What car?

What car would you have under budget?

  • Octavia 2.0 TDI PD 140

    Votes: 20 45.5%

  • Octavia 1.9 TDI PD 105

    Votes: 4 9.1%

  • Superb 1.9 TDI PD 130

    Votes: 5 11.4%

  • Avensis 2.2 D-4D

    Votes: 7 15.9%

  • Accord 2.2 diesel executive and highest insurance

    Votes: 13 29.5%
  • Total voters
    44
LongLensPhotography

LongLensPhotography

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I need to upgrade to a sensible and v. reliable car.

This will be used for everything: commuting to work (involves a long steep-ish hill), photographic trips anywhere around Somerset, Devon, Dorset, Exmoor, Cornwall and Wales, and finally an odd shopping day out in Birmingham, and some conferences all round the country. Mostly it's just for me, but on an odd occasion there are passengers.

The original list was: 2004-07 non-DPF diesels (up to £4 and if I can LESS) Octavia 1.9 TDI PD 105bhp or Avensis 2.0 D4D. I also thought about Golf plus 1.9tdi.

I've spoken to a mechanic yesterday.

He thinks I should go for 130+ bhp engine, as anything less is 'not powerful enough' in a family saloon / estate (He's got 6L!). Could I get a second opinion on this? Is 130-140 a must? 90 on A170CDI clearly isn't.

He was OK with Octavia, but pointed to 2.0L TDI Pd, or perhaps Superb 1.9TD PD 130

Avensis 2.0 d4d was swiftly crossed out from the list, leaving an option of 2.2L. Golf was wiped out very passionately.

Accord 2.2 Executive is going to hit me very hard on insurance.

Any thoughts? I suppose I need to do some road tests now somehow (who's in their sane mind gonna give me their car for a day?! renal - not sure I can find any that age). Going round the block isn't going to help much with my hills and motorway
 
that's an interesting thought. How good is chipped 105 compared with 130 in terms of performance and reliability? There are many more 105s on the market than all the others added together
 
a PD105 will revo remap from 105bhp 184lb/ft to (approx) 135bhp 235lb/ft so about the same as as stock PD130.

reliablility shouldnt be an issue, unless the 105 has a chocolate clutch.
 
How many miles per year will you be doing? Diesels don't usually make sense, especially for shorter journeys, until you're doing about 18-20k+ per annum. They're not always a great deal more economical when you're hacking around town, and they're noisy, rough, laggy and generally not very flexible. They're also a lot more complex and generally not as reliable as a petrol engined equivalent; they have things like turbos, high pressure injectors, diesel particulate filters and dual mass flywheels which can all fail and land you with a nice 3 or 4 figure repair bill, negating all those fuel savings.

For £4k I'd be looking for a nice high spec 2.0 petrol Ford Mondeo or Honda Accord. You'll get 40MPG easily on a longer journey in something like that.

If you really want a VW diesel then go for an older 1.9 TDI as they're a bit 'rough and ready' but they have a fairly smooth power delivery and they're generally pretty bulletproof, certainly against modern diesels which are designed to get 2000MPG and cost nothing to tax each year. Which of course matters when you're spending £20k on a car, apparently, but I digress..! :)
 
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i should point out that my commute is motorway and town driving, combined i still get 50mpg or thereabouts.

had the PD130 since last october (remapped prior to the previous owner too) and engine has been nothing but bombproof, power band comes in around 1700rpm so not laggy at all, not in the slightest bit noisey especially compared to some older diesels ive owned.

servicing costs have been reasonable too.

oh beg your pardon i had a split boost hose at the MOT last month, still pulled like a train, ran very well and only dropped a couple of MPG lol. otherwise maintenance has cost most in the tyre dept (i have stupid size tyres), had a drop link and a top mount replaced at 90k.
 
hcanning said:
How many miles per year will you be doing? Diesels don't usually make sense, especially for shorter journeys, until you're doing about 18-20k+ per annum. They're not always a great deal more economical when you're hacking around town, and they're noisy, rough, laggy and generally not very flexible. They're also a lot more complex and generally not as reliable as a petrol engined equivalent; they have things like turbos, high pressure injectors, diesel particulate filters and dual mass flywheels which can all fail and land you with a nice 3 or 4 figure repair bill, negating all those fuel savings.

For £4k I'd be looking for a nice high spec 2.0 petrol Ford Mondeo or Honda Accord. You'll get 40MPG easily on a longer journey in something like that.

If you really want a VW diesel then go for an older 1.9 TDI as they're a bit 'rough and ready' but they have a fairly smooth power delivery and they're generally pretty bulletproof, certainly against modern diesels which are designed to get 2000MPG and cost nothing to tax each year. Which of course matters when you're spending £20k on a car, apparently, but I digress..! :)
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Thanks, but isn't petrol engine pretty much dead after 100k? Diesels go to 250k-500k with right maintenance. There are some unlucky cars, both petrol and diesel - I am currently going through 'divorce' with one. All cars eat tires, oil, filters, suspension, clutch, gearboxes, exhaust, etc.
I'll be doing at the very least 10k next year, in town about: 2x4x300=2400 miles, the remainder being lots of motorway and B road miles.
 
daugirdas said:
Thanks, but isn't petrol engine pretty much dead after 100k? .
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Maybe once but not anymore, modern engines are usually quite good and engine oils are also much better than they used to be.

A diesel motor will generally hold together for longer because it is a more solid object, having a much higher compression ratio than a petrol engine hence needing to be tougher, but being diesel doesn't necessarily guarantee that it will "run forever".

There are loads of things that can kill diesels too, including the dreaded runaway.
 
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daugirdas said:
Thanks, but isn't petrol engine pretty much dead after 100k? Diesels go to 250k-500k with right maintenance.
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No, absolutely not. That's a myth that harks back to the 'olden days' of motoring.

Look after any modern engine and it'll last forever. It's likely a car will either deteriorate into a pile of iron oxide, get written off, or get scrapped because it's "uneconomical to repair" various mechanical parts long before the engine gives up. We have a 2000 Honda Accord in our family (I passed it on to my dad after doing about 30k trouble free miles in it) which has done about 101k and the engine is still as smooth as silk. The key is proper maintenance. You'll kill an engine in 50k miles if you thrash it from cold and never change the oil.

Except in a diesel engine you've got a turbocharger, high pressure injectors (which regularly fail, see Ford's TDCI engines), dual mass flywheels (which are designed to absorb engine-borne vibrations, but due to their relatively fragile nature against a solid flywheel, and the lumpy, excessive torque produced by a diesel engine are quite prone to failure), diesel particulate filters (which clog up and require replacing if the car is only used for shorter journeys), all of which can cost you a fortune. Great on a new car with a warranty, but otherwise...!

Not to mention the fact they're generally slow, noisy, smelly they vibrate the whole car at idle and have a very lumpy power curve which makes for a drive that isn't as smooth as a decent petrol engine.

When you say 2x4x300 town miles, are you referring to two miles, four times a week, or...?! Because short journeys are absolutely not good for modern diesel engines.

What car have you got at the moment?
 
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hcanning said:
Except in a diesel engine you've got a turbocharger, high pressure injectors (which regularly fail, see Ford's TDCI engines), dual mass flywheels (which are designed to absorb engine-borne vibrations, but due to their relatively fragile nature against a solid flywheel, and the lumpy, excessive torque produced by a diesel engine are quite prone to failure), diesel particulate filters (which clog up and require replacing if the car is only used for shorter journeys), all of which can cost you a fortune. Great on a new car with a warranty, but otherwise...!
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never had any of those issues in any of the diesels ive owned. closest ive come is a clutch failure on a 406 HDI but that had done nearly 200k :lol:
 
I dare say a 406 HDI pre-dates the whole eco-*******s 'diesel desire' and they're pretty solid engines :) Although I'd probably rather have one of the XUD-engined 406s and fill it up with vegetable oil :D

Maybe I should have used the word 'modern' in my rant ;)
 
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Like most diesel-engined cars that aren't twin turbo BMW or Audi 6 or 8 cylinder variants, then ;)
 
If you say so ;)
 
hcanning said:
No, absolutely not. That's a myth that harks back to the 'olden days' of motoring.

Look after any modern engine and it'll last forever. It's likely a car will either deteriorate into a pile of iron oxide, get written off, or get scrapped because it's "uneconomical to repair" various mechanical parts long before the engine gives up. We have a 2000 Honda Accord in our family (I passed it on to my dad after doing about 30k trouble free miles in it) which has done about 101k and the engine is still as smooth as silk. The key is proper maintenance. You'll kill an engine in 50k miles if you thrash it from cold and never change the oil.

Except in a diesel engine you've got a turbocharger, high pressure injectors (which regularly fail, see Ford's TDCI engines), dual mass flywheels (which are designed to absorb engine-borne vibrations, but due to their relatively fragile nature against a solid flywheel, and the lumpy, excessive torque produced by a diesel engine are quite prone to failure), diesel particulate filters (which clog up and require replacing if the car is only used for shorter journeys), all of which can cost you a fortune. Great on a new car with a warranty, but otherwise...!

Not to mention the fact they're generally slow, noisy, smelly they vibrate the whole car at idle and have a very lumpy power curve which makes for a drive that isn't as smooth as a decent petrol engine.

When you say 2x4x300 town miles, are you referring to two miles, four times a week, or...?! Because short journeys are absolutely not good for modern diesel engines.

What car have you got at the moment?
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OK, diesel is noisier and rougher than petrol. I am not exactly buying a car for beauty contest though. Laggy? A170 CDI (that's what I sadly have) is very responsive, and so is the older Octavia my dad has.

Accord/hr-v is probably the only petrol car i'd consider having, but then at 30mpg combined I'd have to drive considerably less than I do. OK, you can get LPG conversion, which isn't cheap for a car for 2-3 years. Since I've dumped Clio, which was arguably one of the more economic petrols, my fuel bill is 1/3 of what it used to be. Repairs? Both were horrible.

So my driving pattern is as follows:
4 miles up a considerable hill to work, there are absolutely no lights, traffic jams, just some nasty turns, very little stopping, but many gear changes and then fun with parking. On the way back it is very easy downhill.
Other than that I could easily do several hundred motorway and B-road miles a week, depending on my photographic/shopping plans. I do get many 25% hills, and I was strongly advised not to take A-class there ever again.

I need a so called "1-series" car for my driving needs.

btw. one good thing about skodas is their bomb proof exterior. They are indistructable in an accident. not so sure about toyotas - they feel like made from foil.
 
neil_g said:
the people tuning the arse out of the PD lumps would say so ;)
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Because PD engines are the old school and you'll find most newer diesels are considerable more fragile in the hunt for more power/economy.

daugirdas said:
4 miles up a considerable hill to work, there are absolutely no lights, traffic jams, just some nasty turns, very little stopping, but many gear changes and then fun with parking.
Click to expand...

I hope you're not suggesting you need a diesel engine to get up a hill :runaway:
 
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neil_g said:
thats great but the OP is talking about cars with PD lumps?
Click to expand...

I'm more reinforcing the point made by someone else that all diesels will last until the end of time and petrols will all implode as soon as the mileage creeps from 99,999 to 100,000. I also sport a D-4D in the list which happens to be a commonrail engine, I also believe Honda's diesel is too.
 
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Be careful with 2.0 VAG PD engine, it has a habit of stripping the spines on the oil pump drive at quite low mileages (50k or so) and when it goes it wrecks the engine.
 
neil_g said:
the people tuning the arse out of the PD lumps would say so ;)
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Yes let's compare a heavily tuned engine with thousands spent on it to a bog standard 130bhp VW PD unit, shall we? ;)




daugirdas said:
OK, diesel is noisier and rougher than petrol. I am not exactly buying a car for beauty contest though. Laggy? A170 CDI (that's what I sadly have) is very responsive, and so is the older Octavia my dad has.

Accord/hr-v is probably the only petrol car i'd consider having, but then at 30mpg combined I'd have to drive considerably less than I do. OK, you can get LPG conversion, which isn't cheap for a car for 2-3 years. Since I've dumped Clio, which was arguably one of the more economic petrols, my fuel bill is 1/3 of what it used to be. Repairs? Both were horrible.

So my driving pattern is as follows:
4 miles up a considerable hill to work, there are absolutely no lights, traffic jams, just some nasty turns, very little stopping, but many gear changes and then fun with parking. On the way back it is very easy downhill.
Other than that I could easily do several hundred motorway and B-road miles a week, depending on my photographic/shopping plans. I do get many 25% hills, and I was strongly advised not to take A-class there ever again.

I need a so called "1-series" car for my driving needs.

btw. one good thing about skodas is their bomb proof exterior. They are indistructable in an accident. not so sure about toyotas - they feel like made from foil.
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You need a diesel engine to climb hills? :confused:

What you need is a cheap petrol engined car and to just enjoy the fuss-free driving you'll encounter.

I drive a Ford Mondeo ST220, with a 230bhp 3 litre V6 engine and on a long journey I'll average about 35-37mpg. That's driving at 70mph, none of this 55mph drafting behind lorries nonsense. Ergo, a 2L Mondeo or even 1.6/1.8 Focus will do you nicely. Cars have gearboxes, if you're struggling up a hill in 5th, just change into 4th. The torque of the average diesel engine is negated by the longer gear ratios in the gearbox, so most of the torque isn't transmitted to the wheels.

I once hired a 1.6 Golf Bluemotion (what an absolutely hateful, gutless engine that was) and averaged 29mpg. That's town and dual carriageway driving. Great.
 
To be fair I think modern diesels are not noisy and do have a better fuel consumption than petrols, they are much more refined than they used to be. And to say all diesels are slow is just silly!

As long as you give your car regular runs on a motorway/duel carriageway then low milage shouldn't be a problem.

If you went to one of those car supermarkets they would probably let you test drive?
 
and almost every other diesel engine out there from the last few years.

...meanwhile, here are some puppies.

basket-of-puppies.jpg
 
If your a farmer needing a tractor, look for a diseasel, if not petrol all the way.
 
wisemen said:
If your a farmer needing a tractor, look for a diseasel, if not petrol all the way.
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I am sorry 35mpg on motorway is against my core values. Sorry, end of discussion on that point. I don't want to remember days when I used to spend £50/per week on petrol. Now it down to £15-20 with higher prices. I'd like to keep it this way.

Even a modern frugal 1.2 TSI VAG petrol, which I incidentally had for rental for a day, is horrible on fuel economy. Oh, and it's got a turbo, and CR injectors that will also fail one day. 1.8 old petrol so last century.
 
Hehe, gotta love purchase justification syndrome. To whoever above has to drive a diesel Vauxhall, you have my condolences. I hope the shaking you experience while sitting at traffic lights isn't too irritating. I know it is for me.

I get 35mpg on the motorway. From my 3.0 V6 petrol engine. In something a bit more 'mundane', you should be able to EASILY crack 40. If you can't, then please re-assess your driving style. Oh and in the OP you say your 90bhp A170 isn't adequate. And now you're saying it's "very responsive"?

Edit: Just so that I don't get completely ostracised, called a troll, flamed to the fiery depths of Hades' domain, and then banned from the forum:

I'd choose the Superb from that list. Because it's just a better car than the rest.
 
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daizylindsay said:
If you went to one of those car supermarkets they would probably let you test drive?
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Car supermarkets usually won't let you drive the car until you've signed on the dotted line.

As for diesels being quiet, they are not, they are many things but they are not quiet, anyone who says any different is lying. If you put a 1.7CDTI Vauxhall next to my 1.6 petrol Focus and find that the Vauxhall is quieter, I will be very confused.
 
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hcanning said:
How many miles per year will you be doing? Diesels don't usually make sense, especially for shorter journeys, until you're doing about 18-20k+ per annum. They're not always a great deal more economical when you're hacking around town, and they're noisy, rough, laggy and generally not very flexible. They're also a lot more complex and generally not as reliable as a petrol engined equivalent; they have things like turbos, high pressure injectors, diesel particulate filters and dual mass flywheels which can all fail and land you with a nice 3 or 4 figure repair bill, negating all those fuel savings.
Click to expand...

:agree:

Janesy B said:
I'm more reinforcing the point made by someone else that all diesels will last until the end of time and petrols will all implode as soon as the mileage creeps from 99,999 to 100,000. I also sport a D-4D in the list which happens to be a commonrail engine, I also believe Honda's diesel is too.
Click to expand...

Some petrol engines go this far, 100 000, try nearing 1 000 000....Well Honda's anyway :thumbs:

http://automobiles.honda.com/mile-makers/owner-stories.aspx?Sort=mileage level&Filter=Ruby
 
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Janesy B said:
Car supermarkets usually won't let you drive the car until you've signed on the dotted line.

As for diesels being quiet, they are not, they are many things but they are not quiet, anyone who says any different is lying. If you put a 1.7CDTI Vauxhall next to my 1.6 petrol Focus and find that the Vauxhall is quieter, I will be very confused.
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Ahh yes I thought maybe you could try before you buy but I stand corrected :-)

I don't think anyone's trying to say diesels are quieter than petrols but tbh I'd rather know my car is still running and like to hear some engine noise!

The new diesel audi and others turn off when stationary and you don't get quieter than that!
 
Well my Nissan Micra Diesel which AVERAGES 75 Mpg is not nosiy, lumpy or unresponsive. Then again I don't drive like a 17 year old boy racer.
 
acetone said:
Well my Nissan Micra Diesel which AVERAGES 75 Mpg is not nosiy, lumpy or unresponsive. Then again I don't drive like a 17 year old boy racer.
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Each to their own but I'll wager its not as responsive as a 3.0l V6.
 
daizylindsay said:
Ahh yes I thought maybe you could try before you buy but I stand corrected :-)

I don't think anyone's trying to say diesels are quieter than petrols but tbh I'd rather know my car is still running and like to hear some engine noise!

The new diesel audi and others turn off when stationary and you don't get quieter than that!
Click to expand...


Until they clatter back to life when you need to move off, and it sounds like you've stalled :lol:
 
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