Car Suggestions for Gigging Musician!

arty

arty

arty

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
6,886
Location
Stamford
Hello, my Focus ST Estate is starting to feel a bit long in the tooth (it's a 62-plate, around 72k miles) and I'm starting to think about replacing it with something more modern and fuel-efficient.

I play lots of music gigs - usually 2-5 a week - so need a bit of space for gear. I'm therefore looking for a small estate or hatchback, probably no smaller than a Golf, though I might be able to manage with something Fiesta-sized.

- Budget around £10k, along with part ex value of my current car
- I normally do 2-5 trips between 50 and 200 miles per week
- I'd consider an electric car, but most of the ones I've seen with the range and capacity I'd like are out of my budget. The overwhelmingly vast majority of venues I play have no facilities for charging; I can only think of one in the last 6 months. I have my own drive so getting a charger installed at home would be no problem.
- As reliable as possible (does anyone ever ask for an unreliable car? :p)
- Somewhat nippy; I live right next to the A1, and all the slip roads I have access to are short ones, so it would be helpful to be able to accelerate up to 60 or 70 fairly quickly to make joining the main road easier.
- Apple CarPlay / Android Auto a must, as is air conditioning, but other toys I'm less bothered about. If it's an estate I think rear parking sensors would be nice (I've got used to having them now).
- Would prefer a manual, but don't mind learning to drive an automatic
- Decent ride, and comfortable for relatively long journeys. This is mainly where my current car falls down, as I find it quite uncomfortable after a couple of hours of driving even on quite good roads.
- Would probably prefer something fairly new (<3 years old) as I intend to hang on to it for quite a long time. Not sure whether this is achievable with my budget, though.

Any ideas? I quite fancy dropping down to a slightly smaller car as I rarely need all the space of the estate. I'm a bit out of touch when it comes to modern cars. I drove a brand new Corsa Ultimate for a few days earlier in the year while my Focus was being fixed, and other than it sounding really rough, I was quite impressed - the steering was a bit light, but it didn't feel particularly slow, and the interior was pretty decent, though I remember that it didn't have a handbrake, which was a little odd :confused: I suspect that this is quite a low bar :D

Thanks for any suggestions at all :)
 
An e-Niro ticks all your boxes, although you'd be looking at an older higher mileage one for your budget (although the savings in fuel may allow you to increase that slightly?)

I may be slightly biased as I have one :p
 
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Mr_Sukebe said:
Ford Galaxy
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Thanks, probably a bit bigger than I'd like but I will consider them.
Haggisman said:
An e-Niro ticks all your boxes, although you'd be looking at an older higher mileage one for your budget (although the savings in fuel may allow you to increase that slightly?)

I may be slightly biased as I have one :p
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That looks more like a 4x4 - I'm really after an estate or hatchback, thanks.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
For smaller, Ford SMAx, Honda Jazz
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Will definitely look at the S-max, but I know a couple of people with Jazzes and I'm pretty sure they're a bit too small.

radderfire said:
Skoda Fabia Estate (may not be fast enough)
Skoda Octavia Estate (might be too big)
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The Fabia Estate looks good, but as you suggest they don't seem to do any remotely nippy ones. I've test-driven estates around 120hp before and they've always felt really sluggish to me, so I'm not really looking for anything less than around 200hp (though I appreciate that weight is a big factor, too).

The Octavia Estate is probably okay size-wise, but again the recentish models don't seem to have any particularly nippy engines.

Can you get a Golf GTI estate? The VW website is awful and doesn't seem to have a basic 'spec sheet' page :confused:
 
arty said:
Thanks, probably a bit bigger than I'd like but I will consider them.

That looks more like a 4x4 - I'm really after an estate or hatchback, thanks.
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It's definitely a hatchback, unfortunately like most EVs it's higher than a more traditional ICE hatchback due to the battery under the floor
 
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If running costs are important, the MG 5 Electric is an estate only car, comes in good trim levels and long range (Trophy Long Range is the highest trim level) with a reasonable >200 mile real world range and it's a fairly nice car..

A couple of people in work have them, bought for their excellent VFM and generous kit on the Trophy trim level (Leather/360 cameras etc)

Will get a facelift 2022 Trophy Long Range car for £15k with low miles..

At <2p/mile for fuel and quite reasonable 2 year servicing costs, it's ideal..
 
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Just as an idea - the new 3008SUV has the space of the focus with a roof box when it's seats are down. Or put differently the space of the focus seats down, with its seats up. Only difference is the volume is more vertical. The boot floor has two positions - bottom gives a lip but more height dimension, top gives flat loading and allows the boot cover to go underneath it. Lastly the front passenger seat folds forward so you can get a 2.4m length into it and touching the dash, or longer if it sits on the dash/front window screen.

The question I have is - how much gear? Drum kit? speaker cabs?

Although some are great cars, if you need to get a Marshall cab in, or a bass drum, then you're going to find a wide opening hatch that loads flat is a must without needing to lift over a tail gate etc.
 
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VW ID.3's are coming down to your budget, they've got real world 200 mile range (official 265 mile range), could save you a chunk of change over the years if you've got off road parking to get a home charger installed?

Otherwise the standard range MG5 is within budget too along with a Ioniq 38kwh but both of those will do less than 200 miles in the real world, more like 160-180, the long range MG5 will do 200 real world miles if you can stretch to one.

With the terrible residuals of EV's you'll get into a far far newer car with an EV compared to an ICE vehicle, it's a very good time to buy a used EV imo if you can deal with the range of the earlier cars.
 
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NickK said:
The question I have is - how much gear? Drum kit? speaker cabs?

Although some are great cars, if you need to get a Marshall cab in, or a bass drum, then you're going to find a wide opening hatch that loads flat is a must without needing to lift over a tail gate etc.
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1 or 2 88-key digital pianos in flight cases, 4x 8" PA speakers, a small rack unit, lights, and hardware (multiple keyboard, PA and lighting stands, plus cables), as a maximum. All of that fits quite neatly into my current cat with the back seats down and maintaining visibility out of the back. I would prefer a bit more length over height because I am a piano player. A flat load in is greatly preferred just to save my back!

Thanks for all the further replies and suggestions - I'm looking into all of them, honestly :)
 
sovietspybob said:
VW ID.3's are coming down to your budget, they've got real world 200 mile range (official 265 mile range), could save you a chunk of change over the years if you've got off road parking to get a home charger installed?
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Looks like they have a big boot lip and no flat load-in, unfortunately (rear seats don't fold flat). Shame as otherwise they look quite good.
sovietspybob said:
With the terrible residuals of EV's you'll get into a far far newer car with an EV compared to an ICE vehicle, it's a very good time to buy a used EV imo if you can deal with the range of the earlier cars.
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Interesting. I do know a few musicians who are starting to move to electric cars, but the slight concern I have is that I often do a rehearsal 50 miles away in the afternoon and then go on to a gig 100 miles from there in the evening, for example, without really having time to stop and charge on the way, and without facilities to charge at either location. I'm also loath to stop at a service station and charge at say 1am on my way home from working, as I'm sure you can imagine :p
 
arty said:
Looks like they have a big boot lip and no flat load-in, unfortunately (rear seats don't fold flat). Shame as otherwise they look quite good.

Interesting. I do know a few musicians who are starting to move to electric cars, but the slight concern I have is that I often do a rehearsal 50 miles away in the afternoon and then go on to a gig 100 miles from there in the evening, for example, without really having time to stop and charge on the way, and without facilities to charge at either location. I'm also loath to stop at a service station and charge at say 1am on my way home from working, as I'm sure you can imagine :p
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Yeah that's fair enough, i used to gig as a guitarist and a flat load space was a must for me too as no on wants to be picking up a Marshall can out of the back of a deep boot in a car!

I found though that flat load spaces are quite hard to find when i bought my last car (Toyota Avensis estate) lots of others still had quite a boot lip despite having lots of space inside.

You could always make a false floor out of ply to make it level if it still gave you enough space?

EV's sure don't work for everyone at the moment but it was just worth looking at as they cost soooo much less to run if you can live with the range and charge at home or have easy access to chargers on your travels.
 
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