Cars owned with low expectation, that turned out to be really good.

CoastingHatbox

I'll start.

Citroen Berlingo Multispace (recently reminded of it by another thread). 2007 1.6 HDi. It cost £12k new.

Prior, I'd had a couple of well specced 2.0 litre, ex-fleet Ford Mondeos. I wasn't expecting a lot from the Berlingo, given the Mondeo's were good drivers cars, nippy, comfortable and well specced.

Well the Berlingo was a fantastic family car. It was cheap to buy (relative to anything else big enough). Cheap to run. It was cavernous and it was fun. Kids loved it.

What about you? What car or cars have you bought with low expectations that turned out to really surprise you?

maisie_cat

Best ever was a Citroen Dyane bought for £100 in the 80s. It lasted a few years and was fun to drive. 

SiliconChip

My Fiat Panda (2008) was a surprisingly good drive, not much power but the fun was in getting it up to a decent speed and then keeping it there. And a fair amount of room as long as you didn't need to carry both passengers and luggage at the same time. I did almost 80,000 miles in the 4 years that I owned it with no significant issues.

Grumpy_chap

I once had an old "R" registered Ford Escort that I bought for pocket money with only a week's MOT left. 

It had spaceship mileage on it and was the benefactor of several previous owners - far too many for the age of the vehicle - and the last owner had put a new / reconditioned engine in not long before deciding to get rid as they weren't willing to spend anything more on it and certain  it would fail the MOT.

It did fail the MOT on brakes, but nothing that could not be easily fixed up. 

I used the car for a couple of years until I acquired a "Y" reg company Mondeo and then sold the Escort locally for a few pounds more than I paid initially.  Several months later, I was really taken aback when the guy who bought it saw me and rang after me in the High Street to say how pleased he was with the car.

daveyjp

Probably my original 2010 Merc B class.  I swapped a lemon of a Jaguar X type for it, wasn't expecting much with its poverty spec after the Jag and just 90bhp in B160 form.

However it was a great car and I ended up keeping it for over 5 years and 50,000 trouble free miles.  Great load lugger which was useful as I had a young child and all her stuff to haul around.  It was so good my wife bought one of the last wedge shaped A classes, an A160.

The car is still around, passed MOT last March with over 90,000 on the clock.  Only one fail recorded a couple of years ago for a misaligned headlight.

Just checked the A class as I remembered the reg.  Passed its MOT just over a week ago, 74,000 miles.  It too has only ever failed for headlamp alignment!

MikeJXE

I have had many cars over the 60 years of me driving, mostly the big Fords, Zephyr 6 Granada, Mondeo. 3 year ago I bought a 3 year old Jaguar XE auto,  the best car I have ever had that drives itself. 

knightstyle

When I lost my job and company car I got an Austin Maestro from a dealer friend cheap as it stank of dogs and had lots of dog hairs everywhere.
It was the 1600 and served our family well, 2 learned to drive and with my home made tow bar a trailer moved us and friends many times.
Oh and my son later confessed he had it at 100mph once, well indicated so probably nearer 80!
Currently have had an ex motability Ford Cmax just under 100k miles and never had any problems.

motorguy

I bought this FIAT Marea 1.9JTD as a stop gap for £90 a number of years back.  It was filthy inside and out and had various dents and bangs around the bumpers and wings.  A bit of heat and some pressure behind the plastic bumpers popped out the worst of the dents as did a bit of pulling at the wing.  Touched in the scuffs with a paint touch up, polished it and treated it to a set of cheap new wheel trims off ebay.

I did an 80 mile return commute in this car daily for nigh on a year before i had to scrap it as there was too much rot had developed underneath to pass MOT.



I grew quite fond of it.  It never let me down and i never had to worry about where i parked it.

Nobbie1967

Austin Montego 1.6L, bought as a writeoff with a view to repairing and selling. Didn’t have any luck selling, so I kept it. Nice comfortable car with enough power and decent fuel economy. Great for my first job that involved a fair amount of travelling and must have recouped my outlay in mileage claims alone. Got written off again when someone rear ended me, but was still drivable, so I took the money and kept driving it until it burst into flames on the A120 towards Colchester. Was a bit annoyed as I’d just filled it with petrol doubling the value

Ditzy_Mitzy

A fairly humble Ford Fiesta Flight with the 1.3 Endura engine.  I went all over England in it, albeit not very fast!  The trick was realizing that the engine was capable of running flat out all the time - it was necessary with only 60 odd horsepower available.  

Bonniepurple

A Ford Focus.  I bought it initially as a stop gap when I was getting back into driving after I broke my ankle as it was an automatic and would let me drive over the summer holidays.  I loved it.  I fairly soon realised that I wasn’t going to be able to go back to a manual and so bought a Vauxhall Zafira to lug the family about.  My brother then crashed his car and so drove the Focus while his was being repaired. My Dad then crashed his car and offered to buy the Focus off me.  

I now have a Peugeot Expert wheelchair vehicle and my husband has his 13 year old Berlingo.