I'm thinking of spending up to £1000 on a diesel car to use only for going to work and back but not sure what car to buy .
it has to be a diesel ( non turbo ) and i was thinking of a xsara or 306 , any good points / bad points would be helpful
cheers
Edited by Pugugly on 21/04/2008 at 23:18
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For your budget of £1,000, the best thing is to go for whatever you can find in reasonable condition and a long time before its next MoT test. Neither the make of car nor the mileage is really relevant.
That said, the engine (the same) in the Xsara or 306 are good long-lasting ones and will do you well if you get a good one. In this case see how recently the cambelt has been changed.
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ZX?
Also any of the VAG Group SDi engined cars - Fabia and Octavia spring to mind though watch you don't get an ex taxi Octy!
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I guess the size of the car isn't an issue, if so how about VW Polo 1.9D? I've had one for well over a year before it was written off in an accident. It was good to drive and was very economical and most importantly (for me anyway) it was trouble free!
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I guess the size of the car isn't an issue if so how about VW Polo 1.9D?
Fabia's the same car.... but cheaper, also the Ibiza with the same engine...
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With the rather unwarranted premium for any & every diesel car nowadays - and especially with a budget of £1K - I would say the best diesel car to buy is the petrol engined variety.
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Get yourself an old Merc for a few hundred and run it on vegetable oil. Otherwise, petrol.
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Unwanted and unloved? Citroen ZX.
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a late 1995-1996 405 n/a diesel. i had mine for 10 yrs and wish id never sold it. elec windows, aircon etc
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I was in the same boat as you, and ended up spending £750 on a Citroen ZX with an XUD9 (very good reliable engine) and a Bosche fuel injection pump (can be run on up to 100% vegetable oil). The car's served me extremely well for over a year and 25,000 miles with no big bills at all. They can be really good buys and in the recent past could save you a fortune on fuel bills (vegetable oil) but now the price is rising for vegetable oil so you need to make sure you can find a cheap source before buying a car just for that (supermarket prices are high, cash and carry can still be reasonable in their price).
Some of the 306s have the same XUD9 engine as the ZX's, that's the best engine to get really, make sure it has the Bosche IP if you want to run on veg.
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I'm not sure why the OP specified a non-turbo engine? The turbo on the PSA XUD engine does not cause problems, in my experience, but the lack of a turbo will make driving quite a struggle - you need to change gear far more often in the n/a version, for a start, as the power band is very small.
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Non-turbo for insurance reasons as well?
A 306 dt is only 1 group more than the n/a diesel and far better to drive.
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My dad's old 405 with the N/A engine once did an 800 mile trip on a full tank, think it was coming back from Brittany or somewhere, the engines do lack power but make up for that in consumption.
56MPG on an E reg car.
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True, it is far easier to get lower MPG when you start pushing ahead of 70mph on the turbo diesel models.
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By comparison I averaged 43.6 mpg on a 350 mile run from Oxford to Rotterdam at an indicated 75 mph on Sunday in my 405 TD estate. While 50 mpg sounds great, the cost saving is not that great over the low 40s. To make a substantial difference you'd have to get over 60 mpg.
With the price of diesel as it is, I worked out that SWMBOs Focus 1.6 is about the same cost/mile, as it does about 38 on a long trip. Where the 405 scores on on short trips, which are still over 40 mpg, whereas the Focus drops to 30 mpg.
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I'd certainly recommend a 306 1.9TD. Plenty around now for less than £1000 and provided they have service history, indicating that the oil, coolant and cambelt have all been changed at the recommended intervals then you shouldn't go too far wrong. A word of warning though- avoid Phase 2 306TD's with a DHY coded engine registered between April 1997 and April 1998, a number of which which were supposedly fitted with the 'wrong' conrods and resulted in a spate of wrecked engines.
Performance and economy wise, the non-turbo 1.9D gives only slightly better economy than the TD, but performance is rather leisurely with long hill climbs and overtaking a bit of a challenge. The TD gives similar performance to the 1.6 petrol and as such is much nicer to drive whilst still averaging 40-45mpg. It is true to say however that the fuel economy on the TD does suffer if booted around town or if driven on the motorway at over 80mph. Stick to 70-75 and 45-47mpg is achievable. I normally get between around 550 miles from a full tank doing mainly long, steady runs
In summary, you could do a lot worse than a 306 1.9TD. Mine is still going strong at nearly 14 years old and 221k on the clock and pretty much flew through the last MOT with only a tyre requiring replacement.
Martin
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