You currently drive a nissan almera tino but your wife doesn't like the look of an estate?!, you jest surely?. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, but even so, the kindest thing i could say of the tino is that it looks, 'a little akward'!.

£6k is not a huge budget so i really think your priority should be getting a vehicle which is going to be reliable and fit your requirements.

Assuming it has to be an auto, i'd be looking to steer clear of anything with an automated dual or single clutch manual (which of covers pretty much all VAG products including the superb). This of course does not leave an awful lot of options, even if you were to consider an estate. The only thing i have seen which could fit the bill, and could be considered a safe bet reliability wise is the mazda 6. There are a few available on autotrader, the youngest of which are a couple of 2010 hatchbacks with around 70k miles, here is one

www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/20171028073...1

You may also want to consider a toyota RAV4, though you'd be looking at something older and higher miles. They are very reliable though, so that shouldn't be a problem. Here is a 2009 81k example.

www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/20171015030...1

Avensis Tourer worth investigating it's an estate but if anything is a neater design than the saloon which is rather ungainly, but remember Avensis 09 on have been hobbled with an electric parking brake (mostly automatic operation), it appears to be more reliable than some others but might be something you don't want, i don't.

If you want to operate the parking brake manually the switch is in the most stupid place ever, just randomly plonked in the middle of the dash and also it works backwards to almost all parking brakes, push to put the brake on pull to release...no i haven't a clue what they were drinking at the time either.

Weirdly Volvo lorries have the electric parking brake (why they thought this a good idea i haven't the foggiest idea) switch in a similar 'Lord only knows why' spot in the middle of the dash.

I ran an Accord estate for 3 years and 30,000 miles from 2010-2013.

It was great, I had no issues apart from front tyre wear (I had to change tyres on the front once a year).

Fuel consumption wasn't brilliant but I had the automatic diesel and like to make progress..

The boot is a bit of a wierd shape as the rear suspension turrets intrude but in reality we never struggled for space, even with two children and their associated clutter.

I'd have another but of course Honda discontinued the Accord here.

I'm now on a Volvo V60 which is even better...