Would Love Some Car Advice

[kelevraz]

Hi, im going to be buying my new car in the next month or so, but i havent decided which one i want to go for yet.

I currently have a 57 plate 5 door ford fiesta, im quite a big guy, and with the addition of my little one i feel like i need a bigger car, but i also want one with power, so i have narrowed my choices down to the following, ive got an 8-9 grand budget :

A ford focus ST - would have to be relatively old (5 years +), as the newer eco ones are veryyy much out of my budget

A VW GTI - same as the ST

Vauxhall 1.6 Turbo - ive put this in here because they seem remarkably cheep for what they offer, with my budget i could get something with around 20,000 miles, but they depreciate quite horrendously and aren't as 'fun' as the other two - atleast thats what ive understood from what ive heard so far

Would love some opinions/advice from previous and current owners and all that, the kind of things to look out for when buying, pro's / con's etc

BY THE WAY, because i know how some people get, ive already been through lots of reviews online, i just thought it would be nice to get some direct opinions, so no need to come in with any 'oh, you never heard of the internet?, cant do any research yourself?' or any of that tripe, thankyou, its a forum for a reason

[kelevraz]

Thankyou for replies so far

Generally, into the search filters on auto trader i search for:

black / silver
0-8 seconds acceleration
manual
petrol
5 door
up to 60,000 miles
hatchback

Those are the main things anyway, as for the 'fun ride', the thing is, my kid is hardly in my car as it is, her mum will be driving in the next few months and she will spend the majority of time in her car, at the MOMENT, on the odd occasion that they are both in my car, my other half always has to move her seat forwards, which isnt really a problem, but every time it happens i just think to myself that a car with a big more room would be 'nice'

So as much as it is because of my family, in reality its really more for me lol

[kelevraz]

daveinhampshire said:

If you're looking for room and comfort and you keep cars for a while look at the large cars. A8, 5/7 series, E class merc. Even the entry levels on most are pretty brisk.

will do this i guess, i haven't looked at any 'bigger' cars like that because i assume that nice ones will be wayyyyy out of my price range

[kelevraz]

Hello all,

Thankyou SO much for so many helpful replies

At the moment i'm swaying towards the GTI, but thats mainly because i have someone that i can trust who is willing to sell me one at a discounted price, but since its a car i intend to keep for a relatively long im not only thinking about the price.

At the moment, it costs me about £35-40 to fill up my tank, a 1.4 ford fiesta, could anyone on here shed some light into roughly how much a full tank costs to fill up these cars? especially the ST as ive heard it drinks petrol, Tried to find this online but i couldn't, could only find rough estimates of stuff like services, mots and such

And also, simply put, are BMW's ridiculously expensive to 'run', i hadnt even thought about them because i could only find the 1series, but i messed about with the search filters and realised there was a wholeee section of them that i had missed out on, again, i assumed that a half decent bmw would be far out of my price range but apparently they arent