What is the best car to go for at 18

[Danyog1]

What is the best car to go for at 18, I'm looking for a diesel and a good economical car. Looking to spend about £3,000 I'm currently paying £200 a month to get insured on a 1.6 that sees the garage more than the fuel station (30MPG)

[Evanivitch]

Fabia/Ibiza/Polo with the 1.9Tdi PD100. Get it remapped to 130 and you're flying.

[Buff Mchugelarge]

1.0 Corsa apparently.

[Danyog1]

What are the 2.0 Diesel 130bhp standard Mondeos like ?
Did a insurance quote for one of these and it came back at £136 a month..

[BritishRacinGrin]

Danyog1 said:

What are the 2.0 Diesel 130bhp standard Mondeos like ?
Did a insurance quote for one of these and it came back at £136 a month..

Ran one of these for two years. If you're talking about the MkIII (1999-2007) then the TDCI engine has a reputation for worn out injectors and knackred DMFs. These cars are a bit old now and if they go wrong they tend to go wrong in an expensive way.

[Danyog1]

BritishRacinGrin said:

Ran one of these for two years. If you're talking about the MkIII (1999-2007) then the TDCI engine has a reputation for worn out injectors and knackred DMFs. These cars are a bit old now and if they go wrong they tend to go wrong in an expensive way.

Was thinking of one between 06-08 with around 80k on the clock. Was looking at the 2.0 130 ghia model, and getting it mapped. Was told these were good on fuel and get a bit of decent power after been mapped.

[McSam]

BritishRacinGrin said:

Ran one of these for two years. If you're talking about the MkIII (1999-2007) then the TDCI engine has a reputation for worn out injectors and knackred DMFs. These cars are a bit old now and if they go wrong they tend to go wrong in an expensive way.

Agreed. My mum has one of these, and plenty of things that should not be failing on an eight-year-old car have failed, it's not the reliable workhorse you'd think. It's also a horrendously unrefined engine which isn't really that great on fuel, and the power delivery doesn't reward driving it hard. I wouldn't recommend it at all against what's available at £3k, I'd only have one as a disposable sub-thousand-pound hack.

Insurance for young drivers is vastly made up of the risk factor associated with the car, but that is based on how many claims that type of car generates, not its engine capacity or performance. Get some quotes for some stuff that's a little bit outside the box - saloons like the Mondeo are a good idea, though not the Mondeo itself, perhaps stuff like Volvo S60s or Audi A4s (both of which can be had in your budget with good diesel engines).

[BritishRacinGrin]

If you're looking at Diesel saloons, check out the Peugeot 406 1.9 or the later 2.0. The engine is less highly strung than the one in the Mondeo but like the Mondeo it's a surprisingly sweet handling car to drive.

[stevoknevo]

Try a SAAB 9-3ss (03 on), not many young guys drive them and they are cheap as chips nowadays. Petrol though, as diesels can be a PITA. I mind of a young fella on UKSaabs had bought one as it was cheap to insure.

[McSam]

The 406 is another one I'd look at for a much lower budget, I agree they're pretty nice but if I had £3k to spend on something to do big mileage (presumably why the OP wants a diesel), I'd get this.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2014...

[ging84]

i wonder what insurance is like for young drivers on electric cars
if you have somewhere to charge one and don't generally need to go more than 50 miles from home, could be worth investigating

[MG CHRIS]

So why not your rover then lol.

[Danyog1]

MG CHRIS said:

So why not your rover then lol.

Sick of it either been in the garage getting repaired or at the fuel station

[Danyog1]

McSam said:

The 406 is another one I'd look at for a much lower budget, I agree they're pretty nice but if I had £3k to spend on something to do big mileage (presumably why the OP wants a diesel), I'd get this.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2014...

I like that, I'll defiantly have to do a insurance quote for that.

[AlexRS2782]

Danyog1 said:

I like that, I'll defiantly have to do a insurance quote for that.

Why would you be defiant over getting an insurance quote on that car

[morgrp]

Danyog1 said:

I like that, I'll defiantly have to do a insurance quote for that.

They go really well and also can be chipped to make them go really really well.

Also one of the more reliable "modern" diesels out there - not known for serious issues

[Danyog1]

I'll be doing a quote tomorrow on the Volvo so I'll let you know what I get quoted. I reckon it will be very high as it is a 2.4l and a 160bhp at standard

[R36vw]

Some more bizarre ones especially insurance wise was a colleague of mine had a corsa....insurance for his son was in excess of £1500. He had a seat Toledo 2.3 v5 cost him £600 to insure his son. Just because it's a 1 liter corsa doesn't necessarily mean it cheaper. There are cars out there with significantly bigger engines(woohoo !!!) the insurance companies regard as a lower risk. Remember ......a corsa , owned generally by a younger driver will have been in more accidents. A Toledo v5(quick car in comparison) is likely to not have been in many. It's a rare car too which means unlikely to fall in an insurers list ...correctly.

[Blu3R]

BritishRacinGrin said:

Ran one of these for two years. If you're talking about the MkIII (1999-2007) then the TDCI engine has a reputation for worn out injectors and knackred DMFs. These cars are a bit old now and if they go wrong they tend to go wrong in an expensive way.

DMFs on those can be replaced with a single mass if you need/want to.

[dvs_dave]

Audi R8, with a data logger to help with the insurance costs.