What car; £3-5k, 20k miles pa?

Spamalot

Spamalot

Spamalot

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What car would YOU buy if you were given a £3-5 budget and were going to be doing 20k miles a year (of mixed driving)?

Only assumptions-

Needs to have good reliability, don't want it spending all the time in the garage. That should take care of running costs, a bigish bill every now and again won't break the bank (shy away from old S classes for example though).

The rest is up to you.

Thanks for your thoughs!
 
Mk3 Mondeo, if you can find one with a good history that deals with all the usual niggles then even better. Make sure you get an 03 or more recent (shouldn't be a problem on your budget), as some of the little tweaks like cruise control will be a nice boon if you're racking up the miles.
 
I have been looking into mk3 mondeos and for me the tdci potential problems outweigh the savings over a 2.0 petrol on 15-20k miles. Only loosely calculated.
 
I've been looking into mk3 mondeos recently, and had a glance at the petrol and diesel to make sure I wasn't doing anything too stupid.

2.0 Petrol:
36MPG
Insurance Group: 10
0-60 Time: 9.6s
Power: 142BHP

2.0 TDCI:
48MPG
Insurance Group: 10
0-60 Time: 9.6s
128BHP

With todays average prices from here, over 20k miles, in petrol it'd cost you £2981.27 and in the diesel £2304.05, so a saving of £677.22 per year.

So really it depends how long you're planning on keeping the car and how likely the failures are. As this thread points out, parts aren't cheap. If you kept it for 2 years, you'd save £1354.44, but if in the 40k miles you're running it something expensive goes then you've wiped out all the savings you've made on fuel. Granted things might go wrong with the petrol engine too, it's a bit of a gamble.

So if I was going for a Mondeo it'd probably be the petrol route, or at that mileage, a diesel from a different manufacturer.
 
Jotun said:
I've been looking into mk3 mondeos recently, and had a glance at the petrol and diesel to make sure I wasn't doing anything too stupid.

2.0 Petrol:
36MPG
Insurance Group: 10
0-60 Time: 9.6s
Power: 142BHP

2.0 TDCI:
48MPG
Insurance Group: 10
0-60 Time: 9.6s
128BHP

With todays average prices from here, over 20k miles, in petrol it'd cost you £2981.27 and in the diesel £2304.05, so a saving of £677.22 per year.

So really it depends how long you're planning on keeping the car and how likely the failures are. As this thread points out, parts aren't cheap. If you kept it for 2 years, you'd save £1354.44, but if in the 40k miles you're running it something expensive goes then you've wiped out all the savings you've made on fuel. Granted things might go wrong with the petrol engine too, it's a bit of a gamble.

So if I was going for a Mondeo it'd probably be the petrol route, or at that mileage, a diesel from a different manufacturer.
Click to expand...

If you really want a petrol mondeo look for one that's LPG converted. Or get it LPG converted, will cost you around a £1000-1300 for a 4 cylinder.
 
B&W said:
If you really want a petrol mondeo look for one that's LPG converted. Or get it LPG converted, will cost you around a £1000-1300 for a 4 cylinder.
Click to expand...
There's not a great deal on autotrader

Might be worth looking at for doing 20k, but personally with me doing at most 12k a year, it'd take 2-3 years just to offset the cost at current fuel prices.
 
B&W said:
If you really want a petrol mondeo look for one that's LPG converted. Or get it LPG converted, will cost you around a £1000-1300 for a 4 cylinder.
Click to expand...

I'd avoid LPG, it usually proves to be a false economy or a massive cost at worst, an inconvenience or irritance at best - especially if you're doing lots of miles.
 
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