Er, no. There is a well known fault with Ford TDCi engines and their EGR valves that causes them to be mobille smog machines. Your dealer should be able to sort easily.
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RichardW

Is it illogical? It must be Citroen....

Well ive given up on the economy idea and settled for around a 35mpg minimum.
I dont need a car that can carry the adults AND the scooter, just one that can easily do both.

So far, within that criteria, the Toyota SpaceCruiser is the only one that comes close, the only 'but' with them is finding one that isnt on its last legs. It has the space and reading owners reports and those of people I know who owned them, they are stupifyingly reliable, even when old and fairly comfortable, if not fast.

It is possible to find cars that have been looked after for most of their lives. I have managed to buy 15 old cars in the last 8 years which had complete service records, some of them from main dealers, all for under £1000, so I know its possible to find such cars.

My Mazda has 20 years worth of service history and it cost me 150 quid, so anyone who tells me that ALL old cars are knackered, have poor service records and on their last legs clearly doesnt know much about the old car market because mine runs very sweetly and has a record of every lightbulb and washer ever changed along with atleast 10 years of main dealer history and another 10 years of local garage servicing, with invoices for the lot. Its not the first one Ive foudn liek thsi either.

When I buy a car, I look upon it as a long term project, so I go through the entire car and replace anything that needs replacing. I dont spend only up to the cars value for a very good reason - I have bought used cars for £2-4000 and had just as bigger bills for them than I have for £500 cars, so even if a car needs £1000 worth of work done, its still cheaper than a £4000 car with just as many potential problems.

Big bills on old cars are usually avoidable if you check a car throughly - making sure the body is good, engine and gearbox plus anything the car is known for having issues with and this is all ive had to do to get a good car so far.

My father had one from about June of last year to April of this year (at which point he traded it for a Grande Punto). It was a 1.4 Eleganza (petrol engine). Nicely put together, comfortable and very well specified, but felt underpowered. I once drove it with 3 passengers from Gloucestershire to home (including the slog up Birdlip hill on the A417).

My overriding impression was that the throttle response was excellent and that the 1.4 was a nicely refined, free-revving little engine, but simply not big enough for the job. To make decent progress required regular trips to 5,000 rpm and below 3,000 it struggled. This meant that I couldn't achieve better than 37 mpg over the trip, which didn't impress.

Depreciation is a problem - when my father traded his in, per Glass's it had lost about £6.5k in the 10 months since purchase. My recommendation to anyone looking to buy one would be to look for one about 9 months old, and with the diesel engine, although they don't appear to do the Eleganza trim with that engine.

I think Fiat would sell considerably more of these if they offered a better choice of engines - say a 1.6 or 1.8 petrol and a 1.9 diesel, or even the 90 bhp version of the 1.3 diesel. The Meriva, which I would consider to be the Idea's most obvious competitior, gives (ignoring the VXR) the choice of 1.4, 1.6 and 1.8 petrols, and 1.3 and 1.7 diesels, and it's therefore not hard to see why it sells better.

Many thanks for the advice

It's virtually impossible to get the ABS to work on a dry road othen than in a complete emergency-as said earlier "wet grass".