Stephen Pope

Looking for something with 5 doors, suitable for wife and two kids. All pretty much local mileage, second car etc.

Budget £1500 - £2000

Was considering the following:

Golf
Focus
Pug 307 (till I saw crush my 307 forum...)

Any ideas?

nick172sport

iTrader: (6)

fiesta finnesse 5 door 200 quid a year to insure fully comp cheap tax does the job

Stephen Pope

cheers but was looking at something the same size as the golf/ focus etc.

Matteeboy

Definitely a Focus. A Golf for that money will be a sky high mile dog.

A Focus is well made, fun to drive even in base spec and cheap to look after.

Four mates have them after I've recommended them and all are more than happy.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Skoda Octavia - decent size, will go for miles and miles and miles and miles!

Matteeboy

I think you'd struggle to find a reasonable Octavia for £1500-2000

The Zohan

agreed, focus is a good bet, a lot of high miles rep mobiles/pool cars out there so plenty to choose from and plenty of rubbish as well.

How about a Honda Civic?
Well built, good drive, safe and reliable. More likely to be privately owned by someone who does maintain it.
http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/car-reviews...c-2003656.html
^^^ignore the prices, they are well out of date.

Reffro

Not at £1500-2000. More likely to be owned by an Asian who has spent bugger all on it, and is flogging it because it will fail the MOT due to a lack of preventative maintenance and the wish to avoid any expenditure.

At least that's my experience with the vast majority of Civic's I saw in that price bracket when looking recently.

Matteeboy

Does being owned by an Asian have any bearing on the condition of a car?

I think that's a bit off.

The Zohan

More likely a trader (asian or otherwise), good inspection of the car and 12 or so months MOT and a service history are good indicator of the cars treatment/life so far

Bealescooby

iTrader: (36)

I got a focus for the family car and it's treated me well the last 2yrs it now needs the clutch doing , so i'm thinkin of gettin something a little bigger and sellin it on ebay the way it is ,
I looked at a couple of mondeo's and zafira's , i also like the volvo s40 and through previous yrs think they are rather reliable , i'm looking to spend about 2k-2.5k

Reffro

My original comment though was based on the fact that every Civic for sale I went to see or called after was being sold by an Asian family or trader and none of them were worth buying due to poor mechanical condition. Bodywork defects I ignored as they had no bearing on my purchase decision.

To answer your question above, Yes, I think it does. A greater majority of cars I saw being sold by Asians, had little or no recent service history and were in poorer mechanical condition. Questions about service history solicited answers that varied from shoulder shrugs to I did have it serviced I just never got the receipt. There were equally poor cars being sold by others, that is true, but they were of a lesser proportion.

You may think that is a bit off, but I was only stating what I found when looking for a cheap car for myself last year. I could perhaps have left out the reference to Asian seller in my original post, but didn't even think about it. Reference to the race of the seller in this case wasn't meant as a racial slur, it was merely what I observed when looking at Civic's for sale.

Matteeboy

Reffro - I'm not some sort of PC mad nutter, just thought it was unnecessary.

RAJ27

Reffro, no need to stereotype. Most of my Asian 'bros' drive BMW's and Mercs, so you must live in the wrong side of town. Oops I'm not PC am I?

Anyway second the Focus. Cheap as chips and still a cracking car. Cheap parts, everyone knows them inside out, insurance reasonable too.

Stephen Pope

cheers lads, the wifes puma (which i bumped last week) may not be a write off afterall so a new car may not be required!!!