[Closed] First car; am I a genius, or a complete and utter fool?

Good load space inside with seats folded down, they aren't that bad to drive. Only thing to look out for is clutch, pedal high on biting probably budget for it to be replaced, but not bad to do. Cheap as cheaps to run, and practical.

grandpa_oab has a camper version of them (!).
Great wee car, but it does feel like a 1995 Clio, all tinny and plastic..

Ah, will keep an eye out for that, cheers! What are the seats like? And have you ever reached 70mph in one, or is that an impossible task?

Also when bridges are closed to high sided vehicles due to wind... 😆

A camper version?!

Quality wheels very practical -IT WILL NEVER GET STOLEN - not ever, try not get silver , they look much worse in pastel yellow or beige .
Please ,please pimp it with every extra you can afford

Hahahahaha 😆

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Nope you are a genius young man, I reckon they've got an odd charm, most ladeez are less impressed by big exhausts and blingy paint than you think.

In fact I was online last night looking at options for a small engined, sensible layout, modest VED 2nd car for me to maybe run, started off looking at corsa, polo and fiesta, ended up looking at wagon R and Vauxhall agila, tiddly grandad box mobiles actually make perfect sense sense... sufficient load space for bikes(with seats folded), less likely to have been babolloxed by some yoof.

That camper is [i]fantastic.[/i]

I remember in gran turismo they were actually quite a nippy wee number!

make sure you get the 1.3...

Y plate or later 306 HDI estate will cost same to tax and insure, whilst being faster, more economical and (arguably) more stylish.

Also, spares should be more abundant if anything does go wrong

Only downside is you're unlikely to find such low mileage examples, BUT the engine is good for at least 200K

Brothers got a Purple one as a cheap run around, looks totally shit but you wouldn't buy one as a pulling wagon.

Perfectly acceptable in every other way.
His is the Vauxhall version (Agila) don't know if it makes any difference to the purchase cost or insurance though.

Not going to do my street cred any good,

If anyone gives you and crap, tell them third class motoring is better than first class walking.

I know someone who tipped one over after hitting black ice, but he is a drummer.

That camper is the colour of grandpa_oab's as well. When and where was pic taken? It might be him...its a downsize from the Suzuki Jimmy he had before...

most ladeez are less impressed by big exhausts and blingy paint than you think

Please ,please pimp it with every extra you can afford

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Help. 😯 That front end reminds me of a Honda for some reason..

Y plate or later 306 HDI estate will cost same to tax and insure, whilst being faster, more economical and (arguably) more stylish.

A big Pug would eat my money in fuel and repairs.

Nope you are a genius young man, I reckon they've got an odd charm, most ladeez are less impressed by big exhausts and blingy paint than you think.

My girlfriend said "Yes, but to a point. That car is a stylistic abomination"

I remember in gran turismo they were actually quite a nippy wee number!

Better to have un-cool transport than none.

Just think how jealous / mad your mates will be when you get laid driving that ! BTW I think you can have some fun with it, a couple of grey wigs and a flat cap for the date night drive to pub/restaurant/secluded parking spot !

It will save you ever having to buy condoms ....

I think a flat cap and pipe, possibly even a charity shop tweed jaicket, would be standard driving uniform if I ended up with one of these.

General consensus is "go for it" then?

I can get insured for a touch over £500, which is pretty impressive being as a 2004 Clio 1.2 comes in at £800 insurance..

I think that'd be brilliant for a first car.

It may not be the coolest looking thing but it'll get you about great.

I'd rather walk.

And this comes from someone who once owned a Vauxhall Chevette.

remember you can't see what it looks like when you are inside!

stuff style - if it is functional go for it!

A big Pug would eat my money in fuel and repairs.

Nope... 54mpg and reliability is good~

however, you seem to have your heart set on the granny wagon~ if you murdered it out with a dukes of hazzard paintjob, or just a cheap and cheerful coat of chalkboard paint, you could still be pimping... just don't forget the cod liver oil

Diahatsu charade cheaper ved and better mpg and surprisingly spacious. Ive got 2 😉

I also had a Vauxhall Chevette - what an awful car. For two years my sex life was not existent. I sold it, bought a VW Sirocco ... and well, it just happened ....

I borrowed my mum's Daihatsu Domino for my first car. About as uncool as you can get but 5 million times cooler than a guy with no car. Did my sex life no harm.

So not having a car is uncool?

/sigh.

It quite often is when you're a teenager.

Mazda Demio 1.3 5 door ?
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same criteria ,

I wouldn't discount a 306. I drive a 1.4 petrol one, it cost £550 and insurance was ~£600 (I'm 19 as well). It's not fast by any stretch of the imagination but it's cheap, gets reasonable mpg and it's comfortable and nice to drive. It's easy to fit a couple of bikes in the back as well, I can even fit the mtb in with both wheels on if the back seats are down, and that's just the hatchback.

So not having a car is uncool?

Worse than that. It's less cool even than the word 'uncool'. Nothing says 'loser' louder* than being car-less in 2015**

*Except perhaps the person shouting 'loser', loudly, at someone who doesn't own a car, in 2015.

**Unless you are:

1. A teens-to-twenty undergraduate rake living and studying in the city, and gets about on a fixie.

or

2. A zen-like world traveller with a beard n' ting.

I bought a car finally last year finally, purely for getting out of London. It's good to know I'm no longer a loser, well apart from the fact that it's a 1L nissan micra 😳

lol! Clearly you've forgotten what it's like to be a teenager, guys. Never mind.

I would consider the older shape Nissan almera.

I had one at 19 and was a great car. Room enough inside for your needs as well.

Of course I was joking. Also - not having a car as a teenager affected me not at all, was too busy cycling about or gigging/travelling in mate's vans, or hitchhiking/bussing wiv me girl. Finally relented in mid-thirties and joined the club. Am firmly in the camp that a car is simply a tool. Yes - a tool that is sometimes driven/worshipped by tools - and is often the wrong tool for the job at hand. But it's a tool.

Sounds like you have your head screwed on. Give it an A-Team paint job or scooby doo mystery van and you can be cool and frugal at the same time.

depressingly, the car that ticks pretty much all of these boxes is the Suzuki Wagon R

My dad had one, so it must be a sensible choice (and I'm easily old enough to be your dad).

FWIW I would steer well clear of the 306 HDI Pug. The engine is incredible - unfortunately the rest of it is pretty bad (owned one from new for 3 years - random electrical faults, leaks & shoddy build quality. It was back at the dealer almost every month for those 3 years. It also went through front tyres like they were going out of fashion.)

if you really REALLY need a car then do it

if you can get away with not having one, don't

if you need a car then that's not a bad choice, cars are only ever a depreciating asset and the trick is to reduce the amount of money spent on them

I have one - well a Vauxhall Agila, so basically the same.

Great little cars. Not cool or fast, but amazingly reliable, and for the size they are huge inside. With the seats down you can easily fit a couple of bikes with the front wheels off + lots of kit. With a roof rack on, I've had a couple of bikes, baby seat (+ baby!), pram, all our luggage and 2 adults. I once managed to cram the subs, tops, and amps for a 3k PA system into it. Was very full though!

Mine's the 1l engine basic model. Happily does 70mph on the motorway, and is surprisingly nippy away from the lights. Whatever I do to it it seems to do about 45-47mpg, and it has never failed an MOT. The 3 cylinder engine does sound like an angry lawn-mower when it's going up a steep hill though.

Mine's a 57 plate, and it's currently on about 90k. Probably good for the same again!
Servicing is cheap, parts are cheap, tyres are cheap, and insurance is bloody cheap. Think I pay £110 fully comp - I do have a few years NC bonus though.

Does have a tiny fuel tank though. That's about the only negative I can think of!

If what you really want us a van, just get some old minibus seats for whichever model you buy from eBay and bolt them in. They start from about a tenner a seat for some models. That said, I'm not sure you'd find a van worth having for the same sort of budget you're looking at here.

Give it an A-Team paint job

YES. Oh yes. Will run it past the girlfriend.. 😆

if you really REALLY need a car then do it

if you can get away with not having one, don't

if you need a car then that's not a bad choice, cars are only ever a depreciating asset and the trick is to reduce the amount of money spent on them

^my parents' words exactly, and it's fair enough. I'll need a car by the middle of summer and not before, but I'm just getting an idea of roughly how much money I'll need to plough in to it, and what car to aim for. I think I'll end up with a better deal if I research it properly and know what problems to look for, roughly what it might be worth and what I could reasonably haggle to.

Just thought I'd stick it up here to see what people who potentially have experience living with this car or its equivalents have to say about it 🙂

a car is simply a tool

My thoughts exactly. I'll try to keep it relatively clean and mechanically sound, but further than that so long as it goes it'll do just fine!

I have one - well a Vauxhall Agila, so basically the same.

Great little cars. Not cool or fast, but amazingly reliable, and for the size they are huge inside. With the seats down you can easily fit a couple of bikes with the front wheels off + lots of kit. With a roof rack on, I've had a couple of bikes, baby seat (+ baby!), pram, all our luggage and 2 adults. I once managed to cram the subs, tops, and amps for a 3k PA system into it. Was very full though!

Mine's the 1l engine basic model. Happily does 70mph on the motorway, and is surprisingly nippy away from the lights. Whatever I do to it it seems to do about 45-47mpg, and it has never failed an MOT. The 3 cylinder engine does sound like an angry lawn-mower when it's going up a steep hill though.

Mine's a 57 plate, and it's currently on about 90k. Probably good for the same again!
Servicing is cheap, parts are cheap, tyres are cheap, and insurance is bloody cheap. Think I pay £110 fully comp - I do have a few years NC bonus though.

Does have a tiny fuel tank though. That's about the only negative I can think of!

Yes, there was that. More user error though than a problem with the car 😉

I wouldn't go near a Pug. Had a 406 HDI, ffing nightmare. Replaced the engine and had a month in France, saw one on the road in that time. They had all died.

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I had the pleasure of driving one of these for a few weeks in cape town. I fell in love with the little thing. it was so light it would wheel spin in second gear. It was really good on fuel, fun to drive, could sit at 70 on the high way and acceleration was good too.

Roof rack for the bikes.

"If what you really want us a van, just get some old minibus seats for whichever model you buy from eBay and bolt them in. They start from about a tenner a seat for some models. That said, I'm not sure you'd find a van worth having for the same sort of budget you're looking at here"

such a bad idea - as a young driver a modified van is about the worst thing you could try to insure.

as a young driver a modified car is bad - a stock van is bad to insure - a modified van = night mare.

What trail rat said - modified van will be expensive to insure (done it when older and was still a hassle).

Also in many cases minibus seats (from an N2/M2 vehicle with 9 - 16 passenger seats) will probably not be legal to fit to an N1/M1 van so that potentially invalidates the insurance anyway....

I think the OPs idea is a good one (I've taken note for when my kids are older). Thinking back my mrs did the same with a mk1 VW Derby granny saloon 🙂

You are utterly skint and want to spend 2k a year on insurance?

At Uni the last thing girls care about is cars. Its pulling in clubs, union etc etc. Boy with car is important at college. Different at uni.

I didn't even have a driving licence at uni.

My sister has one in silver, it's proving itself to be a great little pope mobile.

Gladdens my heart when I hear young uns being sensible. I'm 44 and still don't spend daft money on cars, there are much better ways to spend your brass.

Cars are great, not for driving but just for getting you places you might struggle to get to otherwise. Who gives a toss what anyone else thinks? Go for it and enjoy yourself.

You are utterly skint and want to spend 2k a year on insurance?

I think you need to read again.... £2k for three things - car, VED AND insurance.

Need for car depends on uni location and what you want to do in spare time and weekends (trips to the mountains and mtb races etc were all much much easier with a car).

AH! 🙂

As a student 2k was a vast sum of money.

hora - Member
AH!

As a student 2k was a vast sum of money.

I managed to find £2k to build my s-works while I was a student!

All my money was invested in finding girls to have sex with, buying drink for said-girls, having sex and going to places where I might end up in bed with a girl at the end of the night. **** buying noddy cars 😆

As a student 2k was a vast sum of money.

That what student loans are for 😉

I used to split my loans in 3 equal pots roughly as follows:

1. Drink + Ski Trip
2. Cash savings (interest rec'd was > that paid at the time so it was a simple arbitrage)
3. Stock market investment 1/3

Bloke I used to work with had a Vauxhall Agila as a stop-gap car. The boxy one; same as the Wagon-R.

He was only meant to keep it for a while as a temporary thing, but had it for ages as he couldn't justify getting rid of it. It was cheap, relatively frugal, reliable.....

Maybe have a look at the Honda Jazz too. Arguably a bit more robust than the Wagon R and meets all your other criteria, especially the space.

Would I drive a wagonR? Yes. But then I'd drive anything if it was reliable and cheap to run.

I've got a Vauxhall Agila. Its an ok car, does it's job and is very cheap to run.

Can get a 29er full sus in the back just taking the front wheel off. Two bikes with all wheels off (still plenty of room for other kit too). You don't need to remove or drop the seat posts either - it's a tall car.

Cant go wrong if your after a cheap, 4 seat bike carrier to be honest. Mine was £1200 with FSH and 55k on the clock. Tax isn't that cheap, but MPG is awesome. I think it looks quite funky too.

Maybe I wasn't trying enough, but when looking at insurance for various cars for my daughter (18) the difference between insurance groups seemed to mean nothing. A group 1 and group 12 car came in at £1300 and £1303 respectively...

I gave up and she said she'd feel guilty knowing it was going to cost that much to get her driving.

lol! Clearly you've forgotten what it's like to be a teenager, guys. Never mind.

Small 5 door cars are damn useful. We've got a matiz so even smaller engine, not the most enjoyable thing to take on long motorway journeys but for the 90% of driving [i]we[/i] normally do it's perfectly fine. Been itching to buy something bigger recently but from a practical/economical point of view it would be daft.

However I'd be wary of getting a car at 19, most people struggle to give up ownership of a car once they've got used to one and they can be bloody expensive things to own. So early on in life it could be a hefty millstone

And sorry but you're still in the idiot teenager demographic that is likely to wrap it around a lamp post or someone elses car.

Also worth looking at the old shape Kia Rio, old peoples car so ticks all the boxes but the old one had a massive boot, I once fit 3 adults and 3 bikes in mine. Sold it only to get my van. 🙂

Some friends of mine had one at uni- it did exactly what you want it to do. It goes, it takes bikes, it's cheap.

A Berlingo with seats was another popular one- these are also often driven by the elderly. I had a 1997 Honda Civic five door and this was also very cheap to insure, but I think all the good ones are gone now with it being an 18 year old car driven by students to take their bike places.

I was pretty dependant on my car as a mountain biker with the highlands an hour away. Where I went to uni the riding was abysmal, and there was only the union and bars. If you wanted to go clubbing you had to leave town. If you can get away without one then it's good but I found it really useful. If I'd gone to a big city uni in the south east where the riding's mostly poor anyway I think I'd have coped without.

Donk,I wouldn't be getting a car if I didn't need one, and I'm sure I'll find the huge power and girl-impressing potential of a 1.3l granny car totally irresistible. It's all testosterone and stuff, innit, cause I'm 19, innit?

What about the Suzuki ignis?

Honda Jazz is a out of my budget at this stage, cracking cars though! My brother has one of the older body shapes, and it fits his family of for including a twin pram in no bother.

Mazda demio looks like getting spares could be a pain, there's only 8 for sale in the UK on autotrader just now so they're probably mostly off the roads now.

Will have a look at the Kia Rio at some point.

Tbh the Wagon R is growing on me. Seems to be slightly quicker to 60 than the Agila, with cheaper road tax for a pre 2004 version? Thereafter they shared engines so are pretty much identical.

My wife has an 03 with the 1.3 litre engine. She uses it for her gardening job and it is pretty good for that as lots of room inside.
Was 6 years old when we got it and had only done 11K miles!

Think there was a mistake on the CO2 emissions as the Tax is £150 a year when all the websites say it should be in the band below.

I bought a 50" TV a few years ago and was disappointed when the box did not fit in my Skoda estate as the guy in the shop said it had be transported upright. No problem in the Wagon R!

It is noisy and does seem to feel every bump in the road.

Good potential for customising
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Or if your feeling really ambitious with the old MDF and no nails..
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Or just get some banging tunes in there..
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Took me a while before I noticed the exhausts on that pink one.. 😯

if you do get one, you're still going to look less of a fanny turning up at a trail centre in it than most of the middle aged bmw drivers on here anyway

that camper version is awesome. I really wanted one of these for a while

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One of my mates had a Bedford Rascal van for a while - he's 6'5" & it was hysterical seeing him driving it, even more so with another of my mates (6'4") in the passenger seat! It had twin sliding doors & he could take a running dive into a forward roll through it... just because.

Back on track, i'm getting shot of my trusty Honda Prelude soon as it's rather impractical & was looking at an old Mazda 2 as a cheap runabout which could fit a couple of bikes in - anyone any opinions on these?

If you could squeeze another couple of hundred quid into your budget, Nissan Notes can be had for well under £2k. I've driven one, not bad little motors and don't look quite so much like you've given up on life before it's even started 😉

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Okay, bizarrely enough, I can get a Merc A Class or an Audi A2 for the same money (insurance n'all), with slightly higher VED.

Or a 100k mile Subaru @ £1.5k, with <£900 insurance.

Been sat here putting random cars though the same quote, and getting some interesting results..

A Jag X-Type is also a cheap option, with cheap insurance, but a Saab 9-7 is considerably more to insure.

Might end up with a much nicer car for the same money!

Dihatsu YRV
A few on Ebay for around £500 circa 2001
[url= http://www.parkers.co.uk/cars/reviews/daihatsu/yrv/hatchback/gallery/ ]parkers link[/url]

Okay, bizarrely enough, I can get a Merc A Class or an Audi A2 for the same money (insurance n'all), with slightly higher VED.

I have a '53 plate toyota celica I keep as I'm sentimentally attached to it, despite owning much more expensive cars it's my favourite. A mates younger brother is similar age to you and has often fancied it, he put a quote in and found it to be the same as his 1.4 fiesta. It's needed nothing other than servicing and consumables in the 100k I have covered in it making it a cheap car to own. I know of someone else on the lookout for a ford fusion as his quotes have been low.

Cheap car? No style? Cheap insurance? Still looking for laydee's?
It has to be...
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