Owned one, loved it, wouldnt reccomend it!
They are not reliable whatsoever - had numerous electric problems, interior quality was terrible although looked nice, door handles jammed and the rear ones would come off in your hand. It liked a litre of oil every 1000 miles and averaged 12mpg with fairly sensilbe driving.
Lovely lovely car, but avoid them if reliability and running costs are on the list of priorities at all.
Oh, and the twinsparks need cambelt every 36k miles and the Selespeed ones will drain your wallet and possibly kill you
Haha
Cheers Iain, noted and will (even more strongly) put her off buying one of these!