For around £2,000 you'll be lucky to find a C1 - they start at around £3000 on the used market while the 106 is an older car and has a poor reliability record. If you want something reliable, we'd suggest avoiding French makes and looking at Japanese makes.

For £2000 you could get a very tidy Honda Civic - in the classifieds we've seen a 2000 Civic 5-door with just 40,000 miles on the clock for less than £2000 (it even had air conditioning!). The Civic is reliable and cheap to run (go for the 1.4-litre petrol engine) but as it's a hatchback, it's got useful rear boot space too.

A second car to consider would be a Ford Focus hatchback. You can get a reasonably low mileage example for £2000 or even an estate if you need extra room. And the third car we'd suggest looking at would be a Nissan Almera.