reliable don't often work in the same sentence.
Fractionally better economy means going for a small car with a small engine, but small cars aren't designed with reliability in mind.
Small cars are designed on the cheap, almost as throw away items, they keep the customer coming back to the dealerships for repairs/servicing/parts.

Large cars are the opposite, because the fleet market is extremely important to the manufacturer, any reliability issues could mean losing a multimillion £ contract.


All i'm saying is don't be blinded by a quest for great economy.

Retrogamer

Marktheshark wrote: »

It should buy a small petrol car like a 1.2 16v 04 ish Corsa with plenty of mileage left.
Just avoid the Semi Auto version and anything with a ticky engine.
Avoid Diesel in that price range, repairs can be very expensive if it has high miles.
And forget French cars, they suck.

Not sure about that. I've got a "reliable" German diesel the now but would happily have a Peugeot 106 1.5 diesel again.

They were very slow, noisy and basic. Not the nicest drive either.
Could often get 75mpg out of it though, the engine was bulletproof due to how basic it was and despite a very hard life (previous owner had driven it with almost no oil a number of times) it still lasted 174,000 miles without much trouble.
Parts were cheap as chips to replace and very easy to work on.~

What i have now is much more powerful (Ibiza FR TDi) but costs a fortune to fix, has more technology to go wrong on board and isn't easy to work on.

Mr_Mink

Since the Micra and Yaris usual suspects have already been suggested I'll chuck in the Honda Jazz to round off the collection.

darkmatter101

Go for a an older Honda, one that looks like this: http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201409137366496/sort/default/onesearchad/used%2Cnearlynew%2Cnew/make/honda/postcode/ha72nh/model/civic/radius/1500/page/1/usedcars/quicksearch/true?logcode=p


or this

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/honda/civic/honda-civic-b16a2-conversion-low-miles/2825340


Can pick one these up for under a grand, and they are excellent! I had one during my student days and it was amazingly reliable! Handled well too and fairly efficient. Good modding potential.

Or go for a 1998 BMW 328i M-tech

Horizon81

Mr_Mink wrote: »

Since the Micra and Yaris usual suspects have already been suggested I'll chuck in the Honda Jazz to round off the collection.

Although I mentioned the Yaris earlier, I should have also mentioned the Suzuki Ignis 1.3. They're often overlooked so you should get more for your money. It's not as refined a car to drive as the other Japanese superminis listed here, but it's the cheapest and is a pretty honest, robust car, if a little unusual looking. Tax is slightly more though. £1500 should get you either the earlier 3 door or facelifted 5 door. Steer clear of the 4x4 (4grip) models as you don't need it and it's just another thing to go wrong.