Best diesel for ~1k?

Richdog

Richdog

Richdog

Caporegime
Joined
8 Sep 2005
Posts
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Location
Utopia
Well, to cut a long story short my Vectra 140 SRI is costing me a fortune in fuel... almost £60 a week (~£200 a month) with a fair bit of town driving. It was only a temporary car for a year or so till I had the money to buy something better but I think I would really like to swap it for some form of diesel... I never thought the running costs of it would be this high... I can almost watch the neede go down and it's been fully seviced not long ago.

All I ask is that you spec me a comfortable, reliable car that doesn't look like absolute **** that I can abuse for a good few months.

Perfectly willing to accept Mondeos or whatever else you can suggest. :(
 
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What sort of mpg are you getting from the Vectra? I wouldn't have thought it should be especially thirsty unless you are driving it unsympathetically or there is a fault with it.
 
Richdog said:
Well £60 gets me about 220-250 miles of daily commuting, averaging around 28-29mpg according to the trip computer.
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28-29mpg sounds fine, but if it is only doing 250 miles on £60 then that is about 17mpg which is not fine :)
 
Richdog said:
Well £60 gets me about 220-250 miles of daily commuting, averaging around 28-29mpg according to the trip computer.
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Then something is very wrong. I get 400 miles from £60 in my 530i, and the trip computer reports between 26-29mpg.

With less than 1k miles a month there is no way selling up a 2 litre car and buying a £1k diesel is going to make financial sense.
 
dirtydog said:
28-29mpg sounds fine, but if it is only doing 250 miles on £60 then that is about 17mpg which is not fine :)
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Well my average mpg is currently 29 mpg but I haven't reset it in ages and that includes some motorway driving I did to Milton Keynes for work training etc... so actual town driving figure is lower. Either way it's really ticking me off, if I can halve my monthly petrol costs simply by switching (and losing nothing or very little on the car) then i'll be more than happy.

[TW]Fox said:
With less than 1k miles a month there is no way selling up a 2 litre car and buying a £1k diesel is going to make financial sense.
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Even if I save £100 a month?
 
Richdog said:
Even if I save £100 a month?
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A £1k diesel isn't likely to be all that new. Therefore you could find yourself saddled with the bills associated with keeping an old car on the road.

Secondly, £100 a month doesn't sound especially likely.

Before I had the 2.0 16v Mondeo, very similar engine to your Vectra, I had a Xantia TD, fitted with the sort of diesel engine you will find in a £1k car.

Around town with the Mondeo I got 24-27mpg, with the Xantia, I got 33-35mpg. Remember, diesels get 50mpg on long runs, not around town, at least not older style indirect injection diesels.

So lets do the maths. You've already said you do about 225 miles a week. This is 900 miles a month.

With a properly functioning 2 litre 16v petrol engine developing around 140bhp I would estimate your monthly fuel cost to be £149.82. This is based on 24mpg.

With a diesel for about £1k, I will for arguements sake assume you drive it nicely and get the higher end of what I experienced - 35mpg. This means your monthly fuel cost, taking into account the fact diesel costs more than petrol, would be around £108 a month.

So, you'd save £40 a month. Errr, wow. Worth the hassle? I don't think so.

Lets assume for one minute you acheive the impossible and, for £1k, manage to buy an uber diesel powered car that manages to do 50mpg around town. Even this would still cost £75 a month - so I dont know where this £100 a month saving is coming from becuase I can't see you managing it.
 
[TW]Fox said:
So lets do the maths. You've already said you do about 225 miles a week. This is 900 miles a month.

With a properly functioning 2 litre 16v petrol engine developing around 140bhp I would estimate your monthly fuel cost to be £149.82. This is based on 24mpg.
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So as he's getting through £200 it seems that there is something wrong with his car which is making it excessively thirsty perhaps. In that case he might be able to save the £100 a month, but it would arguably make more sense to get his current car fixed instead.
 
[TW]Fox said:
Lets assume for one minute you acheive the impossible and, for £1k, manage to buy an uber diesel powered car that manages to do 50mpg around town. Even this would still cost £75 a month - so I dont know where this £100 a month saving is coming from becuase I can't see you managing it.
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Well, with my old 1.4RT I easily got by on £30 a week... and the Vectra is almost doubling it at ~£55 a week. That's how i'm coming to my conclusions about the money i'd save.

I need to come back here with some more exact figures as to what i'm getting from a £60 tank. I'll fill her up tommorrow and then reset the trip computer.
 
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