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£5000 worth of hatch - Huw
I could get a new 1.0 Daihatsu YRV or a 9 month old Fiat Punto 1.2 or a 3 year old 1.0l Toyota yaris for about £5k. All 5 door no frills models. Which is the best buy? Opinions and alternatives please.
£500 worth of hatch - Huw
Make that £5000 worth of hatch.
£500 worth of hatch - Steve G
5K is a lot of money too spend on a poverty spec motor IMHO.
Why not go for a 3-4 year old car with a proper engine which has some modern comforts (aircon/elec windows ...).
Peugeot 306 / VX Astra e.t.c
Take a visit to the great trade centre or visit www.gtccar.co.uk ,5K can buy some nice specced motors these days.
Steve G
£500 worth of hatch - Steve Brautigan
I agree with Steve G. I'd go for something a bit older but better speced. For example on the abc car supermarket site (www.abccars.tv) has a 25k (V) Ford Ka Collection for 3995 or if you could afford to insure and run something a bit bigger then how about a T reg Renault Megane RT 1.6 with 35k on the clock or a R reg (new shape) Astra 1.6 LS for a quid under 5k.

Basically dont spend 5k on a jap car go for something older and get so much more for your money.


£500 worth of hatch - nick
Depends....If you like clattery engines, buy a Ka. If you like repair bills, buy french or italian. If you want a horrible car that loses value like the proverbial brown stuff off a shovel, then buy an astra. If you want a competant car that will go on for ever and show half decent residuals then buy japanese. Only drawbacks are higher insurance costs and higher parts costs (but you'll hardly ever need them).
Just my humble opinion, feel free to disagree.
Personally I'd buy a mint moggie 1000, triumph 2000 or rover p6 for half the money, but then I'm weird!
Good luck whatever you get. Read HJ's reviews before you decide, he talks a lot of sense.
£500 worth of hatch - Crombster
I wouldn't buy one, but new Astra's seem to get a fair right up these days. As for residuals, if your spending less than 5 grand then the car has already lost the cash so residuals aren't an issue.


For
The Astra is one of the better small hatches to drive and its engines are all willing performers. There is also plenty of space and a large boot.

What Car

£500 worth of hatch - Huw
Thanks for the opinions. Interesting to see the Astra getting such a positive press. It is perhaps a bit bigger than I was aiming at but it has been added to my 'consider' list. Any opinion on the Suzuki Wagon R? The 1.3 seems quite nippy (Don't go all PC on me for calling a jap car nippy)and it seems to have the edge on the astra for performance, reliability and economy. Shoot me down please before I part with the cash.
£5000 worth of hatch - Monaro
I would personally go for the YRV... new car with plenty of come back and it looks good, and isn't that badly specced. But then I like Daihatsus for their value for money. Esp when Toyota own (I think) Daihatsu and the Yaris you are looking at is what, 3 years old.
Paul C
£5000 worth of hatch - Blue {P}
If you must get one off your list, the Yaris will be very cheap to run and has a little bit of street cred. Although I wouldn't entertain the idea of buying a poverty spec car, they're much harder to sell on, when you could get something like, as has been suggested, a Ka with air con etc. for less. It may not be as well made as a Yaris, but it'll be much more comfortable and I've heard good things about their handling...
£5000 worth of hatch - Huw
Thanks for the assistance. I had a KA for a few days and the whole family got to dislike it in that short time so nobody wants to live with one.

I wish the Toyotas were difficult to sell on - they might be cheaper - the 3 year-old Yaris is the same price as the new YRV. My concern about the YRV is that if they were any good there would be plenty of them about - and I have yet to see one.

Nobody going to say anything about the Punto? There are plenty about but does that mean they are good?
£5000 worth of hatch - Blue {P}
Nope! ;)

Certainly don't have the best reputation. On another forum I visit someone's sister owned one, and in the first 20,000 miles suffered a fair few problems, but most worringly the problems included a loss of either steering or brakes, I can't remember which.

Best avoided.IMO.

Have you though about a Fiesta? With the 1.25 Zetec engine you'll be impressed, it's comfortable, can be bought very well equipped, is very nippy, and fairly economical. Avoid the 1.3 though, if you didn't like the Ka then you won't like the Fiesta with the same engine, the 1.25 is a totally different animal...
£5000 worth of hatch - L'escargot

>>a Ka......but it'll be much more comfortable

I've had a Ka as a courtesy car on several occasions, and I found that the seats were the most uncomfortable (bar none) that I have ever had the misfortune to have to sit on !!
£5000 worth of hatch - Phil G
New Puntos are one of the few new cars to represent good value for money imo. 5.5k gets you a nice looking brand new supermini up there with the best of them. Take one over a Ka anyday.
£5000 worth of hatch - Huw
My 'fear' about the punto is that the post 2000 model will, 'in the fullness of time', prove to be no more reliable than the pre 2000 models that too regularly failed their first MOTs. But would a 3 year old Yaris be as much trouble as a new Punto? At the moment I am still thinking Daihatsu YRV but I have a Suzuki Wagon R to look at too.
I appreciate it is 'diferent strokes for different folks' but we as a family did not like anything about the KA. IMHO the fiesta might be a good car but I'm not sure I would call it a good value for money motor.

12 Days left on the MOT of my 1986 Nova so it looks like decision time soon. (Hopefully I will not have to be too choosy as anything [apart from a KA] will seem great after a 16 year old nova.)
£5000 worth of hatch - DoddMan
I think it really depends on what you want out of your car. My sister owns a Ka and she is very pleased with it. It maybe basic but it drives well and cruises happily on the motorway. However she is young and unattached; it would be definitely not be suitable if you had to regularly get two adults and two kids into it.

Personally I found the Ka too basic and ended up buying a 1.25 Fiesta recently. It cost me £6000 which is slightly above your budget, but then again it was only 6 months old and had a few extras like electric windows. However again I'm young and single so the lack of space in the back isn't a problem. So far I've been very happy with it. It goes, stops and drives pretty well and is very comfortable; I don't reckon that there's much else you could ask of a car.
£5000 worth of hatch - Toad, of Toad Hall.
My sister owns a Ka and she is
very pleased with it.


She must love getting the rocker cover off to do the tappits with an oily feeler gauge. [1]


[1] This is irony. My intention is to highlight through humour the extreme inconvenience of having a car that doesn't have self adjusting hydrolic tappits, and thus the lack of wisdom of recomending a Ford Ka to anyone.
--
These are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of all Toads.
www.private-eye.co.uk/innews
£5000 worth of hatch - blank
More-or-less what others say. Buy used and carefully. Focus, Civic, Ashtray if you must.
£5000 worth of hatch - madf
Don't buy a Fiat. The cars are unreliable, Fiat are close to going bust and the dealers are on the whole just awful.

I bought a 1.6 Fiesta (old model). Bit over your price range but a post June 2000 1.25 Zetec one is just in your budget and has the balance of 3 years mechanical and 6 years body warranty (yes they are wax injected bodies now).
Cheap to run and great handling. and v reliable.
£5000 worth of hatch - T Lucas
You cannot go wrong with a Yaris,brilliant little car.Try the YRV,you may well be very pleasantly surprised.Its a Japanese car so will not give any problems.For what its worth,the YRV is VERY popular in Japan.I quite like the styling,but thats just me.
£5000 worth of hatch - Cardew
The bottom spec Yaris is built in France and according to HJ's Car-by-Car breakdown has some quality problems - although he bought his mother one.

Brilliant car though, the best supermini I've driven. New ones are less than £7K from Toyota(with ABS) and even less from Car supermarkets. I would have thought that £5K would get you a pretty new one.

Just to differ from those advocating an older car with more goodies, I would raise a little more money and get a new one. A 3 year guarantee, peace of mind and that new car smell!
£5000 worth of hatch - T Lucas
Those Corsas are pretty awful things compared to Yaris&YRV etc and i personally dont like the 3 cylinder engine.