Interesting car, £1000, GO!

[antipacker]

Some sort of exhaust on it, not big and not loud but not stock. I don't know about the brand. It doesn't seem to have been lowered and the ride certainly doesn't indicate cheap coilovers or anything.

I love the car, given more time no we wouldn't have paid this much for one, but as well as being the one of the most expensive ones within the distance we were looking at it was also the best one so to be honest I'm not that fussed on the money.

Whoever's had it before has obviously looked after it, it's got all the stamps, the mileage is genuine, and it has one dent on the bonnet that I reckon will pull out (it's not creased, just a shallow dip) and a small scratch on the back bumper. Aside from that it's not got a mark on it that I've managed to find so far. No parking dings on the doors, no scuffs on the door lips like all the others had, no nothing.

Everything else we could find for this much money was either really boring, had been molested or was really tatty with bits falling off everywhere. It's been a week of high drama in this house, bigtime, but the end result is I've got a decent little car and spending a bit extra to get something with a bit of poke means I won't get bored of it so quick, all the little 1.4s and whatnot would have seen more bored in no time, so hopefully it'll be a keeper for a couple of years.



I'd rather it look old than toilet like a huge amount of newer cars do

it does have its ++++ though

 

[Joshy]

I genuinely cannot believe that somebody who seemed to know a bit about cars happily plonked down £2,000 for a 306 XSi when looking for a car that is A) 'Interesting' and B)'Cheap'.

Not knocking the XSi as a bad car, but that really is decent GTI-6/VTS money (and twice the price of the cheapest examples on autotrader) and the GTI-6/VTS IS a better car.

Interesting that you bring up insurance. Surely a XSi isn't exactly buttons to insure? It's still a 2.0 16V 'sporty' model driven 99% of the time by people who desperately want a GTI-6 but cannot justify the insurance. Surely the quote for a GTI-6/VTS wasn't more than a grand more expensive than this XSi? Personally I would have bitten the bullet, put the grand you'd have saved by going for a low market GTI-6 (which can be had allday for around a grand in varying condition) and put it towards insurance.

I do understand that you were in a rush, but buying a cheap tatty runaround whilst you looked for something special would have made a far more sense than blatantly paying over the odds for a car that you very may well begin to regret buying in a few months down the line.

Either way, you've probably made that trader's Christmas. Do you think modified 12 year old Hatchbacks are the type of car they fight at auction for?

 

[PardonTheWait]

I genuinely cannot believe that somebody who seemed to know a bit about cars happily plonked down £2,000 for a 306 XSi when looking for a car that is A) 'Interesting' and B)'Cheap'.

The budget changed from dirt cheap to have much more leeway - and the extra money didn't come from me. I was helped out so that I could get a car quick as due to what's happened over the last week the car I had previously bought from my sister has gone, my sister's on the brink of divorce and my whole family have been either threatened insulted or assaulted by her husband.

It's a long story but the end result is that finding a bargain and spending a couple of weeks tramping around to car dealers in December and January wasn't really what we were after. My dad literally works almost constantly and a decent chunk of it was coming off of his card - we had a four day window to find and buy a car, this has been day three and it turns out I'm working tomorrow now anyway.

As far as interesting goes, I said at the beginning of the thread my definition of interesting isn't necessarily the same as everyone else's. Bear in mind I've been driving literally three weeks. For my first car, 135bhp in a smallish car will keep me more than amused.

Not knocking the XSi as a bad car, but that really is decent GTI-6/VTS money (and twice the price of the cheapest examples on autotrader) and the GTI-6/VTS IS a better car.

Rearrange your search to within 30 miles of my house and the story changes

There's one GTi-6 within 30 miles of us, it's P reg, there's holes in the seats and the mileage isn't listed.

There are a few VTSs, but to be honest I don't really like them inside. I don't care if it's irrational, I didn't like sitting in them. Xsara VTSs I didn't even consider because if you ask me they're pig ugly.

Interesting that you bring up insurance. Surely a XSi isn't exactly buttons to insure? It's still a 2.0 16V 'sporty' model driven 99% of the time by people who desperately want a GTI-6 but cannot justify the insurance. Surely the quote for a GTI-6/VTS wasn't more than a grand more expensive than this XSi? Personally I would have bitten the bullet, put the grand you'd have saved by going for a low market GTI-6 (which can be had allday for around a grand in varying condition) and put it towards insurance.

I'll give you that one! The insurance is only a couple of hundred quid a year more. I seriously considered the GTI-6 and I seriously looked for them - but they weren't there. I wish they had been, but they weren't.

I do understand that you were in a rush, but buying a cheap tatty runaround whilst you looked for something special would have made a far more sense than blatantly paying over the odds for a car that you very may well begin to regret buying in a few months down the line.

Either way, you've probably made that trader's Christmas. Do you think modified 12 year old Hatchbacks are the type of car they fight at auction for?

I can't see me regretting it. I'm not a car person in the same way that I'm a bike person. The last vehicle I owned was a 130bhp 155mph litre sportsbike, I am not going to be able to buy ANYTHING on four wheels that feels fast to me.

£1250 came out of my pocket for this car, we overpaid to finish off this whole episode that we've been through. It's all sorted now.

Don't get me wrong. I DO know it was overpriced. I DO know that given a few weeks I could have had one for cheaper or got a GTI, but when it comes down to it, we had £2k available to us and a few days - that was the best car we found, and vastly better than most of the others. We didn't have the time to wait around for a deal, or to travel up and down half the country. We spoke about it yesterday and decided to both cough up some extra and if at all possible, get a car today. If we hadn't found one, I would have bought some ****box to tide me over but it means more arseache and my whole family have had more than our fill of that lately so we coughed up the extra money to get it done.

My final point

I bet it's faster than all your first cars were so ner

 

[snowdog]

My final point

I bet it's faster than all your first cars were so ner

You could have bought something far faster for that budget there though . I know I would if I was in the UK. You have dirt cheap cars over there.

And you're probably right, in pretty all situations .
Except on an autobahn . mine is 3 kph faster .

EDIT: How odd, not sure if it's true but in autoweek.nl it says it will take 10.4s to the 100kph. In that case my car is faster in a straight line on paper .

 

[Joshy]

You could have bought something far faster for that budget there though . I know I would if I was in the UK. You have dirt cheap cars over there.

And you're probably right, in pretty all situations .
Except on an autobahn . mine is 3 kph faster .

EDIT: How odd, not sure if it's true but in autoweek.nl it says it will take 10.4s to the 100kph. In that case my car is faster in a straight line on paper .

As far as I'm aware all of the 0-60 times Peugeot list in the 90s should be completely disregarded. It's a rumour that they'd run these tests with the car fully laden (4 passengers + luggage) to try and keep insurance groups low. It seems like the 'official' 0-60 time released by Peugeot for the mighty GTI-6 was a mere 8.5Seconds. Magazine tests claim anything as low as 6.7Seconds in standard trim .