Mods, please leave here for a while before moving to other marks, hoping for a quick response.

Partner has booked a test drive for the above tonight, 1.7 diesel variant. Anybody owned or know if these cars are any good. She's going from a MGF and wants something practical for communting and carrying a baby,pram,etc. I thought a golf diesel would be better but is approx 2K more expensive. The car in question is 1 year old, about 15K miles and is up for just under £9,995.00. I know sod all about these cars so any advice comments very welcome.

Cheers

Chris



Edited due to poore spilling :D

[Edited by chris singleton - 12/15/2003 2:59:55 PM]

Family member has one, superb, great all rounder.

Thanks for replying XS, anyone else got any views good or bad?

I think I'm going to struggle to beat them down on the price as £9,995.00 seems pretty good for a 1 year old car, think they were about 17K new.

Cheers

Chris

My sister has a petrol one (1.4) which she's very happy with. She hasn't had any problems that i know of. Having said that, the A-class came pretty close to the bottom in the most recent Top Gear reliability survey...

rented 2 of them while on holiday. Was very impressed, seated 5 adults and lots of stuff in comfort (they were the stretched versions though) and the engine was fine for tootling around and cruising down the motorway. I was considering buying the missus a new one untill i got home and saw the price of them!

Missus has a '99 A160 Elegance........

Good points:
Elevated driving position, nimble around town, reasonably economical (but that's not an issue if you are going for the diesel), it can be turned into a van if all the seats (apart from the drivers obviously) are removed, pretty comfy on longer journeys, excellent traction control in baaad conditions (had a nightmare journey on the A9 a couple of years ago and the traction was awesome). The MB baby seat is a boon for the front as its got a transmitter that automatically switches off the passenger air bag and the height adjustable passengers seat is also handy so that you don't get the "i can't see" wail from lil passengers.

Bad points:
Not the best built by comparison to other MBs or other German marques and we've had issues with the suspension (particularly the trailing arms) that we've gone 50/50 with MB over. Not great if you have more than one bambino to travel around with.

$64k question: will be buy another
A: definitely

Thanks for all the comments. We decided to buy it!

It was only a classic model so no alloys or air conditioning but she hates air con anyway. What swung it for us is that we managed to get £7,000 trade in on her 98R MGF which we would have struggled to get privately. I don't think we paid too much over the odds, it's registered Jan 2002 and done 12K miles. It's a little bland inside but much cheaper than the golf.

Cheers

Chris

I know this is a long shot but don't suppose my standard 17" MY01 WRX alloys would fit?

Chris