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Perusing for replacement car
Comments
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A more modern car may have lower insurance too, as they pretty much all include a front radar to hit the brakes before you hit the car in front.
You might struggle to find a near new car that doesn’t include some form of hybrid propulsion. In addition to various “aids” you will find petrol cars include a charcoal filter to reduce fumes from the petrol tank, fill the tank to the “brim” and you risk flooding that filter… it’s expensive to replace, our Seat Ibiza needed one and it cost (from memory) £169 + vat, plus labour.
On the plus side, auto gearboxes, push button start/stop, electronically controlled “hand brake”, all around ultrasonic parking sensors and reversing cameras with switchable wide view, all produce a car that is far easier to drive and park compared to one that is “manual” everything. We have a 6 year old manual gear Seat Ibiza and an 18 month old automatic Leon. The difference is like night and day to drive, especially when manoeuvring/parking.
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As regards automatic, I will only buy one when I really have no choice. I enjoy using a manual gearbox.
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You can always use the paddles to change gear on an auto, faced with 6 or 7 gears on a recent manual gearbox, it becomes a pain when you select the wrong gear at a roundabout, or select the wrong gear and stall the car… been there done that. Auto boxes are very common these days as is the auto start/stop to save fuel and fumes.
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There aren't that many super mini type hatchbacks on the market these days and most have chimed in with a list of what they think meet your requirements.
The lower speced cars won't be full of screens, they tend to have a basic entertainment screen the you connect your phone to for maps.
Most will have normal, physical controls for the heating and all fairly new cars will have some form of driver assist/crash mitigation systems. Radar and camera that support the braking system and lane departure control.
The latest cars will now have more advanced systems along with the others, like driver monitoring, rear cross traffic alert and intelligent speed control. These systems mean it's easy to add other extras, like adaptive cruise control and even active lane assist.
These are mandatory now but there will be some way of turning some of them off, some easier than others.
Some models will come with other useful kit like parking sensors and cameras, blind spot monitoring and the likes. You might not think you need them, but once you have them they start to become the norm and become really useful.
So you might want to start investigating them a bit closer and start making a Pro and Con list.
As I wrote before, it looks like you keep your vehicles a while, so I'd consider a big Pro would be an extended warranty, so that could cover you up to 7 to 10 years. (5 to 8 on a late used car).
Most of these types of cars are small petrol turbos, but one or two are fitting mild hybrid systems to them instead of turbos to boost them along a bit more, there's a good chance the mild hybrid systems will have a longer life than a small turbo, so that might be worth looking at.
Servicing costs are another consideration. Most will quote you a three year cost for a plan but drop in a big one at 4 or 5 years, so it worth asking about that. Others like Renault just have an A and B service with recommended items at X miles, so if you do lower miles you can push them back.
Then move on to practicality. I really only need one, sometimes two seats but I need a biggish boot, so I don't care what it's like in the back as I as I'm ok and I can stuff the boot full.
You will find some ready made new cars for the same price as a one or two year old car. They tend to get shipped in and stored at the docks and suddenly they want rid, so if you curb the urge to select factory options, you might find bargain.
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As an ex-rally driver I used to be of that opinion too.
My experience of autos was clouded by the Ford and Mercedes autoboxes of old - some of them with only three speeds available!
I thoughtI could do better than any automated gizmo - how wrong I turned out to be.
Modern autoboxes - such as the ZF 8-speeder are a revelation.
Some of them are even linked to the sat-nav and can anticipate the road ahead - e.g. turn off the motorway onto the slip-road and the box changes down in anticipation of the upcoming junction or roundabout.
With paddle- shift I get faster changes thany thing a human can achieve with a manual box.
Add that to the fact that autos give better fuel consumption while also giving a good bit faster acceleration, you understand why there are almost no manual sports cars produced nowadays.
By all means stick to a manual if that's your thing, but I'll never go back.
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It's the physical act of changing gear I enjoy. The interaction between foot/clutch/hand/gearstick
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I never used the paddles after the initial novelty wore off.
But I'll never go back to manuals.
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the paddles on a eniro are brilliant. You can control the car without hardly ever having to use the brakes.
The thought of having to use a clutch and brakes and changing gears and filling up at petrol stations sounds awful.0 -
I've heard some people are now paying over £5 a tank to fill up as well. Shocking.
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Have there not been problems with some of the auto boxes ,i remember someone ( might have been Goudy ) who posted about twin clutch cars ,dry clutch cars etc. i was always a fan of torque convertors but that was on construction equipment and also was there not some one on here who had a newish range rover and everybody slated the transmission.
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