And for once the answer is not an Octavia estate.

Mrs Lunge needs a new car, her 15 year old Punto is costing far too much each month and it is time to cut our losses.

She has about £4k to spend and wants something “reliable and fun” in that order. She only drives about 4 miles to work each way and does a thrash up to Manchester once a month so petrol is the fuel of choice. She needs 4 seats and a boot but does not need to carry bikes as that is what my car is for. The key thing is she tends to run cars until they die rather than changing them every few years, hence the 15 years old Punto so whatever she buys needs to be able to be kept running.

Any ideas mighty STW?

Polo?
Yaris?
Fabia?

She only drives about 4 miles to work each way

*the hive mind will judge you now*

Mini Countryman?

£4k will be cutting it fine.

She only drives about 4 miles to work each way

*prepare to be judged!*

[/quote]

We’ve been togther over 8 years, she has ridden a bike twice in that time, you can judge away but she isn’t going to do it!

Golf, Corsa, Yaris, Bettle (I spotted one on a 51 plate in really nice nik, done 41k FSH for £3k the other day) Fabia, Forfour, 206/207, 306/307, A2, 3series compact, Merc Coupe (just about) Kangoo, Megane..

Mrs Bol has a Panda 100hp. It’s an absolute hoot and fits your requirements from what you’ve said. Our only problem is that we now fight over it.

Honda civic?

Toyota Celica?

Very reliable, reasonably fun, you’ll get a good one for £4k, and if it’s going to be ran for years parts will be cheap.

I didn’t know you could get panda 100hp’s for 4k. They are great.

‘Reliable and Fun’ don’t normally go together.

How about a Fiat Grand Punto – sports version. Fiat reliability is actually ahead of all the Gereman brands in a recent What Car reliability survey.

Ford’s are always good fun to drive and pretty reliable too nowadays. Can’t go wrong with perhaps one of the newer Ford Puma’s or perhaps a Fiesta ST, Zetec S or similar.

My personal choice though if I had 4k to spend would be a Fiat Panda 100hp. Great fun, you don’t see many around so a little bit special and a low mileage 07 year car a snip at a mere 4k

Panda 100hp

They might take a bit of looking for at that price, but they’re out there.

How about a fiesta of some description, one of my maes just sold a 06 plate zetec with leather etc for less than that, decent little motors

Oldish Mazda MX5?

Our 2006 Suzuki Swift was an absolute hoot, totally reliable and you’d get a nice one at your budget.

+1 for the 100hp crowd…. more smiles per mile!

Or you may get a facelift (54reg ish) Yaris T-Sport for that money too…. very underated warm-hatch.

I’ve had both the above and would be hard picked to say which was better (Panda Handled better, but Yaris is more practical/hard wearing).

Honda Jazz I’d say 🙂

Petrol Ibiza FR?
It’s got the 1.8 petrol that’s fitted to tons of VW’s, Audi’s etc so should be reliable – enough poke to be fun and they handle OK.

If I was looking I’d snap up a Panda 100hp for 4k. I didn’t know they had got so cheap, I’m going to check my piggy bank…

Micra, “jelly mould” shape.

Oh god. I never thought it would come to this.

Clarkson agrees with me:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article1524371.ece

Kill me now.

Clarkson needs a driving lesson. Overtaking trucks on the motorway in a low powered car means building up speed in your own lane when a truck appears on the horizon so you can move out to the next lane when appropriate. Alternatively use the strategy we used on the ‘bahns with a T2. Indicate and start moving out regardless of what’s coming up. When one of the overtaking cars starts flashing its headlights you can safely assume the drivers foot is hovering over the brake and can pull out safely. (obviously be prepared to pull back in but I doubt you’ll ever have to) 💡

I’ll second Flash’s MX5. My sister-in-law asked me the same question, I answered MX5 and she bought one. We did the rounds of a car supermarket just for the test drives and once she’d driven the MX she lost interest in all the others.

if she likes fiat, a panda is excellent value

Otherwise something korean (kia picanto? Hyundai i10?) with the majority of its 7 year warranty left

Civic Type R mmmmmmnippy

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201136414692250/sort/priceasc/usedcars/model/civic/make/honda/postcode/kt89lg/radius/1501/page/10/keywords/type_r?logcode=p

if you can get 100hp for £4k then that’d be on my list. Fabia vRS? £4k will get you one and it’ll run forever and certainly ticks the reliable and fun boxes. Cheap tax and insurance too.

In a similar vein, 9N Polo GTs might be in your budget?

MX5? Unless they’ve changed the design, neither of my 3 ever had 4 seats 😉

Someone suggested an Ibiza FR – good call.

Might be a squeeze but there must be a fair few mk1 TTs knocking around for £4k. 4 ‘seats’ in them.

Corsa? C shape, SRI? Nice little underrated cars.

TypeR? Or for cheaper running costs, the 1.6 Sport that looks a bit like a TypeR. Loved my old one.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWnAdB-vkXo[/video]
Long, but humourous SFW video about car recommendations online…

the mini would really tick a lot of these boxes, and your wife probably likes them cos she’s a girl

06ish Focus LX

Ford Focus ST 170.

Available in both hatch and estate, quick (but not silly), understated, loads of room, good build quality, a lot of fun, quite cheap now.

Next on my list would be a Honda Civic Type R for the above reasons.

I say this as an Octavia vRS estate driver. 😉

How about a fiesta of some description, one of my maes just sold a 06 plate zetec with leather etc for less than that, decent little motors

Zetec Sports and STs could be worth a look – great handling cars.

How about a fiesta of some description, one of my maes just sold a 06 plate zetec with leather etc for less than that, decent little motors

Well he is mad then – he should get more than £4k for an 06 Fiesta. (Unless it was a wreck).

How about an 07 Mazda 3 2.0l Sport? I know someone with one for sale…

😉

How about the bigger Smart? </leftfield>

the mini would really tick a lot of these boxes

only if the 4 seat requirement didn’t mean useable ones 😉

MX-5.

Nothing else comes close for reliable and fun. Loved ours – only car I’ve ever been sad to sell.

She needs 4 seats

Smart ForFour? You’d need the Brabus (no idea how much they go for – £6k minimum?) – we test drove a (non Brabus) one and it was bordering on being dangerously slow and that was pootling around in the city. Walking would have been quicker.

Oh, and supposely if you want a Fiesta, the Zetec-S is meant to have better handling than the ST but be ever so slightly slower.

307 cc, loved mine

Seat Ibiza TDI sport 100bhp, remapped to 150bhp. Cost me 4K to buy on a 56 plate 12 months ago. Great driving car, sounds like a tractor at tick over though.