First Car: 1k budget, no idea about cars

Robisere

Talk to parents, grandparents and other family/friends with experience of buying and selling cars over several years. Ask which places are reliable. Unfortunately, the days I remember of buying "ex-part exchange bargains" from dealerships and large independents, are long gone. Those are now usually scrapped or sent to auction.


TBH, nowadays £1,000 will usually buy you nothing but trouble at a later date. Is there no way that you could get a bank loan for at least an extra £1k? That will give you better options, especially considering the anticipated high mileage: a £1k car will already have high mileage, so it is not going to stand up well to more mileage in a short time.


Whatever steps you take, as has been said here, consider the insurance position, which is very expensive for young drivers.

Nathaniel_Essex

Might be worth upping your budget for the car if you've set aside something separately for insurance. Being a first time driver, the more expensive the car the lower the insurance. My initial budget was around £5k for my first car but the insurance was well within the £1,500 mark. Put more towards the car and got the insurance down.

k6chris

Your £1,000 will go a lot further if you buy something ugly and in a terrible colour. The Nissan Almera above is a great example of that. The logic is the ugly / crap colour car is not likley to have been thrashed by an image concious boy-racer and will be cheap because "no-one" wants an ugly car is an intersting shade of beige. Agree with the comments about getting insurance quotes ASAP so you can start thinking about budgets. Oh, and congratulations for passing! Good luck.

Arklight

I guarantee no boy racer will have ever set foot in that Almera, unless he was being collected from court by his grandad after being banned for speeding.

His smoking Peugeot 206 however, is on Autotrader right now.

Facknats

I bought a Peugeot 206 for £400 three years ago and all it's cost in repairs is £12 at MOT. So realistically everybodies comments about 1k being danger zone aren't accurate when my partner's car was 5k and breaks once a month.

Insurance went up by about a grand when I moved from Norfolk to Nottingham. So remember to prioritise that. If it's got blacked out windows or mods run away.

jimbo6977

do your parents/grandparents (assuming they are still with us and in the UK, apologies if not) know anyone who is giving up a small, running car? knowing the car's history is massively valuable at your pricepoint.

PS Daihatsu Sirion.

Arklight

Look at the cars the Good Old Boys drive. The flat cap and distant stare as they look back in time at all the things that might have been. These old timers know, and crave for two things: reliability; and value.

You can do no better than follow their example. Time was when they would all have Almeras. But what do they drive now?

AdrianC

Arklight wrote: »

Look at the cars the Good Old Boys drive. The flat cap and distant stare as they look back in time at all the things that might have been. These old timers know, and crave for two things: reliability; and value.

You can do no better than follow their example. Time was when they would all have Almeras.

Perhaps. Or Corsas and Fiestas...

But what do they drive now?

Honda Jazz. Or Corsas and Fiestas...

Arklight

AdrianC wrote: »

Perhaps. Or Corsas and Fiestas...



Honda Jazz. Or Corsas and Fiestas...

Corsas or Fiestas?? They aren't reliving their youth. The Honda Jazz I can just about go with.

The village I live in has a median age of 103 so I will have a look at what drives through the high street this weekend.

AdrianC

Corsa and Fiestas are beloved of yoof, sure, but they're also nice sensible small cars from "British" manufacturers your grandad's heard of and has been buying cars from since he started driving.