How would you choose to buy a car model?

[Nefos]

Hi guys,

So my birthday is coming up and I managed to save up some money and I am looking for a special car under £8k.. and woah.

There are Golf R32, which I like the engine, or the Audi S3, with 2.0T, or an Audi S5 with V8 or a S8 with V10, or BMW 335i...

Thing is, I am overwhelmed and it is very difficult to compare a Golf R32 to an S8. And of course some other cars pop up as well, like Alfa Brera 3.2

So my question is, how would you try to increase your criteria to buy a car? My current ones is pretty much seat 4 people fairly comfortably and be unique, but it is too broad, but I do not have hard preferences, as honestly I would like to buy all the cars above, but I would love to have only a couple of models to choose from to make car hunting easier

[anonymous-user]

Coupes only for me 4 doors says too practical.

[kambites]

Drive them all and see which one you like best? Last time I was buying a car I test drove around 30 different models.

[Tall_Blk]

Engine type / characteristics- V8, or higher, V6, straight 6 etc
Number of seats
Number of doors
Body shape- hot hatch, coupe, saloon, wagon, convertible
Reliability
Exterior styling
Interior styling
Daily or weekend toys
Annual mileage
Running costs
Manual or auto

I base my decision on a permutation of the above as It’s got to have the right balance. I remember test driving an A3 once but the interior was meh, crossed the round to an Alfa dealer and saw the interior of the Gt and bought it. I’m not one for speed but love acceleration and the sonorous sound of a good engine note.

[Nefos]

Tall_Blk said:

Engine type / characteristics- V8, or higher, V6, straight 6 etc
Number of seats
Number of doors
Body shape- hot hatch, coupe, saloon, wagon, convertible
Reliability
Exterior styling
Interior styling
Daily or weekend toys
Annual mileage
Running costs
Manual or auto

I base my decision on a permutation of the above as It’s got to have the right balance. I remember test driving an A3 once but the interior was meh, crossed the round to an Alfa dealer and saw the interior of the Gt and bought it. I’m not one for speed but love acceleration and the sonorous sound of a good engine note.

great point, it seems I have to create a scoring system, so excel wizardry here I come!

[Wooda80]

If you really like cars then surely you just know what you fancy at that moment in time?

It's rather like going to a restaurant - loads of great things on the menu but you can't experience them all at once.

So what do you do? Ask for a taster of everything on the menu or go with your instinct? Sure you might end up with food envy but the car you buy this time is not for ever, is it?

Having confidence about choosing a car on the future is reliant on your previous experiences so go ahead and get lots of experience!

[Xcore]

Generally performance per £ vs the likelihood of it breaking

[Toltec]

What about the running/maintenance budget? A CL600 could be interesting, twin turbo V12 etc. however potentially expensive to run.

What really grabs you, are there any colours you like interior and exterior for example?

[Nefos]

Wooda80 said:

If you really like cars then surely you just know what you fancy at that moment in time?

It's rather like going to a restaurant - loads of great things on the menu but you can't experience them all at once.

So what do you do? Ask for a taster of everything on the menu or go with your instinct? Sure you might end up with food envy but the car you buy this time is not for ever, is it?

Having confidence about choosing a car on the future is reliant on your previous experiences so go ahead and get lots of experience!

Thing is sadly I do not have too much experience with owning cars (I drove a Ferrari 458, Volvo XC90, Mercedes C sport coupe, BMW X3, Audi A6 C4, and might miss some), as all the cars I owned were necessity fast buy ( Vauxhall Corsa 1.0 I had 5 years ago, I needed a cheap to insure car, bought it from parents, and a VW golf 5 TDI now, I needed a car right away for cheap).
You have a great point tho.

Last commenter about CL600 (sorry for not quoting,) I think the main issue stems from here, as I am very open here, I like the idea of a hot hatch, but I like the idea of a sport coupe and a luxury barge as well.

As I said above, this will be my first planned car buying. But I think I will just make a spreadsheet and start counting costs and everything so I can rank cars.

[ZX10R NIN]

I like coupes so I normally start from there, then workout what kind of fuel economy/maintenance costs (as these are the two factors that will dictate how long you keep the car) you'll be happy to put up with. You say you want something different but you list mainstream models.

There's nothing wrong with that I was just saying in reality these are really your Coupe options:

G37

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

E350 Sport

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

Monaro

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2006-Vauxhall-Monaro-5-...

CL500 it's a GT but they definitely make you feel special

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

650i Sport

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

335i M Sport

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

S5

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

Personally I like V8's so they're my first looking point (the Infiniti's will give you something different with a good amount of go & sensible running costs) after that it's maintenance costs then spec.
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/202...

[Deep Thought]

Nefos said:

Tall_Blk said:

Engine type / characteristics- V8, or higher, V6, straight 6 etc
Number of seats
Number of doors
Body shape- hot hatch, coupe, saloon, wagon, convertible
Reliability
Exterior styling
Interior styling
Daily or weekend toys
Annual mileage
Running costs
Manual or auto

I base my decision on a permutation of the above as It’s got to have the right balance. I remember test driving an A3 once but the interior was meh, crossed the round to an Alfa dealer and saw the interior of the Gt and bought it. I’m not one for speed but love acceleration and the sonorous sound of a good engine note.

great point, it seems I have to create a scoring system, so excel wizardry here I come!

Test drive as many cars as you can - twice if needs be. We've done this in the past only to be impressed by something we'd on paper have ruled out.

Try to have a view on minimum requirements though - last time around we needed 5 door, petrol and auto, so there clearly was no point in test driving a coupe.

[Toltec]

Deep Thought said:

Test drive as many cars as you can - twice if needs be. We've done this in the past only to be impressed by something we'd on paper have ruled out.

Try to have a view on minimum requirements though - last time around we needed 5 door, petrol and auto, so there clearly was no point in test driving a coupe.

I think unless you can have more than one car you need to work out the practicalities first.
If four seats are required is that four adults and if so for long journeys or short hops where being a bit tight in the back won't matter?
If you use the car to go on holiday can you fit enough luggage for the number of people you want to take, maybe get a roof box if necessary?
Will it fit on your drive, in your garage etc. if that matters?
Boring stuff like servicing costs, insurance, car tax, bork factor or to put it another way can you afford to enjoy driving it?

I'm terrible in that I normally end up focussed on one model of which there are less than a hundred on the road...

Having a fairly wide spread of possibilities is not a bad thing as you can hopefully look for an example of one of several models that is the right colour, options, history/condition and price.

Don't be afraid to spend less if you spot something you like, yeah, like that will happen

Have fun and don't get too stressed about it, if you make some head choices to narrow the field then you can just make the final choice on heart. Then absolutely stop looking at the classifieds, for a while at least.

[Walter Sobchak]

I can’t directly comment on the R32 vs S3 of the eras you’re looking at but I made the mistake of buying an earlier Golf MK4 V6 4 Motion instead of the earlier 1.8T S3 years ago and regretted it.
Currently got an A5 coupe in 3 litre TDI form not an S5 and love it, out of your list I’d probably go S5.

[anonymous-user]

If you can only just afford £8k to buy a car then the big V8/10/12 barges and coupes that were £70k+ when they were new ten+ years ago have the potential to be quite ruinous for you to run. Even something fairly modest and robust like a Jaguar XJ will chuck the odd £800 bill every 12-18 months and with something like a Mercedes V12 it could easily double or triple that.

When you're £8k into a car and it chucks you a £2k gearbox rebuild or a pair of £600 each air struts you've got too much in the car to just scrap it and walk away; these beasts need to either be bought and run on a shoestring and thrown away when they broke, or you need to be prepared for it to be a labour of love (and money).

They make more sense if you have more than one car and you can do at least some of your own work.