CaptainBeefHeart
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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.
Sounds like you need to shop around! I'm a similar age to you but have a VX220 Turbo, which is group 19 insurance and I'm paying £480 a year with 6 years no claims bonus.
I also have a 1.2l 16v clio for the daily grind and get ~ 55mpg (50% spirited driving on fast B roads 50% M40). So it might be worth checking your tyre pressures and seeing if you can't improve your driving style a bit (lifting earlier so the engine can cut fuel as you approach junctions, rather than maintaining pedal position and then braking hard etc)?
Also - How big are you? As I'm 6ft3" and don't have any issues!?
My insurance company were also happy to cover me on my second car for free for a week after I bought it until I got permenent cover sorted out - so it is worth asking the question!
Don't bother with a diesel unless you are doing ~ 15k miles a year or more.
Agreed.
Not really - older diesel engines are more simple and robust than their petrol alternatives, but things have come full circle with modern turbo diesels.
Petrol engines obviously have fuel injectors too, but modern diesel injectors are much higher precision parts and as such cost much more than a petrol injector! They are also more likely to get blocked up due to the finer spray patterns diesel engines employ for emissions control.
The same applies to the high pressure fuel pumps - diesels are running upto 2000 bar, where as the most advanced direct injection petrols are only running ~ 400 bar - guess which one is more likely to fail if any debris finds its way past the fuel filter and then cost more to replace!!
This is before you even start to worry about DPFs (which aren't fitted to petrol engines). Plus they now need to be serviced more frequently than petrol engines due to fuel in oil contamination..
Don't get me wrong there are some fantastic diesel engines about, but in a small cheap car where you're aiming for good economy over relatively low annual mileages, I'd stick to a decent petrol engine. There will be less to go wrong and it will be cheaper to fix if something does fail.
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