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Suppose you are on a small fixed income but you need a car. It doesn't need to be big - Polo size is fine - and you won't be doing huge mileage, though you may go on a long trip from time to time. You have no mechanical skills do reliability is important.
What's the best strategy? Buy a good new car and drive it till it falls to bits? Buy a series of cheap used cars? Stick to non-prestige makes? What would you do?
Sit on a bench next to a busy road and look at the older cars. You will see Micra's & clios etc all 10- 15 years old still going strong.
Pick one up for £500-£700 with 12 months mot. Buy the Haynes manual of eBay for £10 and learn how to do basic jobs. Simple basic cars are easy to fix.
Also Avoid modern diesels, well just diesels in general if your not doing big miles will cost you more in tax in the long run.
Buy a small, 1 year old Japanese/Korean small hatchback. You'll be very unlucky to have anything go wrong for years.
Flip a coin...
Serious answer - we bought a 2012 Ibiza ST, the old 1.4 16v engine. It's about as basic an engine as it gets, no turbo, few sensors etc. It's not high power. Parts are cheap. We've had it three years, done 30k in it, now at 60k overall. Nothing wrong at all in that time, and new discs and pads cost under £70 for me to do myself. I'd not buy the Copa model we have again - tyres are expensive and not comfy enough being so thin.
Hoofing big boot being the estate. According to honest John, its the most reliable car/engine combo VW group have made recently.
I'm hoping to put at least another 100k on it.
as above, buy cheap, small, simple cars from the far east with naturally aspirated petrol engines and a manual gearbox.
This sort of thing has years left - if you bought a cheaper (older) model you could literally run it into the ground with zero maintenance and it'll probably still do 3 years, maybe a couple of hundred a year to get through its MOT
alternately, if you want something newer, this should have a good few years left, but would probably cost more overall
What will the new MOT rules do to this? My wife's car (a 14 year old na petrol) has had the engine warning light on for the past 8 years. According to the garage it won't now pass it's MOT.
Nissan almeria
Avoid modern diesels
If you are averse to a small amount of work, yes.
I pulled and replaced an EGR this year and discovered that it was mostly sticky from soot. Stripping the solenoid off and either sticking it in an ultrasonic bath or bathing it in carb cleaner will bring it back to new, thankfully I kept it long enough to realise I have a handy spare. Oh, the replacement was £80 so hardly scrapping territory.
Bigger issue is making sure you have the right kit to maintain it. ie. computer gubbins.
MkII Nissan Micra.
That really is the end of the thread, and I've never said that before.
Do you already own a car?!
General rule is the cheapest car to run is the one you already own. Cost of changing usually out weighs running costs.
may not apply in your circumstances tho
What will the new MOT rules do to this? My wife’s car (a 14 year old na petrol) has had the engine warning light on for the past 8 years. According to the garage it won’t now pass it’s MOT.
Either get one of those cheap bluetooth OBD2 code readers, download an app such as Torque, find out why it's on and maybe fix it? Or take the bulb out from behind the dash.
I would get a new car or a close to new car. I have a Toyota Aygo that I bought new in 2011 and has covered 80,000 miles. It has been used in towns and on country roads with the odd motorway trip over those 7 years.
It had a 5 year warranty which was used for a couple of things and had option to extend for a few hundred quid.
Services alternate between £100 and £200 a year, tax is zero and it always does over 55mpg
In 7 years it has had one set of front discs (£80), a new rear silencer (£40) and quite a few tyres (£50 each)
It has been so cheap to run that you actually hardly notice paying anything once you have paid off the purchase price. Just bought another new one a few months ago but keeping the 2011 one as second car.
You will see Micra’s & clios etc all 10- 15 years old still going strong.
Don't buy a clio.
Or take the bulb out from behind the dash.
No, with the new MOT the light has to come on with the ignition and go out after the car does its diagnostics. Same applies to the ABS light.
I'm looking to change our car next year and can't really see past buying another Suzuki. The present one has had zero problems in 5 years . Petrol,non turbo and loads of room under the bonnet to do any work.
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Avoid modern diesels
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If you are averse to a small amount of work, yes.I pulled and replaced an EGR this year and discovered that it was mostly sticky from soot. Stripping the solenoid off and either sticking it in an ultrasonic bath or bathing it in carb cleaner will bring it back to new, thankfully I kept it long enough to realise I have a handy spare. Oh, the replacement was £80 so hardly scrapping territory.
Bigger issue is making sure you have the right kit to maintain it. ie. computer gubbins.
However a DPF problem due to loads of short journeys would be fully rubbish.
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How often do you need a car? Rent on for the long trips
There's a few things to consider, first and foremost, people tend to obsess about mpg, but for low mileage it's neither here nor there, there's not point spending £5k extra on a car to save 3mpg.
Also, this isn't the 70s, or 80s or even 90s, most cars are pretty reliable these days, if you keep on top of them. Don't be afraid of dealer services for olders cars, they usually cost about £20 more and they give you a 5 page report of all the things 'wrong' with it, if you want you can fix them all and have it 'like new' again, but get it checked over once a year and not just at the MOT station.
That said, if I wanted a trouble free, cheap to buy and run 'small box on wheels' I'd still buy a Toyota Yaris, petrol and if you really want cockroach levels of indestructibility an entry level one.
On autotrader right now there is a Y reg Yaris for £395, Mum had one exactly the same, you can drive it like a complete **** if you like and it'll do 45mpg, you can, with patience get it up to 3 figures, and it'll still do 45mpg.
It has passed most of it's MOTs and when it's failed in the past it's needed bulbs, a handbrake adjust, brake pads and a number plate - in 16 years! It's got an MOT till May next year and it'll probably need the handbrake adjusted again and some ARB bushes, they're £8 a pair and maybe an hours labour. Or do it yourself, the YT vid to show you how is only 13 mins long.
Or buy a newer one for your budget.
In your position I'd buy new or nearly new and go for one with a long warranty (Kia or Hyundai I guess) as you'll have the car for the duration.
From my experience the biggest problem with older cars is you have no way of knowing how the (multiple) previous owners have treated them. You could get a good one, you could get a stinker. Yes, they can be cheap as long as they don't go wrong but if you plan to run a new one in to the ground you will get good value anyway. Oh, and new cars are nice.
It also seemed that the price of used has shot up recently. I was considering getting a 3/5k second hand car and there didn't seem much value about. At the lower end of my search they all seemed about knackered.
This kind of thing gets debated on here a lot and it probably all works out much the same in the end, but broadly speaking i'd agree with 5lab:
as above, buy cheap, small, simple cars from the far east with naturally aspirated petrol engines and a manual gearbox.
If i was in your shoes i'd look to spend £2-3K on a petrol Yaris/Mazda 2/i30 etc. Largely because I can't afford a new one and don't want the hassle of replacing 2 or 3 bangernomics jobbies in the 8 years that this would probably last...
Thanks all - the last car I owned was a '98 Polo that I bought in 2004 and sold for nothing in 2017 when the repair bills were mounting up. I know nothing about fixing cars and i'm reluctant to start trying to learn, based on various bike-fettling disasters. Looks like a consensus around a far east tin can - slightly depressing, but beggars can't be choosers!
Looks like a consensus around a far east tin can – slightly depressing, but beggars can’t be choosers!
Cars are just places to temporarily sit. Nothing depressing about not wasting your money on something you don't need. 🙂
https://www.reliabilityindex.com
Makes interesting reading. Rates cars on reliability, i.e. how often they break down, how long off-road to fix, and how costly they are to fix, etc. Then gives a score, 0 being best, and the average score for the cars they look at is 100. Anything with a score under 40/50 is worth looking at.
It being no 2 with a score of 4.00 on the list certainly helped my decision to buy a second hand Lancer recently!
Sit on a bench next to a busy road and look at the older cars. You will see Micra’s & clios etc all 10- 15 years old still going strong.
yet its funny how French cars have the rep for poor reliability.
A lot of the advice people give based on reputations for vehicles that are themselves 15 to 20 years out of date. VWs being reliable, Volvos being safe. Its not 1993 anymore. The example of the Mark 2 Micra being a good one. They were good, cheap, reliable cars in their day (and pretty much the best thing to drive through a blizzard too) but the newest one you could buy now would be 16 years old - hardly the obvious choice if you're looking for years for trouble-free motoring.
Its true that they will be amongst the oldest cars that you'll still see pottering around now...so jump in your time machine and buy one 10 years ago.
Go for something common as muck, at least 5 years old. Anything newer will cost you more in depreciation each year than you'd be happy to pay if you were presented with that figure as a repair. From 5 years old to 15 years old yearly costs are about the same year on year. In that time there might be times when a big bill comes in - but if you're intention is to keep a car for a long time then you'll benefit from the full value of that repair
With any car it really comes down to luck and how you use it.
My C-Max and the OH's Fiesta share a lot of common bits so between us we've nearly 200,000mile of us out of them (mines on 118,000 hers 125,000).
Cam belt services (1x each)
Wheel bearings (1x each, yet to go in pairs strangely).
Brake pads and disks (fiesta all round, c-max front only).
Clutch (fiesta only) and they did the gearbox seals whilst it was appart.
Coolant reservoir (fiesta, cracked)
Exhaust (fiesta, rotted from the inside out)
Water Pump (fiesta only 2x, i strongly suspect this was a money making exercise by the garage doing the clutch as it was done with the cam belt and the c-max has yet to wear it's first out).
Assorted bulbs, trim, center seatbelt in the fiesta, radio, electric window switch (i.e. all stuff you just live with rather than spend money fixing on an older car).
So in almost 200,000 miles we've only really ever had to replace wear and tear parts. Annual servicing is done on the drive as it's just an oil and filter change (air filter every 2, spark plugs every 3) and I've bought a 5 gallon drum of oil to make that cheap too!
Now for the bad news:
My OH is not mechanically sympathetic, the fiesta gets thrashed from cold daily, and often only does very short journeys <4 miles for weeks at a time and get an oil top up when the light comes on! The engine sounds pretty f***** as a result (bear in mind it's the same engine in the c-max which is working much harder in a much bigger car and is still sweet as a nut). The front suspension bushes are a little loose so they'll need sorting next MOT and TBH despite the hours and £££ I've put into it over the last few years it might be time to get something new.
Unfortunately this will almost certainly be her mums old Golf TSI, and any idiot (apart from my OH) knows how much turbo's love short journeys and no oil.
TL;DR:
If you're me then just about anything can probably be made to last forever.
If your my girlfriend then you could probably kill a Yaris.
the newest one you could buy now would be 16 years old
So an easy 5+ yrs cheap motoring still to be had! 😀
Water Pump (fiesta only 2x, i strongly suspect this was a money making exercise by the garage doing the clutch as it was done with the cam belt
It's common when doing a cam belt, to replace the water pump, belt tensioner and idler pulleys at the same time!
It’s common when doing a cam belt, to replace the water pump, belt tensioner and idler pulleys at the same time!
Varies by car. The Water pump isn't AFAIK generally driven off the cambelt, but it is often behind the cambelt. The same garage did both cambelts but said the pump wasn't necessary on the c-max. I did the aux belts not so long ago and it's still fine so they were probably right, time will tell if the pump makes it another ~35,000 miles to the next cambelt! I haven't actually checked if it's accessible without taking the cambelt off, I know it is on the MG as the cam is chain driven on that (but that's not an OHC engine).
TBH the incremental cost of the pump wasn't too bad, and they did the gearbox seals for free as they were fine going in but leaked once they'd finished.
yet its funny how French cars have the rep for poor reliability.
A lot of the advice people give based on reputations for vehicles that are themselves 15 to 20 years out of date. VWs being reliable, Volvos being safe. Its not 1993 anymore.
French cars have a reputation (on here at least) of having electrical gremlins. That equates to reliability, in that if the electrics play up it could put you off the road. However it might be easy to fix. They apparently are very good for rust resistance. The Peugeot 406s were very reliable and durable.
VWs are durable, rather than particularly reliable. Look at all the MK IV Golfs you see around. Most of them will have had a load of fiddly sensor failure issues, plus the door locks and all sorts of other well-documented troubles, but they can be fixed and the bodywork and interior will still look ok fifteen or twenty years down the line.
However, these are all old now and I take your point that it is not easy to guess what will turn out to be reliable in the future. I'd take a chance on a Toyota.
A lot of the advice people give based on reputations for vehicles that are themselves 15 to 20 years out of date. VWs being reliable, Volvos being safe. Its not 1993 anymore.
And a lot of it comes down to supply chains.
Italian and French cars had crappy electrics because they bough them from magneto mirelli, British cars had crap electrics because they bough them from Lucas, German cars had good electrics because Bosch made them. Nowadays none of that is really true anymore, it's likely the same Bosh ignition coil is in a Fiesta as in a BMW (might be sized differently but it'll be the a Bosh unit), and it often changes with model years (2004 Fiestas as an example have one of two different suppliers). Pretty much everything mechanical in the car probably came from a supplier that wasn't actually Ford/VAG/PSA/Toyota, but was built to their spec and the same suppliers probably build stuff for almost every manufacturer.
Having said that, according to that reliability site up there the C6 is the least reliable car (even ahead of all that exotica), hardly surprising given the amount of toys and gizmos fitted to it.
However a DPF problem due to loads of short journeys would be fully rubbish.
Yes.
That'll teach me for being slightly tipsy and forgetting the OP between reading a comment and replying.
As you were...
Honda Jazz.
Buy a small, 1 year old Japanese/Korean small hatchback. You’ll be very unlucky to have anything go wrong for years.
^^^ This.
Honda Jazz.
... ^^^ this .... and Toyota.
yet its funny how French cars have the rep for poor reliability.
I'd say that's quite justified.
For one example the Citroen C8/Pug 807.
Electrical problems galore if your fuse box, right below the scuttle panel, gets wet. New BSU is a common fix.
Cambelt? Pre-2005 it's a 50k mile replacement as said scuttle panel had a tendency to leak down the side of the engine and cause premature failure (UK manual says 100kmiles but the French manual says 100k km. Yay.)
See plenty of autos getting scrapped because the gearbox filter is shite and inevitably the "lifetime oil" and box get shafted. New box is more than new car, off to scrappies.
Less said about Eolys FAP system the better, either buy a Lexia system to reset the computer and manhandle seriously toxic into the tank under the car or delete the system in the ECU and remap.
Oh yeah, cheap crap interior that rattles and squeaks constantly, consistent with general build quality. My 80k C8 looks and feels like it's done three times that whilst my 110k Mondeo looks and feels like it's done half that.
Anyone remember the truly awful Lagunas of the early 00's? (Interestingly their replacement was one of the more reliable cars of its day but sold so little they just dropped it entirely)
Now I know this isn't exclusive to French cars by any means but they seem to have more than their fair share.
Risk averse?
1.0T is a bit of a deal.
What I did in your situation 4 1/2 years ago was buy a closeout pre-reg Fabia for £4k under list price, £7700 for a brand new car! It has the non-complicated 1.2 12v engine and after 72k it's been faultless. I plan to keep it for a good 10 years by which point it should have done well over 150k, seeing as my previous Fiesta had caused me no end of grief by 70k and it soldiered on to 133k before I got fed up of it and traded it in (so you can take £700 off the purchase price of the Fabia) I have every faith in the plucky Skoda being around for a long time to come. I did look into £3-5k cars at the time I bought the Fabia but anything I could have bought back then would be nearly dead by now so if I get another 4 years out of it I'll be evens compared to two budget cars but will have dodged a load of hassle finding a second car etc.
See what models are being phased out and phone around, you may find a deal to be had.
XP10 Yaris 1.3
K11C Micra
tbh it depends on the length of commute.
for cheap motoring i would pick something like a golf / focus or bigger. low mileage and old. parts will be cheap as chips and the fact its a bigger car it will have worn its age better.
a small car will usually have been ragged about a bit and because of newer drivers can command a higher premium.