Changing cars / driving on snow

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I am after some advise please.

I currently have Clio mkII which I don't particularly like (I am way too big, not excellent MPG, can't take 25% hills, etc). It has just under 3 months of insurance left.

What is the whole procedure about buying and insuring a new car while selling the old one? I would ideally not want to loose too much money on insurance, etc - that could be better spent on a new lens!

I am considering buying privately, something from 2002-2004. What cars should I look for? I need >50 MPG, presumably diesel, spacious interior and good reliability as well as reasonable insurance. I looked at Octavia's but those greedy *******s want too much for insurance.

The second question is about driving on snow. What tyres or accessories do you use to safely get around on snow? I would like to go to Wales for some landscape photography while it is like that.

I would be grateful for advice.
 
daugirdas said:
What is the whole procedure about buying and insuring a new car while selling the old one?
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On general car insurance you cannot have a single no claims bonus on two cars, so speak to your insurer/broker about what you need to do. Probably you will need a temporary cover for the old car to enable you to sell it/keep it on the road and transfer your no claims to the new one.


As for what car, bit like telling my missus what shoes to buy! :D
 
I think that you can add another temporary vehicle to your insurance policy for a small fee, so that both can be insured at the same time.
Driving on snow - I just looked at this site: http://www.snowchains.co.uk/ as I think the chains are good value at about £120, though they are no good on bare road, probably need winter tyres.
PM me if you're coming to North Wales and want some company to the mountains, if I'm free I'll tag along.
 
2.0 TDI Focus, with winter tyres, works for me. Grunty, reasonable top speed, 50mpg on a run, BUT service intervals are far too close together (12500 miles), wifes petrol is 18K miles and cheaper to do too.

Matt
 
you can just change the car on your policy mid-term. however you wont be able to have people test drive your old car as you wont have insurance (and theres wont cover them unless you have cover).

ive just picked up an 03 seat ibiza tdi sport for £3.3k.. 50mpg+ on a motorway, bags and bags and bags of torque, comfy, essentially a VW so reliable, cost me £30 more on insurance over a 406 barge..
 
I don't know what you consider reasonable on insurance. My Porsche (group 20 on the old grouping system) costs me £360/yr fully comp as my daily driver, so you ought to be able to insure a Skoda for less than that.

To get around on snow there following are possible solutions:
winter tyres
snow chains / snow "socks"
four wheel drive

The latter two will assist in traction only, not cornering or braking (something that some 4wd owners seem unaware of).

You can get 50mpg from a petrol car, but it tends to only be the ones with small engines ( <1.2l or so) which are not so relaxing on motorways. When I used a Hillman Imp as an everyday car I could get over 50mpg on the motorway, but much less around town. Diesels are a better solution if fuel economy is your overriding consideration, but you should consider overall cost of ownership. Purchase prices are typically higher, servicing intervals are shorter so servicing costs are higher than for petrol equivalents, so depending on the number of miles you do in a year a diesel may not be the best solution.
 
neil_g said:
(and theres wont cover them unless you have cover).
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Not true.

The driving other cars clause that some insurance policies have may or may not have a further clasue requiring the other car to have its own insurance in force. On my insurance it does not, so I can drive another car that has no current insurance of its own. What I can't do is leave said car parked on the street as then there will be no insurance, as it is only insured against third party risks so long as I am driving it.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Not true.

The driving other cars clause that some insurance policies have may or may not have a further clasue requiring the other car to have its own insurance in force. On my insurance it does not, so I can drive another car that has no current insurance of its own. What I can't do is leave said car parked on the street as then there will be no insurance, as it is only insured against third party risks so long as I am driving it.
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ah right.. personally in a situation like the OP's i would work on the assumption that the person did not have cover unless they could prove it :)
 
Winter tyres for driving in snow up to 15cm - I've not bothered seeing if they'll work in anything deeper than that as the front of the Cougar will just scoop too much snow into the engine bay...lol
They work fine. Better than with less snow in fact, which tends to be more slippery on top of the road surface.
We now have snow on top of packed-snow/ice and the car stull drives OK. Have to be careful still on off-camber turns on steep gradients - we have quite a few of those - this is a hilly town.
 
onomatopoeia said:
I don't know what you consider reasonable on insurance. My Porsche (group 20 on the old grouping system) costs me £360/yr fully comp as my daily driver, so you ought to be able to insure a Skoda for less than that.

To get around on snow there following are possible solutions:
winter tyres
snow chains / snow "socks"
four wheel drive

The latter two will assist in traction only, not cornering or braking (something that some 4wd owners seem unaware of).

You can get 50mpg from a petrol car, but it tends to only be the ones with small engines ( <1.2l or so) which are not so relaxing on motorways. When I used a Hillman Imp as an everyday car I could get over 50mpg on the motorway, but much less around town. Diesels are a better solution if fuel economy is your overriding consideration, but you should consider overall cost of ownership. Purchase prices are typically higher, servicing intervals are shorter so servicing costs are higher than for petrol equivalents, so depending on the number of miles you do in a year a diesel may not be the best solution.
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Wow how could I get it so cheap? I paid £500 for Clio 1.2L and some places quote me £900 for Octavia 1.9 sdi :'(. I would be well chuffed to keep it under £500. I am 26 btw and had my licence for years, but not been driving much until last year.

Fuel economy on my 1.2L clio is really not great; as soon as I hit motorway or go up the hill. That is pretty much all I do. It is OK in flat cities like B'ham, but clearly not M5 or Bristol. 100 motorway miles cost me at least £20 on petrol - when I believe it should be around £10.
 
Im guessing you havent had insurance before, so wont have any NCB, so you wont have the experience in the insurers eyes for anything remotely cheap.
Ive been driving 8 years, have 8 years NCB, no claims or convictions and still get quoted over £600 for my Nissan Xtrail (group 21!).
I went with a specialist 4x4 insurer and got it for just over £400 with limited 4000 miles milage.

If you are under 25 years old, it will be expensive, if you are over 25 but have little driving experience it will be expensive, If you have any claims or convictions it will be expensive! Its just expensive!
 
daugirdas said:
Fuel economy on my 1.2L clio is really not great; as soon as I hit motorway or go up the hill. That is pretty much all I do. It is OK in flat cities like B'ham, but clearly not M5 or Bristol. 100 motorway miles cost me at least £20 on petrol - when I believe it should be around £10.
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There's a common misconception that engine size is automatically the inverse of fuel economy. There's more to it though, and with your 1.2 you'll have to be caning it on the motorway compared to something bigger which is why fuel economy takes a hit.
 
trencheel303 said:
There's a common misconception that engine size is automatically the inverse of fuel economy. There's more to it though, and with your 1.2 you'll have to be caning it on the motorway compared to something bigger which is why fuel economy takes a hit.
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:plusone: my 2.5 litre landie was a group 2 :)


Admittedly it has as much power as an asthmatic snail with a cold, but hey.
 
daugirdas said:
Wow how could I get it so cheap? I paid £500 for Clio 1.2L and some places quote me £900 for Octavia 1.9 sdi :'(. I would be well chuffed to keep it under £500. I am 26 btw and had my licence for years, but not been driving much until last year.

Fuel economy on my 1.2L clio is really not great; as soon as I hit motorway or go up the hill. That is pretty much all I do. It is OK in flat cities like B'ham, but clearly not M5 or Bristol. 100 motorway miles cost me at least £20 on petrol - when I believe it should be around £10.
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I'm 41 and my only fault claim was 10 years ago, so have full no claims, the car is garaged and I do ~10,000 miles/ year which goes some way to explaining my relatively low insurance bill.

Motorways are generally where you'll get the best fuel consumption but it drops really, really quickly as speed increases (drag increases as the square of velocity). You shouldn't need that much throttle to keep a 1.2l car running at an indicated 70mph. You will get overtaken by everything except lorries and caravans, but compared to doing an indicated 85mph you'll save a lot of petrol.

I get 35mpg from the Porsche on a motorway run at 70mph (indicated). That's a 3.2l, 250bhp flat six engine, so not the most economical thing in the world. I don't drive it very much faster than that, just because it can go faster doesn't mean I must drive it faster. At the moment I'm getting 22mpg around town as my journey to work is mostly done before it fully warms up in this weather, normally it's 25mpg.

So I don't pay much more than £20 for 100 motorway miles (3 and a bit gallons), so not sure why you're using so much fuel unless you're driving at 90mph.

Diesel will mean you use less fuel, but as I said, calculate the whole cost of ownership to make sure it will actually save you money.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Motorways are generally where you'll get the best fuel consumption but it drops really, really quickly as speed increases (drag increases as the square of velocity). You shouldn't need that much throttle to keep a 1.2l car running at an indicated 70mph. You will get overtaken by everything except lorries and caravans, but compared to doing an indicated 85mph you'll save a lot of petrol.

....

So I don't pay much more than £20 for 100 motorway miles (3 and a bit gallons), so not sure why you're using so much fuel unless you're driving at 90mph.

Diesel will mean you use less fuel, but as I said, calculate the whole cost of ownership to make sure it will actually save you money.
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Well on motorway it is doing actual 70mph. If I don't then lorries start overtaking me which is not ideal nor safe. I have a feeling that car should really drive at no more than 50-60mph 'real'.

The more important issue is the 'size'. It is too crowded inside, I can't sit upright and get awful back pain when travelling a little further. Landrover would be my dream if I could afford running it.

BTW Aren't diesel cars / engines more reliable and can do far more miles compared to their petrol cousins? The next car would need last 3-4 years without any major repairs. I will be getting new tyres, brakes and belt straight away.
 
My wife bought a new Clio but I persuaded her to sell it as the steering wasn't equal as you turned the wheel. the further you turned it the turning ratio altered which in my near 50 year of driving experience was dangerous. Yes it was checked by the dealer and told it was correct for that car.

I got her to buy a Kia Ceed estate with the higher power output, this matched as nigh is damn it the larger power output Clio and a load safer and bigger. Not only does it have the 7 yr warrantee but a spare wheel (which many new smaller cars don't). Around the houses it returns about 42 to the gallon and mid 50's on a run. Both cars were diesel by the way.
AS regards using snow chains I would be careful about using them on front wheel drive cars as I believe they are for rear wheel drive use. It could affect the steering.

If buying a car from a private seller a must is getting a history (HPI) check on it first. I am not talking about service history but outstanding hire purchase -stolen -insurance writeoffs etc

There are several companies that do it for only a few quid and can be found via Google.

My youngest son nearly got caught out as I wasn't there when he went to look at a vehicle. It was a repaired insurance writeoff when I made him do this HPI check and he got his holding deposit back. There was nothing the seller said about it and trying to pass it off as perfect and never in any accident.

Also it does pay to have an inspection done by someone like the big motoring organisation. May cost a bit but better that than a few miles down the road the engine packs up costing thousands to replace.
 
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Marcos James said:
Learn to drive sensibly in snowy / icy conditions and fit winter tyres.
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My Dad who 'doesn't believe' in Winter Tyres ("No Robert - all season tyres are perfectly acceptable if you know how to drive properly..." :lol:- now you know where I get my italics from...lol) has just rung me up last night to tell me he couldn't get the car out of his street after about 2" of snow in South Devon and had to leave it stranded at the end of the road, blocking it for everyone else...apparently it had 'gone slushy'...lol

I did laugh...quite a lot...:lol:
 
daugirdas said:
BTW Aren't diesel cars / engines more reliable and can do far more miles compared to their petrol cousins? The next car would need last 3-4 years without any major repairs. I will be getting new tyres, brakes and belt straight away.
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My Diesel Picasso is at 191K at the moment and the engine is still going strong :) just cost regular service parts. Biggest expense i've had from it is a new cambelt. The only other car i've had that cost so little was a '89 Firebird.
 
daugirdas said:
BTW Aren't diesel cars / engines more reliable and can do far more miles compared to their petrol cousins? The next car would need last 3-4 years without any major repairs. I will be getting new tyres, brakes and belt straight away.
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How many miles are you thinking about? My Quattro had 163,000 miles and 22 years on it when I scrapped it and the (petrol) engine was still fine. In retrospect I should have kept it, but there you go. Keep pretty much any modern car properly serviced and the engine will go on for a very long time. Of course buying an older car you won't know how it has been treated but the service book is a good place to start.

If you are talking about a lot of miles then diesel is probably the way to go.
 
daugirdas said:
Wow how could I get it so cheap? I paid £500 for Clio 1.2L and some places quote me £900 for Octavia 1.9 sdi :'(. I would be well chuffed to keep it under £500. I am 26 btw and had my licence for years, but not been driving much until last year.

Fuel economy on my 1.2L clio is really not great; as soon as I hit motorway or go up the hill. That is pretty much all I do. It is OK in flat cities like B'ham, but clearly not M5 or Bristol. 100 motorway miles cost me at least £20 on petrol - when I believe it should be around £10.
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Skoda Octavia 1.9tdi is group 7 insurance so you'll be struggling to get much cheaper.
Realistically, you just need to stick with low insurance group cars until you've built up a few years no claims. You're already over 25 so that helps

My lad had a 1.2 Clio as his first car at 17, you should be able to get 30-32 mpg on a run, depends on how you drive it.
At 18 he bought a Ford focus 1.6 Zetec. Group 5 insurance, good performance and economy and a great drive. He's now got a Clio sport and gets 35mpg from that.

I'm guessing your price range is £2-3K, in which case £3k should get you Focus on a 53 or 04 plate with reasonable lowish mileage (around 60-70k) as a lot of these are used as families second cars (wives cars). If you do look at these, look at the families and think about how they've been used to check for wear, so kiddie car seats, dogs in the boot, woman driver so check the corners for parking damage, drivers floor area for heals wearing carpets etc.
The plus side will be the low mileage, but that could be all short journeys, but the good news is they are reliable cars and go on for ever. I'd stick with the petrol models as they are plentiful and will do 35mpg on a run easily.

Hope this helps.

P.S.
After a while you can have what you want. I have a group 20 motorbike £120 insurance per year and a group 20 car - £400 insurance per year.
 
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realspeed said:
AS regards using snow chains I would be careful about using them on front wheel drive cars as I believe they are for rear wheel drive use. It could affect the steering.
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Utter Rubbish, they do affect the steering, in an incredibly positive way :thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:
 
onomatopoeia said:
How many miles are you thinking about? My Quattro had 163,000 miles and 22 years on it when I scrapped it and the (petrol) engine was still fine. In retrospect I should have kept it, but there you go. Keep pretty much any modern car properly serviced and the engine will go on for a very long time. Of course buying an older car you won't know how it has been treated but the service book is a good place to start.

If you are talking about a lot of miles then diesel is probably the way to go.
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My 2.6 A6 had 252,000 miles on it when I got rid of it - there was nothing wrong with the engine at all, it needed about £800 spending on the rest of the car, and was only worth a couple of hundred.

Any engine if looked after, driven correctly and maintained will last a long time. (Manufacturers defects aside)
 
Joe T said:
I wouldnt say the longterm running costs of a diesel are less than a petrol. If you need to replace a turbo or injectors, this will cancel out any of the fuel saving.
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Same as any car though, surely - regardless of fuel?
Are diesels any less reliable than petrol engines? Quite the opposite, I'd have thought...
 
Byker28i said:
Skoda Octavia 1.9tdi is group 7 insurance so you'll be struggling to get much cheaper.
Realistically, you just need to stick with low insurance group cars until you've built up a few years no claims. You're already over 25 so that helps
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http://www.thatcham.org/abigrouprating/index.jsp?page=347

TDI Classic (90) is class 6; SDI classic (68) is class 5 (2000-2004)

I don't really know what that means, but how much lower do I need to go?

A newer car with enough space for myself would be better but I am limited to around £2k + £5-600 for initial repairs including MOT, tires and brakes. I thought about Peugeot 407 1.6 diesel but that is strangely more expensive to insure! Could someone explain what I should be looking for?
 
Arkady2 said:
Same as any car though, surely - regardless of fuel?
Are diesels any less reliable than petrol engines? Quite the opposite, I'd have thought...
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Built for the same purpose, just about the same Id imagine.

Commercial engines are built to last longer aren’t they, like a quarter of a mill life time on a truck compared to 100 thou on a car type thing.

But then a commercial vehicle engines like my VW van which is the 2.5TDI …is the same engine as the Golf and an Audi car of those years, so perhaps those engines will last as long as the vans.

----

I don’t do cars but that Vauxhall 100thou guarantee sounds good ..doesn’t it?
 
Pretty sure that diesel engines have fewer moving parts and aren't quite as 'fragile'.
An average diesel should last in exess of 200k miles with minimal maintenance, whereas most petrol engines start needing to be more carefully looked-after past 100K miles...

Most petrol V6-engined cars I've owned 'suddenly' need more work after about 90K (things like water-pumps and other peripheral engine-bay bits), despite regular maintenance and cossetting, whereas my ex-wife's diesel Vectra went on forever - I know for a fact she forgets to service it sometimes for two or three years at a time.
 
Lol &#8230;As a professional mechanic (on bikes) I do sometimes wonder if half the faults people get are actually caused by errors of servicing crews&#8230;.yep! :gag:


Diesels have to deal with far greater pressures, pretty similar in complication to petrol engines otherwise Id suggest.. they also make more heat and so have larger chunkier cooling systems. But that means heck all I think &#8230;. The engines in Japanese bikes for instant are tough as heck, full of tiny parts, but like 200 thou is easy if you put your mind to it&#8230;. The Japanese FI systems are superb and bullet proof, compared to say to BMW system which are touchy and pathetic.

There&#8217;s a guy called Nick Saunders, he&#8217;s the worlds solo unaccompanied god of round the world biking&#8230;20 odd times now. ..few years ago his record was challenged. ..so he set off alone on his favourite bike, a Japanese road race bike called a Yamaha R1, 1000cc&#8217;s of pure race bike, Really, you couldn&#8217;t choose a model to be further than the design of an off road bike that most of us would consider to be the correct choice.

Deserts and all, no problem, few falls, but no faults..&#8230;

&#8230; he completed his tour in 18 days. :eek:
 
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Thing is, I just know that as soon as I say anything about how great the engines in my cars are, they'll explode on me, showering piston fragments all over the place...

I'm saying nothing...
 
I'd suggest diesel longevity may have something to do with revs, my Focus likes to be upchanged at no more than 4K, (nearer 3K so it drops to 2K in the next gear and max torque). The average petrol car is revved higher, so all things being equal (they rarely are though) I'd expect a low revving diesel to last longer.

Matt
 
MatBin said:
I'd suggest diesel longevity may have something to do with revs, my Focus likes to be upchanged at no more than 4K, (nearer 3K so it drops to 2K in the next gear and max torque). The average petrol car is revved higher, so all things being equal (they rarely are though) I'd expect a low revving diesel to last longer.

Matt
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There's methods in your theory there Matt, but an additional pointer on diesel angines is the fact they are built to a heavier specification, using pure compression to ignite the fuel as opposed to a spark. This means greater pressure in the internals and therefore needs building up to with stand that.

I run a couple of diesels both for fun and for commuting. I struggle to get less than 40mpg in either and that's pushing it. I'm not the lightest of drivers and the performance diesel is just that, a performance car topping 60 in around the 6s mark.

I also happen to do 30k+ miles per year so there is the cost of fuel helping me out in my diesel decision. I bought the passat for the long distance run to work each week (250 miles e/w) which is a big comfy and so far reliable car. The Octavia sounds like a good decision for the OP, and I can only suggest over that maybe looking at the mondeo either petrol or diesel. These are a greater marketed vehicle which should have lower repair and servicing costs in the eyes of insurance companies. Again, ford have a good and bad reputation depending upon who you speak to.

What to buy? Well, I bought diesel and expensive but both my miles and pay check warrant it, the OP's doesn't have the same luxuries.

As for driving in snow, m+s (or snow) tyres are highly recommended by quite a few guys here at work in Aberdeen, and by me who doesn't have them. All I have is a constant nightmare getting 18 inch very low profile tyres stuck at every snowflake!

K
 
Joe T said:
Petrols dont have injectors, and most dont have turbos.
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All modern petrol engines have fuel injectors now, rather than the traditional carburetted method of supplying fuel to the engine.



Arkady2 said:
Pretty sure that diesel engines have fewer moving parts and aren't quite as 'fragile'.
An average diesel should last in exess of 200k miles with minimal maintenance, whereas most petrol engines start needing to be more carefully looked-after past 100K miles...
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The compression ratio of a diesel engine is usually 2 to 3 times as much as it is in a petrol engine, so it is simply tougher due to the very high pressures inside the engine block.



MatBin said:
I'd suggest diesel longevity may have something to do with revs, my Focus likes to be upchanged at no more than 4K, (nearer 3K so it drops to 2K in the next gear and max torque). The average petrol car is revved higher, so all things being equal (they rarely are though) I'd expect a low revving diesel to last longer.

Matt
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Perhaps, but in practise I don't think it makes much difference. So many drivers have this mindset that you have to be in the highest gear as quick as possible, and that the engine will suddenly explode if you raise it above 2,000 RPM. I'd be surprised if anything more than a few % of your average punter even knows what engine labouring is.
 
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Yes, labouring along side cold starts, over revving, and not getting the engine hot evey time its run, are the three engine killers in my book...not much you can do about one of those though.


Arkady2 said:
Thing is, I just know that as soon as I say anything about how great the engines in my cars are, they'll explode on me, showering piston fragments all over the place...

I'm saying nothing...
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Lol ..I so understand, lets not tempt fate then. :thumbs:


I mean there actually not that nice I&#8217;ve heard &#8230;. :shrug: :D
 
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