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Hi - I need to get a motor as I’m using a Renault master to do my everyday and it’s costing me a small fortune.
I need a car my wife is comfortable with driving so nothing too big and has cheap Tax a year - ideally around the 1k mark.
What cars do we think I should put in my list?
Anything Japanese
2006 onwards Nissan Micra
Honda Jazz
Kia picanto
Can get these for £1000 all day long
Avoid anything German, don’t be tempted with German reliability it doesn’t exist at £1000 !
French - avoid
British ford vauxhall - avoid at all costs £1000 pounds will buy you an embarrassment of a car.
Swedish - don’t be tempted!!! I’ve got a Volvo it’s awesome. But alas £1000 would buy you a habit that just won’t end !
Basically at that budget stick Japanese!
Let us know what you end up with !
I was going to say Fabia, with a proper service record.
A friend recently got a Dacia Stepway on a £50 a month lease deal. No idea how but might be worth looking in to.
£1000 is cheap, my advice would be go Japanese or korean.
Not foolproof, but they’re more likely to work reliably.
Or, if you’re not doing many miles, consider leasing a new dacia or similar, the overall cost may not be much different once you’ve done a couple of relatively minor repairs to the £1000 car.
Jazz
Jazz - very popular for having the cat nicked off them which will cost more than the car to replace.
If you could go for a larger car maybe a Civic. Mind you for £1000 you may not get much choice and condition rather than make will matter more.
At 1000 pounds I'd avoid looking for a specific make/model, and just look and whats available locally meeting your requirements and buy on condition, which is far more important at that price.
If the cars you look at are local it will be easier to look at more cars before buying.
With current car values, a £1k car is going to be as cheap as you can get and therefore have a lot of inherent risks and potential costs. You might be ok, but I would not guarantee any car at that point in the market unfortunately.
Old Nissan Micra is probably all you'll get for 1k...
I find Gumtree is a good place to look for sub £1k cars in the locality.
As mentioned above, second the Micra or Picanto suggestion....
I do think I’m going to have to tweak my budget - price of cars is a massive change.
It’s for my wife mainly so I don’t want A plum
Just spent £2500 on a 2006 Yaris in decent nick and low miles for my son's first car. Only options even close to £1000 near here were a handful of insurance write offs, even older cars with 150k plus miles or the odd weird find - such as an old range rover, an Alfa Romeo that looked prety nice but was 20 years old, and over 250k miles for £2k, or a BMW z4 that had similar miles. Both looked very clean though, but not suitable for a first car!
I do think I’m going to have to tweak my budget – price of cars is a massive change
It is scary how much cars now are, particularly at the lower end of things. Very few around too. Go and read Pistonheads Shed of the Week...
My father just bought a Panda auto 1.3 multijet - £4.4k for a 9 year old car that was maybe £10k new?
I too would go with look local and open to all models, not a specific brand or model.
Fwiw I know two friends who've had Micra auto's and they have been Uber reliable, if utterly Tupperware like.
Do an open search on auto trader- no make/ model just put “deceased” “late” as keywords. I’ve had a few stop gap bargains where someone is selling off a car as part of an estate clearance.
Auto Aygo/C1 Might be a bit tatty at £1k, but they are cheap to fix.
We bought a 60 plate for £2k in November, for the 'kids' - it's needed some 'jobs' but all have been cheap other than the manifold/cat snapping which is common with age - that costed £700. Brake disks and pads, £38.
Auto's are little more expensive than the manual, which we have.
If selling today, with the tarting up and servicing, jobs one, it would fetch £4k - checked autotrader. You should pick up an early one for £1k ish.
We've had K11 and K12 Micra's (square one then the bubble) which were great. Then had a Mk1 Yaris for 19 years - it's still going locally and is 23 years old, although the red paint is now shot.
Auto Aygo/C1 Might be a bit tatty at £1k, but they are cheap to fix.
If you hadn't put auto Infront of that I'd agree with you.
Autos city cars go for mental money.
Working automatic gear boxes for them go for whole working manual car prices !
Does OP's Mrs need an auto due to driving license ? I'd recommend an Aygo/C1 etc manual, so bloody lazy with gear changes, they just pull away what ever gear. Very easy cars to drive if you aren't in a hurry. But they will scoot off if you boot it. There is good forum/you tube support for every job, so a real cheap car to run if you can do a bit of spannering, and it's not a big heavy car to work on.
Noisy, but 68 bhp in a very light car is quite nippy if you get the VVTi spinning !
I take the Aygo for shopping trips, as my old big saloon eat's fuel on short trips, the Aygo doesn't. Getting the 'boss' to use it too as her SUV is just as shoot locally. The Aygo is actually fun to drive, basic etc. Our's is 'posh' has leccy windows, bluetooth and aircon....
As a city car, they are great. We need a thread about cheap run abouts, not yer £50k plus leccy cars - £50k buy's a lot of decent city cars and fuel for the 30 years I have left driving, and they aren't an offensive monster truck, unike most leccy cars. Give me a leccy Aygo anytime !.
I like mine....it's nippy yes But you have to use the gear box there is very little over lap in the gears... And for get coasting up to something <5 mph in second and then pulling away.... You have to go to first. Caught me out a few times having driven diesels for the last 15 years.
VVT Petrol cars have to be revved - you oil burners won't be used to it.
Boot It !
Can you get a Smart ForTwo at 1k? They are small and semi-auto.
FB-ATB has it with a deceased spec car, usually the family of the late owner just want shot of it.
At that price a K11 Micra is your best option.
The advantage of it being an auto will be dear departed Dorris won't have been doing 6700rpm slipping the clutch in a Tesco car park
The advantage of it being an auto will be dear departed Dorris won’t have been doing 6700rpm slipping the clutch in a Tesco car park
You have met one of my neighbours then?
VVT Petrol cars have to be revved – you oil burners won’t be used to it.
Boot It !
combined with
The advantage of it being an auto will be dear departed Dorris won’t have been doing 6700rpm slipping the clutch in a Tesco car park
Is largely why you always see the little C1/aygo/peugoets needing clutches between 60-80k....that and the clutch is about the size of a bicycle brake disk.
USe the gear box the clutch will last longer...
matt_outandabout
You have met one of my neighbours then?
Not them but my shopping bike nearly got crushed last week locked to the bike rails at Aldi by a Dorris in a Kia Picanto, thankfully the revs got my attention as she reversed at walking pace and just kept going passed some trollys towards the bike rails. I had to thump on the roof 3 times before she stopped.
She then moved off with the engine bouncing off the limiter at about 3mph