Thoughts on a Vauxhall insignia?

[Djtemeka]

I've been thinking of retiring the little V reg corsa for something much more modern and grown up.

My dream car would be a skyline or vxr8 but price vs age is not working with my thinking now as we are going to be starting a family soon.

I quite like the look of estates and my boy racer days are loooooong gone. I like exec looking cars.
Bow and merc are nice but their prices are too high for me as I don't use the car much at all.
I might do 3k miles per year but more when the kids start appearing.

Diesel estate is cool as I camp a lot and tow the bikes to track days and I'm trying to keep the mileage off my van.

Now, my budget is around 16k. Give or take and you can get an Insignia Elite with all the toys for that. 14 plate. 8k miles.

Sounds great but what are these cars like to live with. I love the new shape mondeo in sport trim but that price is too far out of my budget.
Volvo is pricey too in the 1-2year old range.

Are the insignias good to drive? Comfy? I don't race around anymore (I have motorbikes for that silliness)
Our driving is a mix of a couple miles to 150 in a day when we regularly head coast side so dpf issues shouldn't be a problem.
My requirements are comfort and looks first. Sportiness is far down ththe list.

Thanks!

J

[Djtemeka]

I would have thought that their build quality these days were ok?
The cars I were looking at were still with a year warranty left over and then you could buy 2 or 3 more years warranty form£500.

I get the paint is thin. My new vivaro scratches easily. Also my old vivaro.. Christ, I'm sounding like a right Vauxhall nutter

I keep my vehicles for years so I'm not that precious about resale values

[Djtemeka]

Our current corsa is falling apart hence we are using my van more. Once the kids arrive in our life then we would use it loads. I only thought of diesel because 95% of them sold are diesels.

I guess I'll need to take them out for extended drives to see which I like.

As for unrefined...all my cars have been 15-20 years old when I bought them so unrefined is what I've become used to so the newer cars should feel wonderful in retrospect. My corsa is also 50bhp 1.0 so the newer car will be a rocket ship in comparison

[Djtemeka]

I'm not a fan of the old shape mondeo but the new shape is great. Pity the prices are still too strong.

I wonder if I can find a vxr in an estate. Running costs don't bother me really but if I'm going to go down that road then the vxr8 would get the look in.

[Djtemeka]

Easternlight said:

And you want a diesel to do low miles a year

Buy a decent engined car while you still can or hand your PH membership in on the way out!

As I said before. We only do low miles on it as it's unreliable. We travel from London to Chichester quite often but in my work van and I want to keep the miles off that. The car itself is reliable but we have had rear wheel bearings changed 3 times in 150 miles. Each time it left us stranded on the motorway. I just want a nice new modern car for a change. I've always earned buggerall money but things have looked up this year after going self employed. I bought a pre reg van for work and it's great! I'd like the wife to feel comfortable and relaxed in something a little nicer too but I need running costs to be low too as we aren't out of the woods yet

[Djtemeka]

All that jazz said:

Euro 6 diesel for 3k a year miles is only ever going to end badly.

The VXR is (as already pointed out) expensive to run. £500 tax and low 20s mpg if you drive like a granny, single digits if you like to play. Engine sounds great though, even better with an aftermarket exhaust.

The early models suffer from very expensive 4wd issues and are out of warranty now. Unknown whether the issue was fixed on the more recent ones but they'll be out of your budget anyway.

How about a Focus ST estate? Creeping under £15k now for the mk3.

Here's one such example : http://www.autotrader.co.uk/used-cars/ford/focus/u...

Identical spec and colour to my own and I rate them very highly. Perfect for your 3k a year miles . 30mpg driving sensibly or 26-27mpg if you want to play.

The focus looks great! I'll keep that in mind ta

[Djtemeka]

Thanks for the info.

I was looking at 530i tourers but thought that BMW had rather expensive bills when they did go wrong which is why I discounted them.

640d would have been great for me but no room for the sprogs unfortunately.

I might look into the 5series again

[Djtemeka]

Just saw a 535i for 19k which I really like. Over budget but I'm only buying in the start of summer anyway so it just means a little more saving

Thanks for the info guys

[Djtemeka]

Update.

So the corsa has been serviced and mot'ed. no advisories. This thing just won't die!
The wife's sister is turning 17 next month so will be getting her learners so we thought to give the car to her. This put us in the predicament on finding a car quickly. We managed to find a Mazda 6 2.2d 160bhp locally. 2012, 50k miles and pretty tidy for less than all the others out there. Quite frankly, it tickles all the boxes apart from being VERY left field which I like.
Collecting in a couple weeks time as we are really busy.
I understand about the dpf issues on diesels. It we won't really use it during the week and on weekends it will be used for long journeys (70m+)
Pretty happy with it all really. Just got to sell a couple motorbikes at the end of the year now
Thanks for all the inputs. We just decided on the Mazda as a stop gap to something nice... Which won't be a car but will be a house.
Wife took my pants and is wearing them now

[Djtemeka]

Oh and far under half the budget I originally wanted to spend and it comes with 12 month Mazda warranty

[Djtemeka]

Emeye said:

Is there a reason Mazda 6 diesels are cheap?

I recall something about them being unreliable, but that may be older ones - worth checking out though?

as far as I'm aware the only issue is if you do short journeys only which we wont be doing. Something about the dpf pushing diesel into the oil and thus indicating high oil levels