Cheap small car needed
Discussion
Just been speaking to my sister and she is finally considering buying a cheap runabout for her and hubby to use. I wondered whether any PH'ers might have anything that might fit the bill. They live in London but anything around the London, North East or Glos areas considered. Here's an extract from her e-mail. I would say that the budget is negotiable depending on what turns up:
Could you help us find something along the lines of the following?
1. £1000-2000 budget
2. High reliability
3. Small but a bit bigger than a metro
4. Not too underpowered.
5. Cheap in insurance and running costs
6. Ideally German :-) but Ford or Japanese are ok too. Not so keen on French.
7. In the London, North East or Gloucesterhisre areas or thereabouts-ish
8. Obviously all the other ussual things are good but might be asking too much - 1 previous old lady owner type thing, not too many miles on the clock, 4 wheels, steering wheel, seat belts.......the list goes on!
We're pretty much looking to buy now.
In addition to the above must be HPI clear and have a decent MOT. Some tax and SH would be good too.
Could you help us find something along the lines of the following?
1. £1000-2000 budget
2. High reliability
3. Small but a bit bigger than a metro
4. Not too underpowered.
5. Cheap in insurance and running costs
6. Ideally German :-) but Ford or Japanese are ok too. Not so keen on French.
7. In the London, North East or Gloucesterhisre areas or thereabouts-ish
8. Obviously all the other ussual things are good but might be asking too much - 1 previous old lady owner type thing, not too many miles on the clock, 4 wheels, steering wheel, seat belts.......the list goes on!
We're pretty much looking to buy now.
In addition to the above must be HPI clear and have a decent MOT. Some tax and SH would be good too.
Just used the advanced serach in the classifieds, select the models you want (Ford Fiesta, Seat Ibiza, VW Polo and Skoda Fabia are the ones you seem to have it narrowed down to) and set your prices, then go from there.
Reliability wise, there's not much in it with small hatches. They all have niggles but no one car is miles ahead of any of the others. You're making things a lot harder by excluding french though- small hatches are the one thing the french do well.
Reliability wise, there's not much in it with small hatches. They all have niggles but no one car is miles ahead of any of the others. You're making things a lot harder by excluding french though- small hatches are the one thing the french do well.
TonyRPH said:
busta said:
Just used the advanced serach in the classifieds.....
Sadly, I have found the PH classifieds advanced search facility useless.It really does need an overhaul to compete with Autotrader.
Sorry PH.
Not having options for 'petrol' or 'diesel', and 'auto' or 'manual' is a bit of a pain sometimes.
TonyRPH said:
But they are complete and utter piles of s
te. Build quality is terrible and they are a nightmare to work on. Rust like a 1980s Fiat too.MoonMonkey said:
Just been speaking to my sister and she is finally considering buying a cheap runabout for her and hubby to use. I wondered whether any PH'ers might have anything that might fit the bill. They live in London but anything around the London, North East or Glos areas considered. Here's an extract from her e-mail. I would say that the budget is negotiable depending on what turns up:
Could you help us find something along the lines of the following?
1. £1000-2000 budget
2. High reliability
3. Small but a bit bigger than a metro
4. Not too underpowered.
5. Cheap in insurance and running costs
6. Ideally German :-) but Ford or Japanese are ok too. Not so keen on French.
7. In the London, North East or Gloucesterhisre areas or thereabouts-ish
8. Obviously all the other ussual things are good but might be asking too much - 1 previous old lady owner type thing, not too many miles on the clock, 4 wheels, steering wheel, seat belts.......the list goes on!
We're pretty much looking to buy now.
In addition to the above must be HPI clear and have a decent MOT. Some tax and SH would be good too.
Looking to buy now, and hoping someone else will do all the leg work as we're too lazy to do it ourselves..... Could you help us find something along the lines of the following?
1. £1000-2000 budget
2. High reliability
3. Small but a bit bigger than a metro
4. Not too underpowered.
5. Cheap in insurance and running costs
6. Ideally German :-) but Ford or Japanese are ok too. Not so keen on French.
7. In the London, North East or Gloucesterhisre areas or thereabouts-ish
8. Obviously all the other ussual things are good but might be asking too much - 1 previous old lady owner type thing, not too many miles on the clock, 4 wheels, steering wheel, seat belts.......the list goes on!
We're pretty much looking to buy now.
In addition to the above must be HPI clear and have a decent MOT. Some tax and SH would be good too.
3 clean looking Golfs at the top end of your budget.
1999T VW GOLF GT TDI 3 DOOR 110 BLUE 1 OWNER"
vw golf s 1.4 16v (1999)
2001 GOLF 1.6SE
Edited by TonyRPH on Monday 23 August 13:12
RacingPete said:
TonyRPH said:
busta said:
Just used the advanced serach in the classifieds.....
Sadly, I have found the PH classifieds advanced search facility useless.It really does need an overhaul to compete with Autotrader.
Sorry PH.
If you move between marques it doesn't always reset the other fields very well, which means more button clicks just to start over.
Never has the right age, price and engine size options. Last one really bugs me, it's a car site, selling cars. Yet the engine size options just don't make sense. If you want to filter you are likely to want to look at bigger engines or smaller ones. But use the options on the Autotrader search and you can't easily filter out what you want, e.g.
It groups 2.0-2.5 litre together. Unhelpful, as you are most likely to want to find the V6's over the 4 cylinders. This option will group them together for a lot of models and brands.
The it goes 2.6-2.9 litre. ARRRRHHHH. An Omega saloon or a Mondeao or a Jag would be 2.5-3.0. The search simply prevents you actually generating a list you would really want to look at.
From a user point of view you want useful car related metrics and options, not numerical middle ground.
Sub 1 litre, sub 2 litre type of thing would be better if you can't manage a free text numerical search or a custom list based on the make/model selected. Also include engine configuration, because if you want a V6 or a V8, it really helps to filter the results by these.
rant over/
300bhp/ton said:
MoonMonkey said:
Just been speaking to my sister and she is finally considering buying a cheap runabout for her and hubby to use. I wondered whether any PH'ers might have anything that might fit the bill. They live in London but anything around the London, North East or Glos areas considered. Here's an extract from her e-mail. I would say that the budget is negotiable depending on what turns up:
Could you help us find something along the lines of the following?
1. £1000-2000 budget
2. High reliability
3. Small but a bit bigger than a metro
4. Not too underpowered.
5. Cheap in insurance and running costs
6. Ideally German :-) but Ford or Japanese are ok too. Not so keen on French.
7. In the London, North East or Gloucesterhisre areas or thereabouts-ish
8. Obviously all the other ussual things are good but might be asking too much - 1 previous old lady owner type thing, not too many miles on the clock, 4 wheels, steering wheel, seat belts.......the list goes on!
We're pretty much looking to buy now.
In addition to the above must be HPI clear and have a decent MOT. Some tax and SH would be good too.
Looking to buy now, and hoping someone else will do all the leg work as we're too lazy to do it ourselves..... Could you help us find something along the lines of the following?
1. £1000-2000 budget
2. High reliability
3. Small but a bit bigger than a metro
4. Not too underpowered.
5. Cheap in insurance and running costs
6. Ideally German :-) but Ford or Japanese are ok too. Not so keen on French.
7. In the London, North East or Gloucesterhisre areas or thereabouts-ish
8. Obviously all the other ussual things are good but might be asking too much - 1 previous old lady owner type thing, not too many miles on the clock, 4 wheels, steering wheel, seat belts.......the list goes on!
We're pretty much looking to buy now.
In addition to the above must be HPI clear and have a decent MOT. Some tax and SH would be good too.
to be fair though they know bugger all about cars plus the hubby is german and hasn't lived in the uk before so is a total novice to buying / running a car over here.Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the German bit
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