What next car - advice please

[Lunartick]

The initial message was deleted from this topic on 13 September 2025 at 15:20

[Scrump]

A £2k car is likely to be in a similar age/mechanical condition as your current car.

[ZX10R NIN]

If your budget is only 2k I'd say better the devil you know & have the turbo rebuilt.

[Canon_Fodder]

My heart bleeds for you OP, I'm afraid your situation is utterly desperate.

[Mr Tidy]

I hate to say it but at that budget you might just be buying someone elses' problem!

If a repair isn't silly money I'd be tempted to get your car fixed.

[samoht]

Lunartick said:

Think from an older car perspective, I'd like something diesel/auto. Seem to see Mercedes of an era get mentioned here regular and also MG/Rover, in the price bracket. Or if anyone else has any suggestions or advice please?

Well, for Mercs I think you'd be looking at W203 facelift C-Class, 2004-06... on average these would be far more likely to cost you money than something like a Kia, they're nice cars to drive, cheap to buy, but not that cheap to run unless you get very lucky.

The general problem with looking for a reliable diesel is that reliable cars are made in Japan, but they don't buy diesels in Japan, so Japanese diesel cars generally have borrowed European engines and/or aren't as well developed as their petrols.

There aren't many diesel automatics for £2k tbh, and many that there are, are Fords with the Powershift box which are cheap either because the gearbox is already broken, or because any punter assumes it's about to break.

Only possible I can think of is a Passat, probably an older one with the 1.9 TDI engine, like this
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202201171...

it's an old car so things will go wrong, but if you want a change from the Kia, they have a decent rep for robustness.

[imck]

Has the Turbo gone gone?

My 2008 Ceed 1.6D Turbo started whistling about 120K but still drove OK.
Diesel Specialist said to leave until further symptoms. Still OK at 215K. Sold to a Colleague 4-5 Years ago.