First car - max budget £2000

tummelv

tummelv

tummelv

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19 Jan 2011
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Inverness, Scotland
Hi there,

I was thinking of buying my first car towards the end of the year - just starting to learn to drive now. I was thinking of a Ford Focus - specifically a 1.6 petrol. I've been looking at the MK1 around 2002 models - they seem to go for about £2000-2500 for a good one.

How does this sound? Could I go down to the lower end of the scale and still get a nice one for £2000. I was thinking if I could save some money on buying the car then I can keep that as a repair fund if it needs some work down the line for the usuals like brakes and tyres.

I got a quote from moneysupermarket and the cheapest is about £2000 fully comp if you pay anually, £2200 if you pay monthly. I am 20 by the way.

However, I'm only working part time at the moment and earning around £5000 a year. I don't have any living expenses to pay beyond a little money a month to my parents to help out with the bills. My savings so far will be able to pay for the car and the first years insurance outright leaving my monthly wage to pay for the fuel and upkeep of the car. Is this perfectly affordable? I've heard that insurance goes down after 1 year by a third usually for a new driver so I think I can easily save ~£1400 to meet the annual payment for the second year of ownership once I have paid for upkeep and fuel. I'd only need to save about £120 a month.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. :D
 
Robbie G said:
Personally, I would opt for a newer Fiesta. Buying a ten year old Focus seems slightly risky when you won't have gazillions to spend on repairs.

You should be able to get an 05 Fiesta MkVI for £2k.
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I had been looking at a fiesta for a bit, something like this?
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classif...code/iv23sq/page/2/quicksearch/true?logcode=p

Only thing is there is no mileage info. I suspect the mileage is quite high as that is a lot lower price than other 05 fiestas. You sure you can get one for £2k? They seem to be in excess of £3k on auto trader.

rjkoneill said:
Why get a 1.6 focus as a first car? Surely a small engined runabout is all you need for a first car?
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Couple of reasons why. The quotes I have been getting for a 1.2 corsa are £1800. If for only £200 more a year I can get a bigger, faster and more useful car then why not?

Also I am 6'3" so fitting in a corsa while not impossible isn't perhaps ideal for longer journeys. I have been driving the latest model Corsa dual control car with my dad and while I fit easily enough I really wouldn't want to spend much time in any smaller of a car than that.

My CV has been handed in at the place I work at with the possibility of finding me a decent job in the company. If I was offered a place it's likely I would have to travel a lot for the job so a car I can get comfy in will be really useful.
 
Vigoro said:
Have you tried adding parents to the insurance quotes as named drivers?
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Holy crap...I tried adding my dad as a named driver and the quote went from about £2000 to £1500!

MikeHiow said:
This and the small engined mini hatch cliché comes from when they used to actually be cheap to insure. These days this isn't the case, and sometimes end up being more expensive than their larger counterparts.

The Focus is a good call, it's also worth checking out the Mondeos if they tickle your fancy - the 2.0 won't be much more thirsty than a 1.6 Focus and you may even find the insurance is cheaper.
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I did look a the Mondeo but the engine size alone seems to push the insurance up to just unacceptable levels. :(

Brookert said:
My girlfriend has the policy to my car, makes the insurance £1000 cheaper. Although that will change next year.

I think a 2.0l is silly for a first car. I learned in my mums 1.6 focus, nice car. Insurance group was the same as my 1.3 fiesta weirdly.
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Yeah, I've been finding that some cars have suprisingly high and some have suprisingly low insurance groups. However, the actual quote seems to have no relation to the insurance group.
 
Out of interest I ran a quote on a Ford Mondeo worth about £2500, it came to £1635. That's quite interesting because the quote was for a 1.8 mondeo and a quote for a 1.8 vectra is about £1900. Big difference for two cars that are very similar to each other.
 
Thanks!


It was worrying because about 2 minutes into the lesson I pulled onto a road which I thought was a 40mph road when it was actually a 30mph road. I got up to about 35mph before I began to think it was maybe the wrong speed. Then my examiner leaned over to check the speedo and that's when I twigged. I spent the remainder of the lesson wondering whether that incident was a major or a minor fail. Luckily, it was just a minor! The rest of the lesson was not too bad and I made just a couple of small mistakes. Because of the speeding they even gave me an eco driving brochure on how to use less fuel!
 
shoes said:
Yeah i like my focus - mine is a lot older and worn than yours and isn't as reliable any more, but it's a great car to drive, especially as your first car (this is my first car too).

Zetec is the best trim of these IMO if it has the comfort pack.
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Is the comfort pack the one with aircon and the quickclear windscreen? Mine has aircon but no quick clear windscreen. I would have liked quickclear but it wasn't a dealbreaker for buying it.....

Just phoned the garage who have confirmed the car will be ready for me next Saturday to come pick up. It needed an MOT put on it and they were also going to change the cambelt. Gonna be a long wait till Saturday! :(

The garage is 40 miles from my house so it's gonna be a long first drive with my new car on fast roads. Still, should be a good chance to get to know the car.
 
Just went over my quote with my dad to confirm everything looked good. Had to change a couple of fields and the new quote went down further to £1071! So double checking with my dad saved me about £65. Really chuffed! :)
 
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