Buying your first small car

actionman_3

Has anyone got any tips for buying your first car please?

I am learning in a corsa. I get so much contradictory advice. I would like to spend up to £3000 on a second hand car.

I was told the citroen C1 is only £6000 brand new and cheap on tax and insurance. So I would pay that for brand new.

Is it better to go for a new citroen,or a secondhand corsa,polo or similar small car please?

If a car is 5-7 years old is it liable to get more faults than buying a citroen brand new?

Or do you think I should go for a car that is only 2 years old. The salesman said a 7 year old C3 he had wouldnt develop any faults as it was in good condition.

I am sorry for asking what may seem silly questions but I have absolutely no knowledge of cars.

Is it best to go to a main car dealer or back street garage. The main dealers seem to be more expensive.

vansboy

Lots help & info in http://www.honestjohn.co.uk

But my suggestions....

Yes some NEW city cars do look good value & they are! You get a 3year warranty & lots piece of mind, won't loose too much £$£$ in depreciation, compared to say a £9-10000 model, .....

BUT - first car makes more sense to buy a used model, your £3000 will get you a good choice of Corsas to look at, although I guess you're in a new model at the moment, so do make sure you're happy with the way the old one 'feels' when you're it.

A used car will be easier to sell on again, if you find you've chosen a model you cant get on with, don't like after a while, or ..... put a few scrapes n dents in it!!

An independent local used car garage would be a sensible place to buy. A small business, thats established & has a reputation they won't want to tarnish is worth spending your £$£$ with.

Even better if they have on site servicing, 'cos you'll need someone to maintain it. Otherwise, recommendation as with most things, is where you'll find a good mechanic.

Then buy a BRAND new one, in a year or two!

Welcome to the world of Moneyspending - that's what motoring is !!

VB

olly300

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/buy_sell/buying_used/index.htm

globalds

My advice would be to go and test drive a few cars ..If the only thing you've driven is a Corsa ...Then you may find some other cars are much better to drive and are as reasonable used ...And I would hazard they would be much more reliable .
Maybe thinking further afiled than Europe ...I would go for a Japanese car ...Still can't really match them for Reliablilty .

toasterman

I'm only on my first car I've bought myself, but I decided against taking out a loan or finance (mse-styley), and set myself a budget of £1000 for the car and £1000 for the insurance. I figured with my clear lack of experience and poor history of accidents, it'd be better to have a car I wouldn't care too much about if I scraped it parking, or had some other minor mishap.

I can tell you now - this doesn't buy you much. I actually ended up spending £575 on the car and about £1100 on the insurance (I was male (I still am male..), under 25, previous accidents in company cars, living in the city, etc..).

For that money, I got a 1995 Rover 214si, which isn't a particularly luxurious car, has no sex appeal at all (the only woman who has told me it's a really nice looking car was a pensioner), but I got it because Rovers are so unfashionable that they're very cheap to buy. Nothing that expensive has gone wrong with mine, but lots of niggly little things because its 12 years old. Most expensive repair was just under £200 for a bit of suspension that made it fail its MOT, but to be fair that was done in a main dealer Rover garage.
A common fault in Rovers is the head gasket failing so I'm told - which is expensive to fix. But if the car cost you almost nothing to start with, you just don't bother getting it fixed - junk the car and start again.

In some ways, its quite a relaxing car to own - because if someone scratches it overnight (it's happened several times), I'm not so bothered. The window's stuck and I've not bothered to have it repaired. You don't have to worry about depreciation because it's almost worthless from the day I bought it.

In contrast, I had a brand new Skoda Fabia with air con, electric windows, etc, etc from a garage for one night while mine was being looked at, and I barely slept, worrying about if someone damaged it while it was in my ownership - how much it would cost me to put right, etc. I actually went out driving in it, just so I knew where it was and that it wasn't being damaged.

I don't know much more about cars than you, but Citroen don't have a great track record for reliability. They are very cheap though and the cheapest ones often come with free insurance...which will save you a fortune in your position.

When i was looking, if you're on a low budget - main dealers aren't great. From what I've seen of car dealerships - you seem to pay more than buying it private from Autotrader/Trade-It (i got mine from Trade-It) and most don't offer much of a warranty for second hand vehicles - yet still think they're justified in hiking £1500 on the price for not doing a lot.
Not all garages are like this I hope.

I've used main dealers and backstreet garages for repairs.
While several backstreet garages (that were recommended to me) turned out to be a little bit dodgy, I've had bad experiences at main dealer Vauxhall, Rover and Peugeot garages too...so you should really ask around locally. Maybe see who your instructor uses for repairs...my sister is an instructor and she's in and out of garages very regularly for servicing, new clutches, new tyres etc.
You can always to go another garage if you don't trust the first one you go to.

epz_2

an older car which has been used will almost certainly have more bumps and scrapes than a brand new car (though you do ges some new dogs as well) but you will pay a fraction the price and if you buy the right car it woulnt really affect you.


i dont know where toasterman was looking but there are plenty of real gems under a grand though really smal cars arnt a good choice cause teenagers like them so they cost more to buy and insure, you would be able to get an audi a6, bmw 5/7 series or a pre 94(aka proper) merc brutes like that live forever, cost little more to insure and lets face it, as a new driver you are a LOT more likely to be in a bump.

know what i would rather rattle into a tree, a car with bug bonnet and a lot of weight rather than a wee dinky car that will put the engine in your lap after a bump.

mattogier

In my experience the reliability and build quality on modern French Cars - Citroen and Renault in particular is not great.

In my day (sounds like old man) my first car cost me £100 (Citroen 2CV) and my second cost me £10 (Mini 850) both cars taught me a lot about car maintenance :-) but were cheap to insure & maintain.

toasterman

thats the problem epz - at the point of me looking for a new car, I had a small scrape (only my car damaged) that my company told me they claimed for, with me as named driver (AFTER I told my new insurer about this, I found out they never claimed for it in the first place, so I know it would have been lying - but I clearly wouldn't have told my new company that).
I'd also had a bigger accident which my company claimed for, with me as a named driver (that one was fair enough).

While the car from the bigger accident above was being repaired, I had a courtesy car for my job (nearly brand-new Ford Ka), and some little $h17s locally keyed down the side of it and snapped off one of the wing mirrors - the quote for that was £400 and my company claimed for it on their insurance with me as named owner at the time - hey presto - 3 accidents against my name, male at the age of 23, living in the city, parking on the street, etc.

Norwich Union quoted me £2000 for my first year's insurance of my Rover 214. I shopped around and eventually got it for £1100 although I had to phone companies because nobody has boxes to state 3 accidents on their website.

Thats why my choice of first car to buy myself was so limited to low insurance group cars made of paper. I dread to think what a heavy BMW or something else with an engine in it, would have cost me to insure.

Edit: Oh and I'm sure I read somewhere recently about someone crashing two cars on purpose. One was an old Volvo estate (generally considered to be a bit of a tank), and a modern small car - something like a Clio I think it was. The results said the person in the Volvo wouldn't have got out with his/her legs still attached. But the Clio driver could have walked free. I guess it depends how far back you're going - slightly bigger cars seem to be a lot cheaper to buy than small cars of the same age...from my recent research. Often fuel economy isn't that different either - I have seen that small cars aren't necessarily greener or cheaper..depends what you're using it for, and if it's just a rubbish car to start with.

epz_2

yeah,it was 5th gear, the problem was the volvo 940 they used was designed in the 70s, and all volvo had done was change the styling in the late 80s, it did look a bit wrecked but a lot of folks recon it was a fit-up and they had done something to it.

frankly i would have loved to see what would have happened if they tried something like that with merc w126 or similar which was designed in the age of even basic computers, lots of experts recon if princess di had worn a seatbelt she would have survived when her s500 hit a pillar at 90mph


bad luck on the insurance mate i passed my test 2 years ago and am driving about in a group 19 bimmer 740 e38 and my fully comp renewal was £793.46, though even i have to cop to the fact it sucks petrol like you wouldnt belive, though you have to pay a bit of a price when you get a 70k car for under 4k.

toasterman

That is amazing. It is interesting how much cheaper bigger cars can be.
The depreciation is massive.
I wouldn't buy a brand new car even if I had the money right now in cash, but looking through Parkers, some of the expensive (£30,000+) cars can lose as much as a quarter of their value in 12 months.

goldspanners

the type of people who buy these cars new do so because they can afford to,or they will be company directors with an image to keep up,they arent going to buy second hand now are they/
that wouldnt look impressive down the golf club would it?