£2k budget, wanting a good, economical automatic diesel with street cred.

I'd suggest he needs to up his budget. If he sells a bucket of unicorn droppings then he's far more likely to have the money for something suitable.

In all seriousness though, he's well off the mark. Buying anything that is diesel, auto and 'popular' - such as an Audi A3 or VW Golf, or BMW 3 series saloon - at that budget is a recipe for disaster and expensive bills.

Much depends on whether you and he can DIY the running repairs.

If you can then Merc Diesels take some beating and the gearboxes are excellent, but they require constant preventative maintenance and good regular servicing, if you're reliant on garages then this will be costly, if you can DIY then these vehicles can be run surprisingly cheaply, brake hardware for example will last the life of the car with a bit of maintenance because they are expensive long term designs, they won't in many cars which arn't so designed, they won't with an electric parking brake either.

In this budget rust is the biggie, because MB didn't get their act together until about 2007/8.

As above though, manual Honda Civic 2.0s model up to 2005 avilable in three door form too which is a much nicer looking car to be fair, no i wouldn't want one (so not this dads mobile) but my daughter who drive's like the devil himself is after her swore by her two which refused to break despite her best efforts, another left fielder would be a supercharged Corolla again manual, but the best bet i reckon would be a petrol Lexus is250 auto, if you can find one in budget.

Street cred is a funny old thing, much depends on which street and which inhabitants of said street.

Edited by gordonbennet on 29/11/2017 at 19:20

The left side option would probably be a Volvo S-60, which there seem to be quite a lot of the early ones still about. More importantly, most of them, particularly the diesel autos will have been owned by the more 'mature' owner who never misses a service and still uses the main dealer when the car is 10 years old.

However there's still a large risk it will fail expensively in less 6 months. If the budget accounts for that, it's fine, but if the 2k car has to last at least a couple of years something small and simple is much lower risk.

Hi..Thanks for all the advice...My son fancies the more relaxed drive to work and the driving in and around the city of sheffield, and the dreaded crawl through Glossop etc when he comes visiting us, an automatic would offer this. He does around 15000 miles a year, and loves the economy his current citroen c4 diesel (manual) gives him, so is reluctant to switch to petrol, but the citroen is slowly wearing out, He is also currently buying a house so that is impacting on available funds, I have recomended running his current car untill it is not cost effective to maintain, so really we are just doing some forward planning.

I can well understand your son wanting an auto for that kind of running. My own love of auto's started while working at a Saab dealer in Aberdeen from '90-'95. One of my duties was to drop off and pick up customers which often coincided with rush hour traffic. Driving an auto was just SO much more pleasant!.

But, unless your son can up his budget, it really wouldn't be advisable to go for a turbo diesel auto. And your son also needs to be aware that a torque converter auto is going to be noticably less efficient than it's manual equivalent, at least 10% thirstier, but possibly as much as 20%. This is the main reason for the rise of the single and dual clutch automated manual gearbox. On paper at least, they have at least the same mpg as the manual version, and in some cases, better mpg. And of course this has a knock on effect through emissions and therefore road tax.