Help an under-informed 21 year old

Original Poster

5 posts

61 months

Wednesday 24th April 2019

Good Afternoon All,

This is a plea for help from a young man with very limited knowledge when it comes to cars! A good dose of expertise from all of you extremely knowledgeable people would be highly appreciated!

Anyway lets cut to the chase, Im looking to buy my first car. I hate going in to debt so I am wanting to pay cash preferably around 4k but anywhere up to 5.5k if I was able to find something that would last. Thats the main criteria really, I want this car to last so it has to be reliable and I anticipate running it into the ground (i'm wanting to make it last at least 5 years+).

I'm also 21, so I have that age old desire to go fast while not bankrupting myself in insurance and petrol! The kind of things I like are Abarths (cheap to insure but unreliable?, also bit too expensive), Mini Cooper S (hard to determine whether these are reliable or not but insurance is reasonable), Ford fiesta ST (crazy expensive insurance, but seems a good all rounder), BMW 1 series, old 3 series convertibles etc. Im leaning towards a Mini at the moment and have found examples around 10 years old with 50,000 odd miles on the clock below 4 grand. Any other suggestions would be very much welcomed?

You get the drift, something fast, low mileage so I can get many more years out of it, probably looking at something in and around 10 years old with not many miles on the clock. I fully accept that buying a car of this age means it will need some work doing on it at some point but thats all good with me as I wont be paying for it by the month on some finance deal in the first place. Therefore repair/servicing costs will influence my decision.

Quite a large set of criteria I know, and any help and advice would be forever appreciated!

Cheers,
Freddie

Original Poster

5 posts

61 months

Wednesday 24th April 2019

Some top answers and all very helpful, much appreciated smile

Original Poster

5 posts

61 months

Wednesday 24th April 2019

M4cruiser said:

^^ This!! Check out your insurance quotes first.

Not uncommon to get quotes of £4,000 per year for a £4,000 car, unless you already have 3 years NCD and a good driving record.?

Some cars feel faster than they are, maybe that would suit. e.g. Peugeot 207.
Some cars feel slower than they are. e.g. Polo 1.6.

I don't have any NCD, but i did pass 4 years my test 4 years ago and i've got 2 years named driver experience and live in a good area it seems... anything under a grand a year on insurance and i'm happy (which most of the things i'm interested in are in fairness)

Original Poster

5 posts

61 months