What hatchback - £13k

I'd look for something a bit bigger if you want to put bikes in the boot.

Is mileage a big concern, if you were willing to go up to say 70 or 80k you should be able to get plenty of estate cars for that.

£13K? You could buy an eBike for that (but not an S-Works...)

Why size down?

I don’t have to size down but I put my bike in it once a week, and I commute to work twice a month. I don’t really use it much other than that, except maybe to nip to visit people. I was hoping a hatchback might suffice.

If you're only going to be using it to drive to work twice a month and then nip to visit people occasionally I'd be looking at higher mileage stuff personally. Modern cars are good for up to 150k on average and you'll get a lot of estate car for your 13j if you're willing to go higher.

What's wrong with what you have if it currently suits your needs?

If you only use it a handful of times a month, there's no harm having something slightly bigger IMO.

I would worry a Focus Estate wasn't big enough for bike transport personally (being used to a van).

That’s a good point. Any suggestions if I was to up the mileage then? I currently have a Focus estate on lease, but it’s due to go back very soon and I can’t afford to lease at the moment with a new mortgage.

A van probably makes sense, just not sure I want to have a van as my only means of transport.

I'd be looking at something like a Mazda 6 estate with the petrol engine (diesel one had some issues) at around 70k to 80k. Should be able to find one for around 12k and it'll likely last to twice that mileage or more.

I easily got my road bike in my Golf
My MTB I just took the front wheel off.
I'd get a Leon basically a Golf.

Do you have to change from the Focus?

We've just bought a £13k 2017 Leon FR 1.4tsi DSG estate with 64k on clock. It's a nice, efficient, quick when needed, reasonably spacious car. It's just averaged 50mpg after a long weekend around Highland roads with bikes on towbar rack.
It's typical VAG with some really crappy design - cupholders crap, phone charging space not big enough to cope with cable, odd ergonomics, fussy radar thing that gets scared on county roads with corners but not in town when a car pulled out on me today, boot that drains water in when lifted up.
It's not a patch on the old V70 in ergonomics, functionality, stereo or wafting comfort
But, it's much better sized for what we need, more efficient, better handling, easier to park, easy to live with, good headlights (we've the LED things) and comfy enough car.

I'm still not at a point where I'd recommend anything other than the best three door Golf GTI you can find. In Tornado Red, obviously.

I have the SEAT Leon FR Sport (Black Edition). I test drove all sorts earlier in the year when buying my car, mine has the 2.0 190hp engine. Mine is a 2019 I paid a fair bit more than £13k but appears some can be had for a very good price.
I wasn’t massively pleased with the manual gear box so I went with the 7speed DSG, but that’s likely to be because my other car is also an Auto.
The 130hp Leon felt a bit sluggish to me. I drove it all around Milton Keynes and it just didn’t feel great pulling away at all the roundabouts.
This is a very similar one to mine…..I’d honestly think it’s worth paying the extra couple of grand if you can afford it….

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202208068521022?min-engine-power=150&advertising-location=at_cars&year-from=2016&postcode=WA7%206AG&model=Leon&page=2&make=SEAT&include-delivery-option=on&sort=relevance

Same engine as mine. I get as an average about 36mpg. Mainly town driving, on a motorway run just now (160 miles) it was 44.8mpg.
It’s very comfortable. Gets my hardtail in the back no problem, size Medium Orange Crush, 650B wheels, front wheel has to come off. Im sure there’s a better way of storing the bike inside, but my forks have to go between the front seat and the dropped seats, I’m slightly nervous about tearing the leather, hadn’t happened yet.
The inside is all nice and easy to use, it feels very intuitive. I say that as some of the other cars I test drove were too complex (having to go into the screen settings to switch air con on/off was very annoying).
On mine I have an iPhone Max and it fits fine, it uses USB and I have a tiny cable that connects my phone and it fits into the holder at the front under the stereo area. Agree with the above about the cup holders, they’re fine for coffee but they’re not huge so larger cold bottles have to go into the door holder.
The boot drops down to give extra space. The car itself feels bigger than the girlfriends golf. I prefer driving mine, hers is a 2018 GTDI or something like that. The Seat feels nicer to drive.
My radar I actually turn off. But that’s because my Merc was a nightmare, driving in rural areas on tight roads it would be constantly tugging at the wheel. I don’t notice not having it on if that makes sense.

Thanks for the detailed reply. That is ideally what I would be looking at, just wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get the bike in. Sounds not to bad?

I've got a Leon FR estate but you could easily fit a bike in the back of the hatchback with the seats down.

@matt_outandabout - the charging cable thing is a pain, isn't it? You can improve it with a 90deg charging cable but depends how big your phone is.
Like this: Like This

I don’t even need that cable. My phone is the iPhone Max, it’s huge. With a small USB cable it fits nicely under the stereo. No problems at all.
The missus when in the car uses the rear USB ports with the cable coming around her chair, works fine and also something I did with the Merc as it had USB C front and standard USB rear. She sticks her phone under the arm rest where there’s another space ideal for phones.
There’s two normal USB slots at the front, but not easy to use the second one when my phone is sat there. And two USB at the rear, think these are optional extras.
The bike does fit in without any issues, it also fits in the golf as well (as you’d expect). I do worry about the fork though as mentioned. I have to admit I’m looking at using the suction cups for the roof though as I’m a bit of a neat freak and don’t really like the bike being inside the car. No marks yet, but come deep winter I know I’ll end up making a mess. I’ll take a photo of my phone tomorrow and the cable if you want to see how that works. I’m away working for the week so can’t take a photo of the bike inside.
I quite like the digital cockpit, coming from a much more expensive Merc I was surprised how the inside works so well.
I honestly test drove just about every hatchback available. For the money the SEAT was pretty damn good…..I would have preferred a Golf GTI, and in my view it is worth the extra money if you can afford it. But saying that I also test drove the Cupra 300 and that was really good. But at £9k more than my car for the same year, I couldn’t justify it….and I’d probably have lost my licence by now!

The 130hp Leon felt a bit sluggish to me.

I agree with that. We test drove Golf and Leon, manual and DSG, in 130bhp. They were "ok", but I was concerned about having bikes or boats on and it struggling. The 150bhp is noticeably stronger when pulling a load.

I don’t have to size down but I put my bike in it once a week, and I commute to work twice a month. I don’t really use it much other than that, except maybe to nip to visit people. I was hoping a hatchback might suffice.

It's perfectly possible to fit a modern LLS 29er in a Hyundai i10 if you take the wheels off and put the passenger seat forwards, in an i30 both wheels need to come off but there's much more room, and in a Kia Optima estate just the front wheel needs to come off and there's plenty of room. The above are obviously with the back seats down. With older 26er's estates were much easier to live with as with the seats dropped the bike would go in whole, were as with a hatchback you'd need to remove a wheel. As bikes have got bigger that's no longer the case and the front wheel still need to come off to get in all but the biggest estates.

I've got a 2016 Focus ST3 (250bhp petrol version)

Only gets used on weekends mainly for riding trips or for family duties

Paid 13k for it 2 years ago and its still under 46k on the clock and can get 38mpg on a run

A large mtb fits in the boot with the front wheel off but the handlebar grip pokes between the front seats

I have a Hatchbag full boot liner to protect the car

Not what you suggested, but have a look at the Subaru XV. My neighbour swears by his. Never had any trouble with it great off road. I'd have one in a heart beat.

Why do you want to spend £13k on a car that you'll barely use?

When you say sizing down what is the primary motivation? What are you hoping to achieve?

I ask, as generally the physical 'parking bay' size of an estate car is not much bigger than the hatchback version of the same car. My Octavia is almost idendical in length to a friends hatch. The old focus was a bit longer but in every other respect it drove the same.

As above if you are worried about bike transport then I wouldn't necessarily be planning on down sizing, having said that going from Mondeo to Mazda 3 (about a foot shorter) has been great for parking. And we've owned a 2018 2.0 petrol Mazda 3 for nearly a year now, easily averages 50mpg and have achieved 60mpg on a long run at 60mph, so far can only say good things about it & takes a large 29er hardtail with front wheel off & seat post compressed, easily 👍

We’ve just bought a £13k 2017 Leon FR 1.4tsi DSG estate with 64k on clock.

I love mine and would thoroughly recommend it if I hadn't just today been quoted £3,600.00 to repair the DSG gearbox on that exact engine.

If the auto box starts to play up, my only advice is sell it as quickly as you can and run a mile.

My SEAT estate has DSG and this also worried me so I extended warranty just in case.

From personal experience I cannot fault Mazda. I owned a 323 for about 6 years, covered 135k and it never missed a beat. Beyond the annual service I only replaced tyres and brakes (discs and pads). I now run a Mazda 2 (1.6 diesel) which returns ~70mpg. The 2 covers ~7k miles/year and my only wish were it be a little bigger I.e. a 3. Best advice, take a test drive.

Leon seems popular. Reason for downsizing in size is that the house I’m moving to has quite restrictive parking so thought while I’m changing cars anyway, it might make sense.

Currently driving a 2020 Mazda 3 and have used it to transport a 29er hardtail with front wheel removed.
It’s not got the biggest boot in its class so I think you’d be ok with any of those.
I have previously owned 2 x Focus and a mk7 Golf which is closely related to the Leon and they both worked for bike carrying duties too.

I love mine and would thoroughly recommend it if I hadn’t just today been quoted £3,600.00 to repair the DSG gearbox on that exact engine.

Indeed it seems I made a mistake - I was told the 7sp was the 'safe' buy, and a avoid the 6sp. Seems is was the opposite.
Hmmm.

Reason for downsizing in size is that the house I’m moving to has quite restrictive parking so thought while I’m changing cars anyway, it might make sense.

Does 20-30cm less make *that* much difference?

I used to get my bike behind the front seats of my Mini - and proper old Mini, not new fangled mini! 🙂

Wheels sat on back seat. Not easy I'll admit, but where there's a will there's a way.

Not sure any of the cars you've picked are really downsizing though. You'd lose a few cm at best.

I used to get my bike behind the front seats of my Mini – and proper old Mini, not new fangled mini! 🙂

Wheels sat on back seat. Not easy I’ll admit, but where there’s a will there’s a way.

Same routine here, taking my 1996 Team Marin to XC races.

Wouldn't like to try it with my Starling 29er though 😀

Indeed it seems I made a mistake – I was told the 7sp was the ‘safe’ buy, and a avoid the 6sp. Seems is was the opposite.
Hmmm.

It's a shame really because its really nice to drive when working properly, it's smooth, quick to shift and gets better fuel economy than the manual. It's just got a really high failure rate and the gearbox specialist I've had to take mine to has someone employed whose full time job is solely doing repairs on this specific gearbox.

If you're out of warranty I'd personally seriously consider trading the thing in before it goes wrong because the older it gets the closer a 3.5k gearbox repair comes to being uneconomical as a repair.

That being said, there must be plenty out there that haven't ever had an issue with them. I just don't think I could ever trust it again.

Does 20-30cm less make *that* much difference?

Imagine a world where every car was a foot shorter 🤔 walking around London earlier this year I realised how much nicer a place it would be if every car there was no bigger than a fiesta.

Touch wood, but I've not heard that DSG's have a higher failure rate. I have heard that they're very expensive to fix and finding a service centre problematic.

Imagine a world where every car was a foot shorter 🤔 walking around London earlier this year I realised how much nicer a place it would be if every car there was no bigger than a fiesta.

I pulled up behind an Austin Mini at the weekend. It made me realise just how bloody big cars have become now!

Honda Civic
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/honda-civic-bike-carrying-capabilities/

Would I be mad to buy a Leon or Golf 1.4 TSI with 70k? Will these cars do over 100k?

Something like this for example -

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202210010307715

Seems like a heck of a lot of money for a nearly 8 year old car with 70k on it.

What about this?

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202207278195584?atmobcid=soc3

I have that gen of Toledo and other than the DSG gearbox, which that one doesn't have, I have been really impressed with mine.

It's absolutely enormous in the boot, with the back seats down I've fitted three mountain bikes with wheels on, and a full size Euro pallet (not at the same time...).

If you prefer diesel there's a similar one available, and ULEZ compliant:

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202208319282625?atmobcid=soc3

I'll be honest they won't win any awards for handling or driving dynamics, but I presume it's not what you're buying for anyway.

I can relate to OP as I had an estate that I sat in on my own mainly and downsized to a 308 GTi hatch. I just prefer the smaller car, had planned to but bike in the boot which I can do front wheel off but found impractical with a dirty bike so have stuck some roof bars on.

Would I be mad to buy a Leon or Golf 1.4 TSI with 70k? Will these cars do over 100k?

That does seem a bit pricey.

2 years ago I bought an 08 plate Golf on 67k miles. It was supposed to be a stop gap- made redundant from a job with company car and needed something asap for new job.

It’s the 1.9TDi with 6speed dsg. Cambelt was changed just before I bought it, lockdown meant I didn’t do many miles in the first year. It’s now on 78k miles and I now do a daily 40 round trip commute on motorway. No issues so far (got a bit worried with all the comments about DSG above).

Toyed with the idea of changing it (those Leons above look tempting) but std service, tax, insurance probably costs less than 3 months lease/ finance payments in something newer.

As it’s that cheap it’s no drama if there’s a bigger bill to pay- especially as the MD cocked up my redundancy and I got extra payout that covered the purchase price.

Just a bit worried about the mileage on it, don’t want to stick 16k on it over maybe 2 years and it be worth next to nothing.

That golf does seem very spendy, our Mazda 3 was 4yrs old with 18k miles & cost only £1k more than that a yr ago.