Good compact family car (thats still a bit of fun!)

[philrocks]

Hey guys,

possibly my first post on this forum, so bear with!

I am looking at getting 2 cars, that I can mostly maintain myself. Second is going to be a toy, likely an old MX5 or MR2, but also need a family car.

Budget is under 3K, Cars im interest in are the Honda Civic 2.2 cdti or BMW 118d, (Or if im being really silly and go over budget a bit, Alfa Romeo Giulietta 1.4)

I plan on having the car mapped, and also plan on doing most of the servicing work and such myself, so ideally I want one that is cheap to maintain, either be it cheap parts or long intervals, but I dont know much about any of those cars.

For the record I have a Volvo C70 T5 tuned to about 290 BHP, with a broken roof (short in the circuit somewhere), that currently fits as both the sporty car and the family car, intention is to replace this with 2, whilst mitigating the cost of owning 2.

Any help on what regular service parts costs are for either of those cars, or any recommendations, please let me know.