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Yaris, Fiesta and Aygo/C1/107 are now favourites. Ka would be top of the list, but it only has three doors.
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Aygo's are currently being offered with 3 years free servicing and 1 years free insurance, plus Aygo depreciates less than Peugeot or Citroen equivalent. ( although I suspect starting price is a little higher) We've got one on order as 2nd car as we decided to be totally sensible for a change and get the cheapest car to run ( which it is, according to What Car) On that sort of deal, apart from petrol, of which it uses very little, running costs should be minimal and budgetting easy.
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What about the Rio's passive safety - could that be an issue ?
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What about the Rio's passive safety - could that be an issue ?
Yes, this is an issue with the original Rio. The new one of course is a respectable 4-star so no problem there, but the old one, although never tested in Europe, was rated very poorly in US tests so that is a weak point. However the 2000- Accent is not as bad as most believe -- it was given 5 stars in the US, and while their rating system isn't as stringent as ours, it does mean that the Accent must be equivalent to around 4 stars here as well.
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It's a no brainer then especially carrying one's kids.
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Here's the result of the 2005 Kia Rio test (this car is the same as the one sold here from 2002, it's the saloon version but I can't see that making too much difference):
www.nhtsa.dot.gov/NCAP/Cars/3348.html
Not quite as bad as I had thought; the frontal tests are reasonable, it's the side impact that's poor. Still not really recommended though.
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I have to say though that the US NCAP figures make for some interesting reading.
For example, the 5-star Ford Focus, although it does well in general in both the US and Euro NCAP studies, is flagged as having a serious safety concern (something which these Korean cars don't have).
There is a very serious risk of serious head injury for a rear passenger on a side impact on the new Focus. Yet we don't hear about this here.
I think that if you are concerned about safety on a particular vehicle, you should look at both sets of results (if the car is also sold in the US). For example, the 1997 VW Golf actually rates worse than the 2001 Kia Rio in the US survey.
If a particular car has either a poor overall rating *or* serious concerns in *either* test, this is something you need to be aware of.
On this basis, I'd think twice about buying a Focus as a family car!
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>>Yet we don't hear about this here.<<
To be fair, that probably has something to do with the fact that he doesn't want a Focus so it'd be irrelevant.
I couldn't care less what safety rating a car has. I dont' know what mine is, Dad's is, Mum's is....all I know is that a lot of Renaults have 5 stars and RF's Laguna saved his life.
However, I realise some people care greatly about them and probably should - but stars aren't the be all and end all of safety. They measure one aspect. For what it's worth (nothing), I know someone who rolled an ST170, wrote it off, set all the airbags off, and was at my house having a drink later that day.
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>>Yet we don't hear about this here.<< To be fair, that probably has something to do with the fact that he doesn't want a Focus so it'd be irrelevant.
I was only referring to the fact that we don't hear about such warnings in the UK _in general_.
TBH the best safety feature you can have in a car is a switched-on brain controlling it. But as the issue of safety was brought up, I think it is a mistake to rely solely on Euro-NCAP when researching safety. Similar bodies exist in the States, Aus, Japan etc etc and they do sometimes throw up conflicting results.
I agree about not being too reliant on star ratings. Very often, car manufacturers build cars to pass the tests, rather than building cars to be safe. If the test is perfect, that's fair enough, but the conflicting results thing is, I believe, down to say a Japanese car make which sells to the US designing the car to get 5 stars in the US, or a Euro company designing in a 5-star result on Euro-NCAP. It would be very interesting to see how Renault and others would do in the US tests.
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Thanks all, Internets been palying up at home so couldnt read these over the weekend. The Carisma is on my list of possibles, but dont know if we could get one in budget- which has knocked the Focus out too.
Is bit tricky as Mrs PW has refused to go trawling round the dealers- but is now moaning as I am discussing this other people and not letting her decide. Think we've got the shortlist down to Rio, Accent, Almera Carisma, Cordoba or Astra (she saw a V reg one yesterday and said would be OK). Just depends on what comes up in budget now.
Luckily saw a couple of Rios and they have been approved, although will be thinking about the comments about safety. The only thing is, any major journeys with the kids will be in my car- and I would guess a Rio would still be an improvement over an M reg Fiesta.
Once again many thanks to all for the comments.
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To be honest I'd add the Escort (as long as it's a Zetec engine), Xsara and Skoda Felicia to that list as well if you are looking into bargain bangers (maybe even the Daewoo Lanos). Condition is everything though, just keep your options open.
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Cheers Jase. Must have anticipated you on that as just been looking at Xsaras. Felicia would be a good one too. Fortunately shes not too much of a badge snob so has said would be happy with that.
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Aygo's are currently being offered with 3 years free servicing and 1 years free insurance>>
The offer appears to be tied to an expensive PCP deal, so it's not strictly 'free'. Did you have to sign up for this offer, will they budge on the PCP APR (9.8%!) will they offer the same deal regardless of payment?
A loan can be had for almost half the APR of the PCP deal. Offer does run until the end of the year so fits in with our timetable. What is the waiting time on a new one?
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There's no such thing as 'free' really, I'd be the first to admit that! They offered us the deal however we paid with very little prompting. We were originally looking at ordinary finance as opposed to PCP and the deal was on offer with that, at a lower interest rate. We did enquire about PCP and it was admitted that the interest rate was higher but we were told this was normal for PCP. Don't know how true this was as we were advised to lease by our accountant so we've now ordered one on a lease deal, which includes maintenance.
We were told 4 to 5 weeks maximum, possibly a little less, for delivery.
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