Modern cars

[Cold Snail]

Saab 9000's (after '93) are a very nice car, my wife's 2.0 turbo has 190,000 on it and is still going strong.
My 2.0i has 245,000 on it and only cost £461 last year.
(Not bad for a R plate with leather and aircon).

[Sid]

Well, these days 500 quid or so will buy you a very wide selection of rust free, full MOT'd, "modern" cars (without having to resort
to old skodas, none of which I've ever seen reach 50000 miles without falling to bits!).

Given that the cost of insurance seems to be a prime consideration, along with overall running costs, I'd say a Ford Fiesta is the
car to look for.
Mk3/4 Fiestas range from the doddle to maintain X-flow OHV engined 1.1 though to surpringly quick and sporty 1.6 CVH models. All are
cheap to maintain and have no inherent faults as long as you avoid the rusty ones.
If you can find a nice pre-93 car you'll avoid any problems with the MOT emissions, though finding a *tidy* pre-93 Fiesta might be a
tall order.
Legroom is sufficient for me at 6' 2" and boot will take a standard wheelchair without folding the rear seats down.

Failing that, Rover 214s are worth a look, not *quite* so cheap on the insurance but *very* cheap to buy. Often owned by old blokes
(like my Dad who's had his for 10 years, trouble free, yet it's only worth about 250 quid now), so tidy low mileage examples are
commonplace.
Beware head gaskets though as K-series engines are prone to blowing them.

Sid

[Clara]

Failing that, Rover 214s are worth a look, not *quite* so cheap on the insurance but *very* cheap to buy. Often owned by old blokes
(like my Dad who's had his for 10 years, trouble free, yet it's only worth about 250 quid now), so tidy low mileage examples are
commonplace.
Beware head gaskets though as K-series engines are prone to blowing them.

Sid

EVVVIIIILLLLLL!!!!! Mother has one of those and so far it has nearly killed me twice with failing brakes and bits of the gearbox dropping off at high speed. Hers is a low mileage serviced every six months, had the head gasket replaced... well just because really.

[MattHC1600SL]

In a message dated 18/09/2006 09:12:37 GMT Standard Time, general@vauxhallviva.com writes:

Well, these days 500 quid or so will buy you a very wide selection of rust free, full MOT'd, "modern" cars (without having to resort
to old skodas, none of which I've ever seen reach 50000 miles without falling to bits!).

You dont like Skodas because they fall to bits but you suggest a nice sturdy rust resistant Fiesta Mk3? Hmmmm. And the Rover? Dare I mention Head Gasket? They rust up quite nicely too. For the price of a tatty one of either of these fine quality cars you could get quite a late Felicia, with PAS and low mileage. And I can assure you, even Skodas own 1.3 Pushrod engine is a far better bet than Ford's boat anchor or Rovers nasty lump. Find a Felicia with the VW 1.6 engine and you are laughing. A good Felicia drives nicely, and is reliable. They are also very easy to work on, and parts are cheap. What more could you want? Matt.

[droopsnoot]

Mate of mine just bought an x-plate Peugeot 406 diesel saloon, nice clean condition, 200,000 miles on the clock, and it's still giving 50mpg in general driving. You can get a lot of cheap mileage out of a car like that, if it fails after six months just scrap it and get something else.

[Sid]

At 200000 miles I'd give it 6 weeks rather than 6 months!

I personally can't see why people buy late-reg mega-mileage cars like that, when you can find an older 50000 miler for 500 quid and
maybe get 5 years reliable use out of it.

Sid

----- Original Message -----
From: "droopsnoot" <general@vauxhallviva.com>
Subject: Re: Modern cars

Mate of mine just bought an x-plate Peugeot 406 diesel saloon, nice clean condition, 200,000 miles on the clock, and it's still
giving 50mpg in general driving. You can get a lot of cheap mileage out of a car like that, if it fails after six months just
scrap it and get something else.

[Cold Snail]

At 200000 miles I'd give it 6 weeks rather than 6 months!

I personally can't see why people buy late-reg mega-mileage cars like that, when you can find an older 50000 miler for 500 quid and
maybe get 5 years reliable use out of it.

Sid

----- Original Message -----
From: "droopsnoot" <general@vauxhallviva.com>
Subject: Re: Modern cars

Mate of mine just bought an x-plate Peugeot 406 diesel saloon, nice clean condition, 200,000 miles on the clock, and it's still
giving 50mpg in general driving. You can get a lot of cheap mileage out of a car like that, if it fails after six months just
scrap it and get something else.

Anything from a decent manufacturer dating from about '95-on should be capable of mileages a Viva could only dream of.

For Example, £1000 bought me this six months ago.



Today's mileage.




Always check for overheating, clonks and the usual, but there are some real bargains out there.

[Sid]

Couldn't see the pic as I'm on "text only" emails, but 1000 quid will buy a lot of car these days without resorting to silly-mileage
examples.

My '97 Rover 420 cost a mere 600 quid with 57000 miles on it, full MOT, and no rust, from a dealer.
I've had 1 totally trouble free year so far and hope for several more.

My last workhorse was a 200 quid Montego with 72000 miles that lasted me 5 virtually faultless years.
I only finally let it go 'cos the metalwork was getting too shabby for easy MOTs and the Rover came up at the right price at the
right time.

By contrast my workmate paid 500 quid for a 150000 mile Toyota Estate. Perfect to look at and perfect to drive, but had to be
scrapped at the next MOT due to unresolvable (engine wear related) emissions problems.

All I'm saying is, low mileage and good condition are still the main things to look for when buying a car, irrespective of age.
I still personally favour pre-93 cars as they far easier to get through the emissions test.
My Dad's Rover 214 is one of the last pre-cat cars, and at 13 years old with no rust and just 49000 miles it will probably still be
going strong, long after most current 5 year old cars are in the scrappy.

Did you know that emissions test failure is now listed as the most common cause of vehicle scrapping!
What an insane waste of resources! That's what happens when blinkered environmentalists cause government policy to lose sight of the
bigger picture.

Sid

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cold Snail" <general@vauxhallviva.com>
Subject: Re: Modern cars

Anything from a decent manufacturer dating from about '95-on should be capable of mileages a Viva could only dream of.

For Example, £1000 bought me this six months ago.

[Cold Snail]

Couldn't see the pic as I'm on "text only" emails, but 1000 quid will buy a lot of car these days without resorting to silly-mileage
examples.

The photos that I posted was of a R plate VW Caravelle 2.4D with 332285 miles on the clock.

My '97 Rover 420 cost a mere 600 quid with 57000 miles on it, full MOT, and no rust, from a dealer.
I've had 1 totally trouble free year so far and hope for several more.

My last workhorse was a 200 quid Montego with 72000 miles that lasted me 5 virtually faultless years.
I only finally let it go 'cos the metalwork was getting too shabby for easy MOTs and the Rover came up at the right price at the
right time.

Rovers are cheap and cheerful, but I wouldn't have one.

By contrast my workmate paid 500 quid for a 150000 mile Toyota Estate. Perfect to look at and perfect to drive, but had to be
scrapped at the next MOT due to unresolvable (engine wear related) emissions problems.

Jap stuff is harder to work out, if it's a UK built Honda or Nissan, it should go on for a while, imports on the other hand is like buying a grenade with the pin missing.

All I'm saying is, low mileage and good condition are still the main things to look for when buying a car, irrespective of age.
I still personally favour pre-93 cars as they far easier to get through the emissions test.
My Dad's Rover 214 is one of the last pre-cat cars, and at 13 years old with no rust and just 49000 miles it will probably still be
going strong, long after most current 5 year old cars are in the scrappy.

Did you know that emissions test failure is now listed as the most common cause of vehicle scrapping!
What an insane waste of resources! That's what happens when blinkered environmentalists cause government policy to lose sight of the
bigger picture.

Sid

The Caravelle of mine doesn't have any form of catalyst, it was taken out to liberate a couple of hosses (it needs all the help it can get), yesterday I took it for a MOT as part of the taxi requirements, it sailed through.

[droopsnoot]

My old Audi coupe had 273,000 on the clock when I took it off the road because the clutch went (which turned out to be something else). It hadn't been looked after all that well (oil topped up when the tappets got noisy, that kind of thing) and when we stripped the engine down, the crank looked like new. All the usual rebuild bits (mains, big ends, rings) were done not because they were needed, but because it would have been daft to put it back together with the old ones. The biggest problem with that is rust (it was the last model Audi made that wasn't galvanised from new) but even that isn't too bad.

Some stuff doesn't last, it's true - the 2.8 V6 Audi engine was troublesome after about 120k and very expensive to fix, for example, but there's a lot of stuff around that can easily handle high mileages without any trouble. In fact when I look at a reasonably old car I'm usually sceptical about the mileage anyway - your example of a '97 plate Rover with 57k on the clock equates to about 6k per year, does that sound realistic? I know there are cars like that (my Dad's 1970 Morris 1300 has a genuine 37k on it, and my Mum's J-plate Nova GTE has less than 40k) but they are the exception. But it's like buying anything with some age on it - if you came to buy my HPF, would you look at the mileage, or the condition?