Best MPG Car For A Young Driver?

OddballJamie

Strider590 wrote: »

Well, basically you can't have it all............

A 4 year old large car that does 35mpg, for £4000 (Vauxhall Insignia 1.8)
or
A 4 year old small car that does 38mpg, for £7000 (Vauxhall Corsa 1.2)

(not actual prices, but the difference is about right)

If you want small, you pay the premium and you'll never recover that by getting an extra few mpg. Small cars = worse value for money and only slightly better fuel economy.

Bad examples, both cars can be had for about the same price at four years old, if anything the Insignia will have higher miles.

The example worked before when you put a Vectra in it because they are pretty much worthless nowadays.

forgotmyname

Is 57mpg enough? You need a 2L Diesel Mondeo Estate.

Steady 70mph in 6th gear will give you around 70mpg, The 57mpg was the average consumption from a trip to the seaside and back all loaded up with people and shopping.

Bigger engines are higher speeds and longer journeys may not use as much fuel as you think.

And bigger cars that use a bit more fuel are so cheap to buy.

ACG

I have a 1 ltr corsa 56 plate (for another 16 days and counting)...
I do about 100 miles a week and put in around £15-20.

So multiplying that up for work commute only you would be looking at around £25-30 a week? Im a few years older than you but when i purchased it i was 25 (29 now) with no no claims and it was costing me about £500-550 to insure fully comp.

It has never let me down, I have done trips from manchester to leciester, northampton, swindon etc. Dont get me wrong Swindon/Northampton were not exactly amazing drives but it did the job admirably. Apart from the odd occasion where there are 2-3 biggish lads with me its never really struggled.

Although I have a much bigger car on the way soon so I will probably notice the difference then.

jimjames

Why not just keep what you have?

Thinking it might go wrong is not the same as it actually going wrong. Many people would have walked a mile from my car with 240,000 miles on but it's been far more reliable than many cars mentioned on here with faults that are far newer.

Mr_Mink

Mxty wrote: »

The small hitch is that I will be 20 when I decide to purchase this with one years no claims (given all goes to plan of course), so I also need to look at something that isn't going to cost me a bomb to insure...

I think a lot of people are forgetting this point when saying spend less on a bigger car.

I'd say pick a Honda Jazz, it's excellent at pretty much everything it does, can be picked up for about £1000, stupidly reliable and even the 1.4 can see you doing 50 mpg. And because it's an 'old person's car' it'll be cheap enough to insure too.

Strider590

OddballJamie wrote: »

Bad examples, both cars can be had for about the same price at four years old, if anything the Insignia will have higher miles.

The example worked before when you put a Vectra in it because they are pretty much worthless nowadays.

At the time when it worked with the Vectra, they had not yet been superseded by the Insignia. The difference is that the fleet owners have not yet fully opened the flood gates on the Insignia, but when they do the prices will fall very sharply indeed.

Mr_Mink wrote: »

I think a lot of people are forgetting this point when saying spend less on a bigger car.

I'd say pick a Honda Jazz, it's excellent at pretty much everything it does, can be picked up for about £1000, stupidly reliable and even the 1.4 can see you doing 50 mpg. And because it's an 'old person's car' it'll be cheap enough to insure too.

It'll be covered in parking dings, have been wrecked by low mileage journeys, won't have been serviced properly and it's one of those cars that people will go to great lengths to overtake on sight.

agrinnall

Mr_Mink wrote: »

I think a lot of people are forgetting this point when saying spend less on a bigger car.

They aren't forgetting it. It can be cheaper to insure a big car than a small one simply because small cars tend to be bought and crashed by young drivers, whereas they don't think about buying bigger cars so there's much less historic statistics about young drivers crashing them so insurers don't load premiums as much as might be expected.

JustinR1979

I was going to say that Renault you mentioned!
Corsa 1.3 cdti does mega mpg, nippy enough too.

F1F93

Strider590 wrote: »

It'll be covered in parking dings, have been wrecked by low mileage journeys, won't have been serviced properly and it's one of those cars that people will go to great lengths to overtake on sight.

Really? All Jazzes are like that? My Fiancee has a jazz that begs to differ. The above can be said for any car.

Also, in response to your earlier post, I'm not sure in what world any small car is £3000 more expensive than a similar age and milage large car.

forgotmyname

F1F93 wrote: »

Also, in response to your earlier post, I'm not sure in what world any small car is £3000 more expensive than a similar age and milage large car.

Supply and demand. Too many people assume a small car is cheaper to run.