i need a boring car..

assuming my sale goes thru as planned on Sat, I'll be looking for a second hand car. I'm sick of pumping liquid gold into our other car, a Volvo T5 (you practically need to have a tanker follow you round) to ferry the kids between their nonstop social engagements, so we'll keep that for long runs, load lugging, holidays etc. I'm after something extremely economical for running round town, doing the school run etc. needs to be reliable, most probably a diesel, big enough boot to get very big sports bags (eg cricket) in. up to about 10 grand. everything looks much the same to me in the hatchback / small mpv space, so I'd be grateful for any suggestions?

 

Skoda Fabia VRS.

New Civic i-CTDi might fit the bill too, but it's out of budget.

 

You can put a lot of petrol in your T5 for £10k. Unless you need two cars. You could get an lpg conversion for about £2k

Rod

 

old merc 280(?)d estate. will be running until the heat death of the universe.

if you need huge amounts of space a seat alhambra 130tdi se is about the best big people carrier out there. beefy engine internals from the 150 version but detuned to 'only' 130. i have a 115 version which pulls like a train so the 130 will be enough.

another option is an older omega diesel they use a bmw 2.5 td engine but you don;t have to put up with the image (i like beemer engines just not the cars).

 

...and probably after...

 

Omega's are fine cars, just the usual GM problems but nothing major.

 

dont need anything big, as we have the Volvo for those occasions - just something frugal, ideally a hatchback with a big boot. what are the Renault Meganes like? - quite like the quirky look and the mpg figures, but worry about French cars that tend to recycle themselves while you're driving them...

 

Meganne's are great cars, but the coil pack seems to be a service item - they go so often. My mums friends got one and has had to call out the AA a few times due to coil pack problems.

 

Do not touch a current shape megane diesel. Ever.

Skoda Fabia VRS. It's the obvious choice.

 

to be honest if you want something cheap, frugal and small, you could do a lot worse than a rover 200/400/600 sdi depending on how small. the 105bhp engine is pretty much unburstable and gives good mpg. pretty brisk too but not in the vw/pd class. cheap as chips to buy and find a good specialist to keep it running and your laughing.
in fact if you have a local specialist for a particular type or types of car then go for something they can deal with so you're not done by main stealers or backstreet cowboy garages.

 

Them Rover's are fine, as longs as you carry 20 litres of water in the boot for WHEN the head gasket fails If you're buying a K series I would be check the history very carefully to make sure there have been signs of overheating which could have caused HG damage.

 

Isaac, the Skoda is not boring.

I was really impressed by the Octavia last year, when we covered several hundred miles (on not very smooth roads) on my holidays.

 

at, the sdi';s are not k series they are diesels based on the engines used in ldv commercial vehicles. i've got an old 400 sdi sat out back - been there for 2 years about a year ago i needed to move it to gain access to something and it started after a few cranks on a fresh battery and a squeeze of the diesel priming pump or 2. i'm confident that if i charged the battery again it'd start within 5 minutes today.
the engines are pretty bullet proof unlike the k series as you correctly point out.

 

Agreed, this engine is based on the O series engine from the 70/80s. Was sent to Perkins to diseslise, and very successfully.

Remember the good ole days when British Telecom had all their yellow Maestro vans with the noisey direct injection diesel !

For a cheap and reliable car that returns good MPG, I think you would be hard to beat it.

 

The given budget was £10k, so seems possible to do a tad better than that.

No, the VRS isn't really boring... The point is that it will fit teenage children and has a decent sized boot, very nearly as much torque as the T5, excellent economy and a 55 reg with 6000 miles comes in budget.

 

the Skodas look quite interesting, and I hadn't thought of them - I'll have to go and have a look at the local dealer, who's got both a Favia VRS and an Octavia in

 

Are you talking VRS diesel?

 

Ive just had a go in the Altea 2.0 TDi DSG, very impressed. I dont think you'll get one in your budget but you should get an early 1.9 tdi

 

Yes, the Fabia VRS is diesel.

 

The Octavia vRS diesel looks good too. 170 bhp (un-chipped )