>>>>I will have a look at the Hyundai 130 and the Kia Cee'd.

Have a look at a Focus too. Although they are priced a bit more than the Hyundai and Kia you can get £5k off a new Focus making it quite a bit cheaper to buy. A 1.6 Ecoboost retails at £20k but you can get one for £14k. Same prices for the 1.6 Econetic diesel if you want good economy - looks like you'll be doing 15k+ miles a year so that is a factor I guess.

Skoda Octavia 1.6 diesel - £17k

Honda Civic 1.6 diesel - £19k

Toyota Auris diesel (1.4) - £17k

Mazda 3 1.6 petrol £15k

I'd go for the Focus or if I needed a bit more room the Octavia.

"The downside is the Dacia models which use the 1.5 diesel get slighlty less MPG officially but you should still be getting near 70mpg on your commute (officially 80mpg extra urban or 74.0 mpg combined)."

I don't belive for one moment that you would get 70 mpg out of a Dacia Logan. The official figures for the Logan are identical to the much smaller Sandero and on the Honest John real MPG pages the Sandero 1.5 has a "real" figure of 57.9 mpg. Drop a few off that since the Logan is bigger and I would say a max of 55 mpg would be a more realistic expectation.

"I would stay away from the 1.6 diesel in a Ford focus, these engines are known to be financial time bombs (unless they are now using the Peugeot.Citroen unit?)"

Ford have been using the PSA engine (same as Peugeot, Citroen etc) in their 1.6 diesels since the inroduction of the Mk 2 Focus in about 2004 or 2005. We had one for 5 years and it never missed a beat. It was correctly serviced using the correct lubricants.

Now have a Kia Ceed SW. Huge car for the money, totally reliable and on an 80 mile commute you should get possibly the mid to high 50's. Some good deals out there on nearly new cars with the best part of the 7 year warranty remaining.

My one issue with the Davia range is the poor safety results it gets.

Remember here that if you are hit by a truck, it's how you're hit that's important, not how many rear seat airbags the vehicle has, how pedestrian impact friendly it is or how little damage it suffers when driven into a concrete wall at 30mph.

I'm another one who would recommend the new Skoda Octavia with the 2.0 diesel engine. Although you'd be spending nearly all your budget, you'd be getting one of the best family cars around. They nearly always come top in magazine tests.

But you would be better going for nearly new, which kind of rules out the previous Octavia, as it was seriously dull inside.

I'd also be looking at one year old Mondeos or Passat Estates. Lots of car for the money, big and comfortable, but great for a long commute like yours.

For your budget, you could also look at more premium brands: Two year old versions of the Volvo V60 in D3 or D4 guise and the BMW 320d Touring spring to mind, but both would cost more in insurance and maintenance than the cars above.

Edited by 72 dudes on 24/07/2013 at 16:57

I have no intention of ever hitting a pedestrian the same way I have no intention of going off road. Thus a low score for pedestrian impact or 4x4 ability are not on my priority list.

I tend to agree about the priority, but I think very few drivers go out intending to hit pedestrians or go off road. However it still happens, so it is crass to suggest it is an irrelevant consideration.