RMweb Gold The Fatadder Posted August 30, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted August 30, 2011 I'm currently in the process of looking for a car for the other half, and given that alfas are out I'm finding it tough to make my mind up between the options, We have about 4k to spend, for which we need a focus sized estate Currently we are looking at the Astra, Focus and Megan on about a 56 plate. We need to be able to fit the new puppy (a lab) in the boot once she has fully grown, and going to have to use it to drive down to Toulouse in the new year with all our stuff + cats & dog when I head out for a 6 month placement. Would welcome any feedback from owners, in particular on reliability and engine performance. Thanks Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodyfox Posted August 30, 2011 Share Posted August 30, 2011 Buy something for about £500-600. No worries on depreciation and when it breaks down with anything a bit major get another one... ...spend the balance on lavish gifts for you and your good lady! I've got a Suzuki wagon r thing that cost next to nothing, has loads of space and is ultra cheap to run. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerces Fobe2 Posted August 30, 2011 Share Posted August 30, 2011 Watch out for gearbox and clutch problems in the Focus Rich. I have had 2 Volvo S40's which were based on the Focus chassis pan and mnechanics, they were unreliable heaps! Xerces Fobe Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium skipepsi Posted August 30, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted August 30, 2011 If you are prepared to look at a zafira astra size mpv the 2litre diesel could be a good choice only thing I dislike is the front pillar. you can hide a bus in them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kickstart Posted August 30, 2011 Share Posted August 30, 2011 I'm currently in the process of looking for a car for the other half, and given that alfas are out I'm finding it tough to make my mind up between the options, Just buy the Alfa. All the best Keith Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted August 30, 2011 Share Posted August 30, 2011 I have had 2 Volvo S40's which were based on the Focus chassis pan and mnechanics, they were unreliable heaps! I take it you are referring to the post-2004 (54 or 05 plate onwards) second generation S40 which is based on the Mk2 Focus and not the earlier first generation S40 which was a joint venture with Mitsubishi (Nedcar project) and nothing to do with Ford whatsoever ? I am aware of the first generation S40/V40 being a heap, but I'm not aware of the completely different second model (S40/V50) having that reputation. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pugsley Posted August 31, 2011 Share Posted August 31, 2011 How about a Skoda Octavia? A little bigger than the focus, but great cars. If you can stretch the budget a bit, you could even get yourself a VRS Estate complete with 170hp TDI engine Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert17649 Posted August 31, 2011 Share Posted August 31, 2011 what about a citroen nemo peugot bipper,they are dirt cheap to run loads of space and should about now be 3-4 years on, being french they depreciate very fast so on the second hand market they will be dropping towards the 3-4k mark.OR bangernomics as above 6-700 on a ford or any old estate spending the extra 3k on keeping it going.my brother has been running heaps for years ,chucking them when repair becomes too much.Middle range cars lose value very fast. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Fatadder Posted August 31, 2011 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted August 31, 2011 How about a Skoda Octavia? A little bigger than the focus, but great cars. If you can stretch the budget a bit, you could even get yourself a VRS Estate complete with 170hp TDI engine I did think Octavia, but it seems they have held their value too well. Not too keen on streching the budget too much as I am going to need to be changing my car once I get back from Toulouse next year (going to be selling it prior to going out there). Have my eye on an Alfa 159 estate, and that is going to seriously stretch my budget (so any spare funds from this car can go on the Alfa!) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
34theletterbetweenB&D Posted August 31, 2011 Share Posted August 31, 2011 Tactically, think hard about the advantage of taking a French car to France, especially southern France. Very cheap to maintain there should they require any minor attention or spares. Once you are in Toulouse you may just find the Med on the doorstep makes it rather too appealing to leave... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
(The) Youth Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Will there ever be more than two people in the Car ? If not why not buy a van, great for taking the layout out too Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted September 1, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 1, 2011 Tactically, think hard about the advantage of taking a French car to France, especially southern France. Very cheap to maintain there should they require any minor attention or spares. Once you are in Toulouse you may just find the Med on the doorstep makes it rather too appealing to leave... True, but in practice the majority of affordable garages offer maintenance of "toutes marques" i.e. any make, and in this era, they simply look on the Internet for the maintenance schedule of whatever you brung. So my local Renault dealer in the village is quite competent on servicing my Skoda, and can get bits within 24 hrs. And Alfas do sell better in France than the UK, it seems to me, whereas Fords are far fewer in number here than in Blighty. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted September 1, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 1, 2011 Tactically, think hard about the advantage of taking a French car to France, especially southern France. Very cheap to maintain there should they require any minor attention or spares. Once you are in Toulouse you may just find the Med on the doorstep makes it rather too appealing to leave... Yes, but there can be complications of a very unexpected kind. A good many years back I took a Citroen GS over to Northern France/Belgium and (due to some p*ss poor servicing by a Citroen main dealer in England just before departure) found myself suffering misfiring and loss of power somewhere in the vicinity of Crecy. Not too difficult to find a Citroen capable garage with Citroen although arriving just before lunch time meant something like a 3 hour stop for what turned out to be a barely 10 minute job replacing the distributor cap and plug leads following a 30 minute plus examination by three mechanics and their boss having great fun sussing all the difference between my car and a lhd variant plus checking how certain components could or couldn't be accessed in the rhd version. Seems UK market Citroens boasted some noticeable differences from the home market product to the extent even that some parts allegedly only fitted one or the other (which was definitely not the case with the allegedly different distributor caps and leads as the supposedly different one for an lhd car worked far better on the rhd version than the rhd part). You either love French cars or you hate them (and I've now been driving them in various forms for over 30 years so I've got used to them). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
coachmann Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Being a Ford man, I never had any problems with gearbox or clutch on the Focus's. I will however add that a Focus boot is very small. If you wanna big boot go for a big car. I gotta Mondeo but the same money will buy a Nissan X-trail 4X4......similar insurance, similar mpg and bags of space for a doggie. Big difference is quiet motoring with Mondeo, not so quiet with X-trail due mainly to road noise thru tyres. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim V Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Will there ever be more than two people in the Car ? If not why not buy a van, great for taking the layout out too Problem with vans is that on ordinary roads, they have lower speed restrictions. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ste234 Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 We use Astra Vans at work, they are fairly reliable, and if you get one with a big enough engine (1.7L) they aren't bad to drive! Although the newer ones we have now come as 1.3L, and are a bit sluggish! If your thinking "well hang on, its a van", the Astra Van is derived from the Astra estate Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim V Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 I forgot to say there are hundreds of ex company Ford Focus estates around. Some of them are on extremely high miles. Some are low milers. Plenty of choice. Buy the right one and you won't regret it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Fatadder Posted September 1, 2011 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted September 1, 2011 Thanks for all the advice, going to take Helen to do a few test drives on Saturday and take it from there. The important thing is that it appears there are not that many major issues with any of the cars we are looking at, but will take note of the potential transmission issues with a focus. Tbh, I think my preference is definitely tending towards the ford, given that its much nicer inside than the french cars. But I think Helen seems to have already decided she prefers the 307 or megane Space wise, in the long term it shouldnt be too much of an issue, the 159 I want to buy next year should handle the big stuff when necessary. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted September 1, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 1, 2011 Problem with vans is that on ordinary roads, they have lower speed restrictions. They do? Which ones? I tend to drive at the legal limit - why not? - and White Van Man (or his French alter ego Monsieur Camionette Blanche) always seem to be in my boot! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
edcayton Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Problem with vans is that on ordinary roads, they have lower speed restrictions. In some cases, although "car-derived" vans may not be. Before my VW van was converted to a motor caravan it had lower speed limits, but once DVLA had been notified and the V5 altered it was allowed to go faster! This area of transport legislation is a nightmare. Ed Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium spamcan61 Posted September 1, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 1, 2011 One of the few useful IMHO sets of quantitative data on car reliability is the reports produced by ADAC (German AA pretty much). They give a statistical breakdown of common types of car, based on the number of call-outs they receive for each model (presumably normalised against the number of members with that model). Basically green is good, red is bad. Here's the 2009 report for Astra/Focus sized cars courtesy of Google translate:- http://translate.goo...fCPJw9LwnUYLTEw Seems the Focus fares worse than the Astra or Megane, which does surprise me. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Pannier Tank Posted September 1, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 1, 2011 Watch out for gearbox and clutch problems in the Focus Rich. Xerces Fobe I've been doing 30,000+ miles per annum, and did 140,000 miles with an '03' plate Focus Estate and never had any problems with the clutch or gearbox. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nile_Griffith Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 To throw my two penneth worth in I'd say this. No one ever made or saved money running a car for personal use. they all cost. Buying cheap but paying small but regular repair bills and living on the hope you might get away with it is one way of doing it. Paying good money for a well researched model is another way. However neither is particularly 100% fool proof. For myself I have two cars on the drive at present. One has been described by the motoring press as a bit of a donkey and falls down on every test. The other usually gets most pubescent drivers salivating at twenty paces. Needless to say one now has 267,000 miles on the clock is universally loved by anyone who rides in it, has been a magnificent workhorse all it's life and has received just as much maintenance as was required. The other is sat a gormless stationary lump while the legal eagles argue who pays for the catastrophic failure of a seven speed gearbox. My advice? Buy something that makes you smile when you walk towards it in the morning and doesn't make you want to get out after driving it for 50 minutes. Fuel economy, boot capacity and deprecation and all the usual motoring logic fall by the wayside after the first 6 weeks if you don't love your car and lets face it when you own a car your just never going to win anyway. So if your going to buy one, buy one that makes you smile!!!!!!!!! besides the south of France is a bloody long drive. Cheers Nile! OH! The two cars. The first is a Chrysler Grand Voyager LX. A V6 3.3 petrol. 267,000 genuine miles on the clock and possibly the most reliable woman in my life. The other? A Mercedes SL55 AMG. 5.5 litres of Germany's supposedly finest engineering. With a modest 32,000 genuine miles on the clock. The rather elaborate seven speed tiptronic gearbox having decided it was going to rip itself apart on a motorway jaunt. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baby Deltic Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 The VW Passat is a very good car. I'm on my second one having previously had Ford Mondeos. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
37114 Posted September 1, 2011 Share Posted September 1, 2011 Out of the ones you mention, I would go for the focus, I had a 56 plate focus from new and other than regualr servicing it never went near a dealer, never broke down, despite my enthusiastic driving style. Never had a problem with boot space, and with the rear seats down it would accomodate a hefty amount of stuff. Out of all that size car it is one of the best handling, a mate followed me from Banbury to Towcester on the back way which is quite windy in his 1.9 diesel astra and struggled to keep up with my 1.8 TDCI focus, and he is infitely better/braver driver. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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