Skoda Fabia, Vauxhall Corsa, VW Polo - What Car Advice needed

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Thu 12 Jul 2018 22:19
Skoda Fabia, Vauxhall Corsa, VW Polo - What Car Advice needed - iphammer

I am looking to buy a car for my partner she passed her driving test driving an automatic car so she can only drive automatic cars.

Our budget is under £4000 for a hatchback Ideally looking for something that will be cheap on insurance, reliable, and solid.

Skoda Fabia, VW Golf, Polo or Vauxhall Corsa. What car would be best for our budget and what year of that car should we be looking at?

I have test driven a vauxhall corsa 1.4 2005 plate the other day but going round bends at 30-40 mph in the Essex countryside it felt like the car could flip over at any minute.

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Thu 12 Jul 2018 23:46
Skoda Fabia, Vauxhall Corsa, VW Polo - What Car Advice needed - Big John

Unfortunately many small autos of that age aren't great or reliable. However:-

The Honda Jazz 1.4 CVT auto(with your budget circa 2008) is good and relable (don't get the version that was an automatically shifting manual) and has an amazing interior with the "magic" seats and a surprisingly big boot and flexible interior.

The Nissan Note 1.6 auto (with your budget circa 2008/2009) has an amazingly reliable torque converter auto gearbox with an overdirve (taller top gear). The car is mechanically bullet proof and the engine has a reliable cam chain. It's also refined and the interior space in great. A friend of mine had three of these in a row and never had any issues at all - they were surprisingly economical in real life as well.

The Fabia 1.6 (with your budget circa 2008) with the old fashioned gearbox is reasonable and the gearbox is reliable (not early DSG!). Avoid the later 1.2tsi DSG as this early version had engine (OK much newer) and DSG gearbox issues.

Don't get an auto that is a automatically shifting manual gearbox (some Vauxhalls had these and a version of the Honda Jazz - NOT CVT)

Edited by Big John on 12/07/2018 at 23:53

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Fri 13 Jul 2018 07:14
Skoda Fabia, Vauxhall Corsa, VW Polo - What Car Advice needed - badbusdriver

Your problem here is sifting through cars to find out which type of transmission it has. Basically, torque converter auto is good (though mpg will be noticably higher than the manual version), CVT good, but any sort of automated manual is bad. The Honda Jazz mentioned is a great choice, but only if it's a CVT, avoid the i-shift. The Toyota Yaris would also be a great choice and, like the Jazz, very reliable. In addition, the Hyundai i20 and Kia Rio (mechanically identical) are both torque converter auto and are both very reliable.

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Fri 13 Jul 2018 13:32
Skoda Fabia, Vauxhall Corsa, VW Polo - What Car Advice needed - TheGentlemanThug

Another vote for the Jazz CVT here. My wife has a 2006 model which has barely put a foot wrong.

The other good thing about the Jazz is that they should be easy to come across and in good nick, as they're very popular with the older generations.

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