Performance on a budget.

Depends where you are, but I just tend to search nationally and consider each car individually. Eg Edinburgh is 500 miles from me but I can be there in a few hours on a plane and 6-7 hours drive home.. Wheras a lot of places closer with worse public transport will be much harder to get to. 80 miles is definitely too short though - but decide what you like and base your considerations on how rare they are. You won't be ploughing through hundreds of cars so just keep the search national and go from there
 
330i. Personally I would say running costs on these are very reasonable thanks to excellent aftermarket support. They are great all rounders.
 
ultralaser said:
Thanks for this, I had considered the ST220 but they are rare near me. I'll check out the 9-5 and the v50/s40 T5 too.
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S40s are decent in a jack-of-all-trades, master of none kind of way. Beware early ones as they have all sorts of electrical and ECU issues that are not cheap to rectify, ideally you need to look at 55-plate onwards but that might be difficult in your budget. I'm putting mine up for sale soon if you're interested :)
 
Clarkey said:
330i. Personally I would say running costs on these are very reasonable thanks to excellent aftermarket support. They are great all rounders.
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They are superb cars - I should probably have elaborated on the running costs comment. I didn't really mean that they'll all cost a fortune to maintain, it's more that a poorly maintained one has the potential to keep having annoying faults. Of course this could be said of any car but you do read a lot about annoying niggly things on the e46/e39s and finding a good one is becoming increasingly harder as they get older. Definitely worth considering for this requirement but worth spending the time researching and being prepared to walk away from a dud
 
90s jap stuff as mentioned above.

Not one mention of a Mazda mps?

3 is 5.9s with a 6 being 6.4 I think.

A tad over 3k should see you in a decent 6.
Keep an eye out for a 55 or an 06 plate 6 and it halves the tax :)
 
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You won't find an MPS at that price range unless it's a shed. To land a decent 3 MPS you're looking at £4,500 and if he only has a low budget he won't want to pay £254 every 6 months for road tax. :)
 
esK` said:
You won't find an MPS at that price range unless it's a shed. To land a decent 3 MPS you're looking at £4,500 and if he only has a low budget he won't want to pay £254 every 6 months for road tax. :)
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I had a look at yep your are spot on. But I should say 264 per 6 months tax is not an issue. I'd much rather buy something cheap that costs a bit to run / maintain than get credit / loan and buy something I'd owe the bank to own for a while. Just my PoV (I know it can be a more expensive route).
 
My position is similar to you, I think a lot of people assume that if you want a cheap car then you must be really poor :)

But I couldn't bring myself to spend £500 a year on tax, its just a silly amount of money for that. The good thing is, the high tax bands only came in after March 06 - so stick to 55 reg and earlier and you'll never have to pay that much. With £2800 you won't be finding many 06 and newer cars that do what you want anyway
 
My initial reaction is 90's Jap (200sx, R33GTST, GTO, Supra/GT4 etc) but checking on Autotrader, apart from Imprezas, there's so few of these mid 90's cars about now that they're starting to command a £5k+ price :eek:
 
Ah, missed that bit. They're surprisingly decent on motorways though, although anything over 50m in one go will get annoying.
 
esK` said:
You won't find an MPS at that price range unless it's a shed. To land a decent 3 MPS you're looking at £4,500 and if he only has a low budget he won't want to pay £254 every 6 months for road tax. :)
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Mk1 3s have noticeably dropped in price in the last 6 months. I've seen mk2s go for 7.5k. Mk1s are hitting the right side of 4k now. I'd go for a non Aero in cosmic blue.

3k will see a 6 easy tho, the added space the IP wanted and awd rather than fwd.

Your correct a mk1 3 would be around 260 for 6 month but I managed to find a low tax 6 so mine is I think 280 foe the year rather then the 480 in the original 6 I had.

Been through 3 of them now, sold the last 2 and was close to buy-in a 2.2 diseasel civic type s.

Low tax 6 in red popped up, was no stopping me haha, think it was a round trip of over 800 mile but so worth it :)
 
See, now none of the mentioned cars sprang to mind for me, lol.

My instant thought was a 4.2 V8 A8. Or, for something a bit more agile, a B5 Audi S4.

Mercedes S500's, Lexus LS430's and BMW 745's are coming in that budget too.

You want a performance motor for motorway driving and stuff, V8 or just get a diesel.
 
You could get a pre-facelift Corolla T-Sport for less than £1000, it will get you to 60MPH in 7 seconds, and it will do 40MPG on a run. After reading the thread a little bit more though, I can see this probably isn't what you're after. :p

xs2man said:
See, now none of the mentioned cars sprang to mind for me, lol.

My instant thought was a 4.2 V8 A8. Or, for something a bit more agile, a B5 Audi S4.

Mercedes S500's, Lexus LS430's and BMW 745's are coming in that budget too.

You want a performance motor for motorway driving and stuff, V8 or just get a diesel.
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Any of those cars, particularly for under £2800, will likely break, and when they do it will cost an absolute fortune to repair them. Consumables are also ridiculously expensive... Also, a B5 S4 for £2800?
 
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I love the degree of certainty on this forum. Diesels WILL cost more than petrols, these old cars WILL break and cost a fortune. No guarantees on any of it, and the OP did specifically say he didn't mind extra maintenance costs.

Then offer up a blooming Corolla instead?

Fair enough. My idea of performance is clearly a million miles away from the general consensus on here. Ask for performance car, get offered Luke warm Toyota. OCUK Motors for you.
 
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