Spec me a car for the wife

mikeh501

mikeh501

mikeh501

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Recently got myself a car sorted and now need to work out what to get the wife this year. She currently runs a 57 plate 1.4 Corsa which is fine for our needs in every way except its not 4WD. We need 4WD because of where we now live, and mostly because the Corsa is so epicly rubbish in even the slightest slush. Its an Auto with no TC which im assuming really really doesnt help. it just sits there spinning the 1 wheel. much worse than other fwd cars ive had.

So the requirements:-

Small car - must be sub-focus size. shes not a confident driver so something huge wont work out
Auto - it has to be automatic. any flavour is fine.
5 Doors - We've got 2 small kids to cart about
ISOFIX - must have isofix in the rear seats
4WD - obviously must be a 4WD. Any flavour is fine however.
budget - no more than 12-13k top end. prefer to spend less
age/mileage - not too fussed, but ISOFIX means it cant be ancient

once we have a short list we will setup some test drives.
 
Anything auto on summer tyres will be next to useless in any kind of slush/snow 4WD or not. all you need is to get another set of rims with decent winter tyres on for the corsa which should be pretty cheap as i imagine they'll only be 15 or 16"?

My Subaru Impreza was pretty useless in the snow, far far worse than my toyota yaris which i've got all season tyres on. The yaris was pretty unaffected by the snow but the subaru would slip and slide everywhere.

Also i'm not aware of many (any) modern sub focus sized cars that have 4WD?
 
sovietspybob said:
Anything auto on summer tyres will be next to useless in any kind of slush/snow 4WD or not. all you need is to get another set of rims with decent winter tyres on for the corsa which should be pretty cheap as i imagine they'll only be 15 or 16"?

My Subaru Impreza was pretty useless in the snow, far far worse than my toyota yaris which i've got all season tyres on. The yaris was pretty unaffected by the snow but the subaru would slip and slide everywhere.

Also i'm not aware of many (any) modern sub focus sized cars that have 4WD?
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id rather not get into a 4wd/winter tyres debate. #1 shes a women, and 4wd is the answer; and it likely is. #2 not all autos are terrible on snow with summers, but this corsa is particularly bad because of its lack of traction control i think. as a driver i can normally cajole a car along in the snow over the years, but even i cant get this corsa to move when its bad out.

theres a few cars out there that do from what ive seen but spotting them is hard because most of the models have a 2wd variant and its difficult to filter out exactly what actually does have 4wd.

e.g. the Nissan Juke and Qashqai both have 4WD variants. Suzuki Jimny is 4wd but not sure it has auto. The combo of auto/small/4wd is a nightmare.
 
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You'll struggle with proper and 4x4 if you want to keep the size down, I would maybe you rethink and get something fwd with sensible wheels/tyres, will give you you far more options
 
Just a suggestion, my wife wasnt a confident driver, she did a bad weather and off road course, which was 4 days i think...now sadly she is more competent that me on the snow.
 
There was a 4wd fiat panda, not sure how it is on reliability, can't be much worse than a corsa though

edit: actually scrap that i don't think it was available as an automatic only other one I can think of is the Skoda yeti but its probably a bit big
 
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wildman_33 said:
There was a 4wd fiat panda, not sure how it is on reliability, can't be much worse than a corsa though

edit: actually scrap that i don't think it was available as an automatic only other one I can think of is the Skoda yeti but its probably a bit big
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That's one of the issues. Some of these small 4wds don't have an auto option.
 
jigger said:
Suzuki SX4. The Jimny is terrible.
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This afaik, on road & general car use, shocking..but small, 4wd and good offroad.. depends on how bad the roads are near you if its worth suffering 90% of the time for the benefit of not getting stuck

googling small 4x4....they make a 4x4 mini now? did not know that :)


small 4x4 article
 
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HardwareGeek said:
This afaik, on road & general car use, shocking..but small, 4wd and good offroad.. depends on how bad the roads are near you if its worth suffering 90% of the time for the benefit of not getting stuck
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It's not so much off road as un salted roads and drive both of which are on fair inclines.

I've got a land rover defender for off road duty :)
 
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