Best hatchback for £6k

Pixie5740

I am looking for recommendations for a decent hatchback £6k or less.

5 doors, petrol engine and automatic if possible. It will be used around town and for longer motorway journeys so needs some beans under the hood. (Last time I drove a petrol engined automatic as a hire car and it couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding. In fact I'm sure it would have been faster if I had pushed it on to the roundabout.)

I've had a look on Autotrader and so far have found a 2006 Golf GTI with 115,000 miles on the clock, one Seat Leon and a bunch of Nissan Notes within 100 miles radius of Aberdeen.

Any suggestions?

facade

I have a Note auto. (e11)
Great engine and gearbox.
The rest of the car is as good as you would expect a Renault (mis)assembled in England to be.
I won't buy another Nissan.

Common faults:
Water leaks as they didn't glue the windscreens in properly (maestro anyone?)
Springs break if you go over a pea beneath a pile of matresses.
Horrendous rattle when cold caused by heatshield on exhaust.
Squeak from front NS caused by them bodging a subframe fixing (to get the auto in) to a bush in the chassis rail below the aircleaner that pulls out inside and needs the chassis welding.
Tires wear out as fast as you can get them fitted, even the rears as they come with too much rear toe-in from the factory (but Nissan reckon you have bent the axle driving over the previously mentioned pea)
Paint falls off the alloys, which are a stupid size and there are very few tyres that fit.
Wires to tailgate snap at the "flexible" part, and are all the same colour
Mine also goes through headlamp bulbs like a donkey goes through strawberries, which may be the woeful front suspension, as the voltages check out.
The automatic wipers only wipe when the screen is dry, and the automatic headlamps come on whenever a cloud crosses the sun, so are best left on OFF.

Apart from that, they do quite well to the gallon- I get 33 around town, and go quite well, and are fairly comfortable. They are tricky to reverse and you see them with loads of dings to the rear bumpers.

The later e12 has some sort of miniscule turbo'd engine and an awful CVT, Nissan can't give them away and are stopping production.

The e11 has vertical tail lights and a square tailgate that you could actually load stuff in through, the e12 has round low tail lights and a trendy round tailgate.

System

Ford Focus. No need to continue the thread.

agrinnall

I guess the main piece of advice will be to look somewhere other than Aberdeen, which as I'd imagine you'll know is notorious for high priced second hand cars (unless it's changed in the last couple of years due to the oil downturn). Even Dundee would probably get you a better car for the same money, but the Central Belt should be even more cost effective.

Pixie5740

Car prices have come down especially for flashier motors and/or thirsty cars.

Even widening the search out to a 200 miles radius didn't throw much more up. There are 4 Ford Focuses on Auto Trader that fit the brief but they're all more than 350 miles away which is a long way to go for a sub-£6k car that won't come with a manufacturer approved used warranty.

peter_the_piper

Kia Picanto cheap to run, cheap to insure, quite nippy with the 1.25 engine, air con, abs, bluetooth radio etc.

paulpud

Getting a car nowadays with a bit of oomph is not as easy as it once was, with manufacturers seemingly concentrating on eco-friendly/low emissions issues. When you look towards the cheaper end of the market, used car ads are swimming with sub-100bhp engines that are cheap to tax, economical to run but will struggle to overtake an octogenarian in a Honda Jazz.

Up until today my other half had a top-spec Nissan Note with a 1.6 engine and a manual gearbox. It was fairly quick and reliable but I can empathise with the previous poster regarding the niggly faults they seem to have - springs break, alloys peel, tyres aren't cheap, wear out and lose pressure and the auto wipers and lights have a mind of their own. I always felt that ours needed an extra gear - over 60mph was always a noisy affair with a lot of vibration.

After 3 years we decided to replace it and when I scoured Autotrader using our criteria - 6K to 7K-ish budget, 5 years old or newer, less than 60K miles and a 0-60 time of less than 10 seconds the only ones that came up that we fancied were Citroen DS3s or Alfa Romeo Giuliettas

We have today replaced it with an Alfa Romeo Giulietta which is cheaper to tax, delivers 170bhp (0-60 7.5 secs) and can return over 40 mpg if driven like Miss Daisy. Quality-wise the car feels in a different league to the Note. There are a few out there without too many miles on from around £5500 including some autos.

robatwork

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?sort=price-desc&radius=100&postcode=ab116jl&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly%20New&onesearchad=New&make=HYUNDAI&model=I30&price-from=4000&price-to=6000

or smaller

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?sort=price-desc&radius=100&postcode=ab116jl&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly%20New&onesearchad=New&make=HYUNDAI&model=I20&price-from=4000&price-to=6000

Pixie5740

I'll check out the Giulietta because that wasn't even on my radar.

I'm not sure those Autotrader links are showing me what you think they are. They both bring up the same thing on my computer which is a list of all cars for sale in the UK started with a 2005 Nissan Almera for £75.

agrinnall

I think looking for an auto may be a severe restriction in your search, of the 39 Focuses within 200 miles of Aberdeen between £5K and £7K a grand total of none are autos. If it's not a must have then removing that will give you much more choice.

And read up about Giuliettas before taking the plunge, they seem to be better than Alfas of old but still not necessarily trouble free.

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/alfa-romeo/giulietta-2010/

kmb500

Think you'll struggle to find a good Golf GTI at that price unless you're going for high mileage (I personally wouldn't get a car at 100K if I was spending 6 grand). although automatics will obvious be cheaper. You could get a slightly lower spec Golf though which I'm sure would be pretty nice.