New car needed

Nforst if you search around on Google , I am sure you will find a how to fix post on the Scenic cable . If I was searching for a new car , with a little one , I would definitely be looking at 4 door . Don't cross off Focus and its variants , I have had quite a few Fords in my driving life , they are very reliable . I drive a C-Max now and love it !

 

I've bought Ford since 1976, with the exception of one Vauxhall, yuck, and found them very reliable.
Gotta say though for £1500, you could get any load of rubbish, its a bit of a lottery once a motor gets that old, a lot depends on previous owners and how they have been maintained.
You do get a lot of DIY ers poking around on the older ones.

 

My rule of thumb is "less than a grand". The thing is, if you are going to buy a used car, which lets face it is all many of us can afford, you are almost always buying someone else's problems. People tend not to part with a car they are really happy with.

So, whether you pay £500 or £5000 for a used car, you're going to be spending a few hundred more in the first year putting it right. The amount you spend to make it good depends on many factors, and the risk of the gamble also depends on various things. The initial 'making good' cost will usually (but not always) be fairly obvious with a test drive. If everything is great but the brakes feel a bit horrid, or the exhaust is blowing, probably next to nowt. If its misfiring and popping and banging, and full of knocks and rattles, then its probably fit for the scrappy (I've test drove a few of those ).

The 'keeping good' cost is more a matter of a bit of research. Take my old Gothilda for example. £650 she cost me. She's clocked up over 250,000 miles in her 17 years of life, and she pulled a caravan around for a fair few of those miles. Sounds like a disaster yes? A bit of research reveals that these are rock solid, reliable motors. Something borne out by my experience of two of them. Both just keep on going and going with very little maintenance. Contrast that to, say, my Laguna. That one just kept costing and costing. It just takes a bit of research. That's why I would lean towards German makes like BMW and Audi, and even my old Volvo who despite being born and bred in Gothenburg, Sweden, is actually full of parts build by Bosch and VW in Germany But, still, research is the way to go, choose a few cars that seem to fit the bill, and then hunt them down. The worst possible thing to do is to walk into a used car place and start browsing.

 

Just to say that I used to have a Honda Jazz and it is still the best car I have owned.

 

What is it about Renault's that winds everyone up! I currently own a Clio....my third and have owned a Megane as well, no problems with any of them, so they can't all be bad!

Sorry to muscle in on your thread nFrost but I'm also car hunting and have been out and about today looking at various makes, I will not be having another Renault because it now doesn't suit me because of health issues. An automatic is on the cards but I'm not keen.

 

Avoid it like the plague! Horrendous running costs beckon.............

I agree. Old school technology at your price range.

My thoughts are if you have £1500 to spend then maybe a grand spent on the Reno to keep it going a year or two makes more sense. Kia's with four or five years warranty left should be easier to come by in a year or two.
Better the devil you know and all that.

Sums it up in one. Too many piles of poo on the market at that money.
If you do go out and buy my biggest tip is avoid diesel unless you're doing lots of motorway miles.
You could look to Golfs and Skoda Octavias.

 

Yes. it is a 'pretty' car FC. Don't you think though that when it comes down to the nitty gritty, it has to be down to personal choice and not necessarily the mechanics of a specific make. Many modern cars look the same because of aero-dynamics, they all have very similar things going on underneath the bonnet and if any one of us gets lumbered with a dodgy car I don't necessarily think it's down to the make but how it was put together on the production line, like anything else there can be manufacturing faults with just one car out of another hundred that were produced identically at the same time - and off the same 'belt'. It's a case of pot luck!

 

Makes more sense to me also.

 

You'll love it, I wouldn't go back to manual now.

 

Must admit, although my last car had 6 gears it was up to me when I changed up and down.
This new one I have keeps telling me when to change up, its driving me round the bend.

Perhaps its time I got an automatic.