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So want to reshuffle family car line up now but have to have an eye on eldest boy learning next spring too.
Would be useful to be able to see a full list of manual cars up to 5 yrs old that have 1 - 1.2l engines to start to create a shortlist.
Does such a thing exist as my googling hasn’t turned anything up?
Try by insurance group?
Not sure if that is an option but engine size and number of cylinders is kind of out of date now with modern drive train options.
Autotrader
But I wouldn’t limit the search by engine size, we have had 1.0 Fiestas that have cost more to insure than posh fast BMW’s
The answer, as always, is Fiat Panda
+1 for Autotrader; used car search is simple and you can refine search to meet your criteria.
Engine size is largely irrelevant.
First car I drove after I passed was a 2.5L turbo diesel Landrover 110, first of my own was a 1.6 petrol and my second was a 1.9 non-turbo diesel.
Insurance costs of these three went in reverse order of engine size, biggest was cheapest, smallest was most expensive
Don't go off engine size.
Our older 1.4 16v Ibiza is lower power and lower insurance group than new 1.0 TSI.
Also look for 'grandad' cars - the above Ibiza is cheaper to insure as it's the estate... Think things like i20, Jazz... Anything trendier is seen as more nickable and/or schporty.
Some sites let you filter on 0-60 times, this can help get things into the right ballpark now that small turbo petrol engines are here.
Ok thanks for the tips especially re 0-60 times. Assumed small 1l was possibly only route as that’s what all our friends have done but this would be wife’s car used by son not his alone.
If you search for 1.0l cars you'll come up with loads of quite quick cars with turbos.
It´s worth getting actual quotes from insurers. We ended up with a 1.2 Peugeot 208 for our daughter to learn in as the insurance was OK. At the time we had quotes for some other small cars and they were a fair bit more expensive, even though I would have guessed them to be cheaper to insure (If I recall correctly, I think Fiesta´s were actually quite expensive to insure).
IME car insurance costs don´t necessarily have a direct a relationship with performance. I had a V8 M3 which at the time was less to insure than my wife´s diesel estate. She eventually swapped it for a V8 Mustang and it literally halved her insurance cost.
It's been said, but Autotrader, just search by minimum and mazimum engine size nationwide and you'll see pretty much every car available.
Rule number 1 of learning to drive - It must be as unfashionable as possible to give a return of "Beamer factor 5"
