Choosing the proper car/engine size for 50-mile commute in London highways

AdrianC

At £2-3k, around the M25 corridor, your issue is going to be finding a petrol Fiesta/Focus-sized car.

"City-cars" (Aygo etc) tend to be petrol, whereas go up a size, and default was diesel in the kind of age range we're talking about. For the ULEZ, petrol is ~2004-on (Euro 4), ~diesel is 2015-on (Euro 6), due to the relative NOx levels.

I'd be looking very closely at the start and end points, and whether public transport made far more sense, perhaps combined with car at the start point, maybe bicycle at the end.

alihd

tacpot12 said:

Having more metal around you is a good idea in an accident. Motorway speeds create a lot of kinetic energy, and you need a lot of metal to absorb this if you get hit. The more you drive on Motorways the more likely it is that you will be involved in an accident of some sort. I would look to the larger size vehicles. 

I am getting contradicting comments, e.g. this:

AdrianC said:

Everything is perfectly safe if you don't drive into anything. Small city-cars go through the same crash testing as everything else. Crashing on a motorway in any car is perfectly capable of spoiling more than just your day.

Do the small cars have the SAME safety as the larger ones? It is obviously harder to design a safe small car. If ALL cars tend to pass the bare minimum safety standards, then the point by AdrianC is true. If the larger ones go beyond the bare minimum safety standards, then they are safer. How can we compare the safety of the cars, any useful measure?

alihd

tacpot12 said:

I would look to the larger size vehicles. Motorway driving also needs a car with reasonable performance, The 1.0 litre vehicles will have slower acceleration, and this can create problems when none would exist in a car with more performance. You don't have to use the excess performance if you don't need it. 

So you are saying that because smaller cars have a weaker acceleration in high speeds (for overtaking, etc), this could put me in hazardous positions. right?

ontheroad1970

If you are having to accelerate to get yourself out of trouble you have already failed at real driving.  I thought you were other than specific UK rule a competent driver?  99% of the time, it's the middle pedal that will help you, not the outside right one.  To accelerate out of trouble you need to be trained or lucky.  

vacheron

alihd said:

tacpot12 said:

Having more metal around you is a good idea in an accident. Motorway speeds create a lot of kinetic energy, and you need a lot of metal to absorb this if you get hit. The more you drive on Motorways the more likely it is that you will be involved in an accident of some sort. I would look to the larger size vehicles. 

I am getting contradicting comments, e.g. this:

AdrianC said:

Everything is perfectly safe if you don't drive into anything. Small city-cars go through the same crash testing as everything else. Crashing on a motorway in any car is perfectly capable of spoiling more than just your day.

Do the small cars have the SAME safety as the larger ones? It is obviously harder to design a safe small car. If ALL cars tend to pass the bare minimum safety standards, then the point by AdrianC is true. If the larger ones go beyond the bare minimum safety standards, then they are safer. How can we compare the safety of the cars, any useful measure?

If you hit a solid immovable object then small and large cars can both be equally safe. Small cars can be smaller and lighter and still as safe because the larger car also has to absorb the kinetic energy (mass x velocity) of the larger heavier car as well as the passengers.

When this is less true is when a lighter car collides with a heavier car.
In this case, the additional momentum of the larger car will result in a lower rate of change of speed of that car relative to the smaller car which can resulting in higher g-force related injuries of the occupants of the smaller car. 

In relation to performance, smaller cars have smaller engines because they are espected to be carrying less weight, an Aygo for example could be expected to mailnly be shuttling 1 and sometimes 2 people around with little luggage, whereas a larger "family" car could spend most of its time ferrying around 2 adults and a couple of older kids on the school run, and perhaps a boot full of luggage and a couple of bikes on the back for holidays. In this case, a 1.6-1.8 full of people and a 1.0 with one occupant could be roughly equivalent in performance. 

My wife had 900KG, 1.0 Yaris a few years ago and I used to borrow it whenever I was doing short trips as the 3 litre, 2,700KG VW Phaeton I had at the time was a bit pointless for short trips. The Yaris was perfectly happy merging on to motorway slip roads and could reach 90mph relatively easily. We also took 3 adults and 3 bikes over the lake district once in it, yes, you needed to drop an extra gear on the hills, but it was perfectly safe.

However, if you told me I had to drive the two into each other head on at 70mph I know which one I would have chose to be sitting in!
 

wongataa

alihd said:

Do the small cars have the SAME safety as the larger ones? It is obviously harder to design a safe small car. If ALL cars tend to pass the bare minimum safety standards, then the point by AdrianC is true. If the larger ones go beyond the bare minimum safety standards, then they are safer. How can we compare the safety of the cars, any useful measure?

Very simple.  Go to the EuroNCAP website and look at the ratings of the cars.

noclaf

I drive a old (16 yrs old) MK1 focus, 113bhp mated to the manual gearbox is perfectly suited to 99% of my driving as I hardly use motorways but the manual gearbox can be quite tiring on longer runs when visiting family outside of London. I feel v fatigued after those long runs so for regular motorways personally I would want an auto diesel as it's nice to have a bit more shove for overtaking etc I am thinking along the lines of a more powerful car with auto gearbox will need less driver effort.

LandyAndy

My mother has an Aygo.  I occasionally drive it and i would say it would be underpowered for a regular 50 mile journey particularly if there are many hills involved.
I have a Mazda2. Only a little larger but a world of difference in terms of comfort over longer distances. I do 200 mile journeys in it and it isn't at all tiring.

NBLondon

noclaf said:

 but the manual gearbox can be quite tiring on longer runs when visiting family outside of London. 

Huh?   Surely you are using the gear lever less on long runs outside London?   Unless you habitually take small winding backroads most of the way in which case the time spent in the driver's seat is surely the issue.   I took my Mk1 Focus 1.6 manual lots of places with no issues.

As for the OP...  I second the question of what happened to the car you already had before passing your test?  Is that not suitable?    Otherwise, I agree with AdrianC -  to beat the ULEZ, petrol gives you more options so a petrol Fiesta or equivalent.  How tall or broad you are may be a factor that pushes you up to Focus/Astra/Golf size.   If you fit a smaller car OK - then you can maybe look for a higher trim level for improved comfort.

AdrianC

vacheron said:
However, if you told me I had to drive the two into each other head on at 70mph I know which one I would have chose to be sitting in! 

I'd prefer not to be in either.

Head-on at 140mph closing speed is not going to have anybody walking out of either alive. The EuroNCAP frontal impact tests are done into a stationary object at 30mph. Impact energy is related to velocity squared... I'm sure you don't need me to explain that 140 x 140 = 19,600  is a HECK of a lot more than 30 x 30 = 900...

The current-shape Aygo "only" has a three-star EuroNCAP rating.
https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/toyota/aygo/29355
But look at the actual scores. It's dragged down by only 25% for the frippery guff "safety assist" systems. The actual adult front seat occupant scores are pretty damn good.

That's the current scoring system. The exact same car had a fourth star until 2017...
https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/toyota/aygo/7898
The car didn't get worse. The expectations simply got higher.

And the old-shape one had three. With 71% for "safety assist"...
https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/toyota/aygo/10951
Again, those adult front seat occupant dummies are not at all bad.

You're walking away from what would have killed you in an older but larger car - even one highly regarded at the time for safety...