The Death knell may well be being sounded for my Mondeo. So it is time for my second least thing to do after looking for a new job, looking for a new Car. Oh Happy Day!

I do 12 – 15k a year, really don’t want to spend more than 4k absolute tops. I don’t really care if its not too exciting, but decent MPG, fair bit of power, and I should be able to fit a bike in the back with the seats without taking wheels off (that important that bit). This means Proper Estate of old, a box on wheels basically.

I don’t care about lovely interiors or fancy paint (they wouldn’t stay that way), and a bit of ground clearance would be good, (trail builder I spend a lot of time on forest tracks). Given it will be an older car affordability of parts is also a factor. I’ve owned a subaru, loved it, but it failed big time on this issue. And if there’s button on the dash to make a small model of the moon pop out on a stick, that too 😉

But seriously, I’m on a budget, those are the things that matter to me, your thoughts & experiences would be welcome in informing my next automotive-gamble. 😆

Citroen C5 estate?

😕

2.0 Petrol is bullet proof, not that great on fuels but runs forever.

You seem to have described a mondeo? 😉 Fat diesel, underspend your budget to give you some maintenance clearance, sorted. And £4000 will buy a not-that-old, not very sheddy one, this is far from bangernomics.

I suppose you could underspend your budget to compensate for higher running costs though? Outback with the 2.5 in decent nick is doable for £2500 or therabouts, it’ll cost more in tax, parts and fuel but it’ll take quite a while to exceed the underspend- and that’ll give you better trailbuildy manners.

Another Mondeo

Actually a later C5 estate is not a bad shout. Can be had for cheap and if it has already done lots of miles and has a good service history and needed minimal repairs chances are it will do a lot more miles.

The big stuff with Citroen seems to happen early on it their lives. My mum had a C4 and it was still going strong 120k miles later when she traded it in for another.

Boot is huge as well.

Or another Mondeo.

Another Mondeo

Quite agree. I had one for 8 years, I thought it was great, my wife hated it (she called it “the shed”), covered in scrapes and dents on the outside, mud and stuff on the inside. Solid engine, cheap parts, reliable.

VW Passat, mines on 183,500 miles, got back from a 3000 mile trip to Spain and France on Sunday went in for an MOT yesterday and only needed a rear shock (or somink i don’t really know what they’re talking about) , so £60 (+ MOT fee) later I’ve got another 12 months out of it.

If you don’t get a Mondeo, I bet you’ll wish you had.

I’ve got a 2004 BMW 320d touring. Other than a blown engine ( 😯 ) shortly after I got it it’s been very reliable and cost very little to maintain. No idea on MPG but I’d guess at around 40 on average – I probably do about the same mileage as you and mainly on short ( <20 miles) runs.

I can get a complete bike in the back no problems, and it has roof rails so bars and racks go on easy. 2 litre turbo so it’s pretty quick (it’s the M Sport version if that means anything). For your purposes I’d say don’t go for the M as the larger wheels with low profile tyres probably won’t be that great on forest tracks.

Interior is (was) very nice, takes a lot of abuse (bikes, tip runs, kids, dog) but still looks OK. It’s currently on 114k miles and I see no reason why it won’t get to 200k easily.

When I re-insured it this year I think the insurance web site valued it at about 4k. All in all I think it’s a great car and intend to drive it for a good few years yet.

Otherwise I’d maybe look at an Audi All Road. No idea if you can get them cheap but they look pretty handy.

E46 is a good shout, but you’ll not get a bike in the back with wheels on.

Mondeo estate without a doubt. £4k should get a 2005ish decent mileage Ghia X or something with loads of toys. DMF and clutch change at ~100k and it’ll be good for another 100k miles.

E46 is a good shout, but you’ll not get a bike in the back with wheels on.

I can! Depends how big your bike is I suppose, but I’ve had a few in there:

Small ASR5
Medium Stumpy FSR
51cm Road bike
Medium Spesh Camber

Skoda Octavia 4×4 (ground clearance, big, good on fuel)£3,500 seems to get you a 2005 – 2007 version with 100ish thousand miles.

A Van an option if you’re going to be off road a bit?

I can! Depends how big your bike is I suppose, but I’ve had a few in there:

With both wheels on? 😯

Another Mondeo, mk3 I assume.

I’ve just gone through this process with a similar budget 2-4K but the nearer 2 the better. I considered an outback, Impreza Gx and BMW 3 / 5 Touring but ended up with a TDCI Mondeo for just over 2K – seems hard to beat based on running costs and reliability.

I had a mondeo tdci 130, when it was running best car I’ve ever had until 3 injectors failed at 110k. Now have an octy vrs mk1. Reliable but too small for me. Then looked at Scooby wrx’s too small including the outbacks and legacy’s. Have just bought a 2006 mondeo 2.0 petrol ghia hatch 66k on the clock with all the toys for 2k. It’s massive bike will fit in the back with seats down with wheels on. Now just need to sell the Vrs. Tried to find a decent 2.0l petrol mondy mk3 estate but they are like hens teeth now.

Just got an older Octavia 4×4 1.8t for £800
Don’t do the miles we used to as have company vehicles, otherwise it would have been Mondeo again.
Volvo V50 was a bit disappointing and hard to work on.

With both wheels on?

Yep, not all those bikes at once! Seats down, rear wheel in first, up against the back of the front passenger seat, turn the bars slightly, close the boot. Easy.

Yep, not all those bikes at once! Seats down, rear wheel in first, up against the back of the front passenger seat, turn the bars slightly, close the boot. Easy.

Cool! I’ve only looked at mine and thought naaah – I’m not going to get one in there. I’m going to give it a try on Thursday though now 🙂

Just got to 165k on my 54 plate Mundaneo TDCI 130 and starting to think about replacing it now.
Shortlist at the moment is basically ….. another Mundaneo I think.
Probably the 163ps version this time. I’ll be scouring Autotrader for the 2-3 yo trade-ins in the next month or so.

Only mentioned the Citroen C5 cos’ my mates got one. Covered 190k now IIRC and yes it had some work done on it at about 60k under warranty (can’t think what it was) but it’s been a huge barge, load gathering, mile munching bucket of Frenchness for the last 4 years he’s had it. He doesn’t ride so can’t vouch for space/bikes in the back but we can get 3 main sails/4 jibs/3 spinakers in it and me and another mate no problem. Oh, it’s got a towbar on it too for pulling Int14’s around the country.

Have a mate who is having horror problems with electrics on a C5, and it’s only a 2009.
Personally, am on my third Passat diesel estate. 55mpg every fill, cheap parts and a bomber drivetrain. Very good crash protection too…
Can also thoroughly second the idea of a diesel Octavia, although it’s slightly smaller; if you could find a Skoda Superb for the budget, might be a winner.

177k on our passat now. when it dies I’ll probably get another.

engine is good but a few niggly electronic faults recently. OBD2 reader for £13 was a good investment.

Volvo XC 70 good for huge miles and parts are cheaper than you’d think.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201407246066689/sort/pricedesc/onesearchad/used%2Cnearlynew%2Cnew/make/volvo/advert-type/Classified/postcode/kt89lg/model/xc70/radius/1500/price-to/4500/page/1/usedcars?logcode=p

Just popped out for a spin on the road bike. Thanks for all the responses.

It did indeed occur to me as I was typing that I was describing a Mondeo. I want a mondeo, that isn’t about to die.

As others have also had my problem is injectors, its going to a special place for a detailed test on them (my garage only has basic diagnostic thingamabobbs for this), so if they can’t be hit with hammer/wiped with a damp cloth/what ever you do to them, it would be 1k+.

This seems like a likely no to me. Car is 10yrs old, and only 85k, but the last 11 were me in the last year, the previous 40 my dad over 8 years – pottering about on short rural journeys, with nasty cheap supermarket diesel.

Following a recent open up of the injection manifold (is that a thing? sounds like a thing) it was FULL of nasty crap, diameter of the openings was halved. Work I’ve had done on it has increase the mpg from 45 to near 60.

All this is to say he seems to have done everything you are not supposed to do modern diesels. Mileage not has fault. However my garage are warning me off old diesels, they get a lot of these in with similar problems around the electronics of the engine management. But I would bet their clientele is mostly older folk like my old man.

I do thrash mine, do more miles and put better fuel in to so could be I’ll not kill one so quickly. All this is to say I had discounted diesel, but I may have been hasty.

Passat had slipped my mind. They have the sort of capacity I’m looking for.

I’m probably looking to avoid 4wd, though I did like it, and it does make me weather proof, which is good. I would rather spend 2k, 4 is the maximum possible but I’d really rather not.

Cheers all, more input welcome… Thinking about it the newer more miles option may also be better than what I got this time which was older less miles, bad thing for a Deisel really… still it was free 😀

Accord estate then. I’ve been very happy with mine, it’s bulletproof and 2k will get you a nice one. I’ve got a 2L petrol it’s not too bad on fuel and has all the toys and a massive boot there isn’t a better lasting estate for the cash IMHO.

Thats a common issue with a lot of cars fron that era, the EGR valve returns exhurst gas back in to the engine to lower emmissions.
A £4 EGR blanking plate and ten minutes under the bonnet to loosen (not even undo) two bolts sorts that on a Mk3 Mondeo.
At 85k yours is just about run in. My 04 130 TDci has just about got 120k on it and its as sweet as.

Wouldn’t even consider a petrol car. My mkiv 2003 tdi golf estate is the best car I have ever owned. £3300 to buy a few years back, 20k + miles a year, 2 services/year @ £90 each.
3 bikes(upright) in the back & bods (seated) at a push, 1 bike easily. Not too big, 64mpg on the recent run to Wales, with road tax at £135.

At 12-14k it’s sort of getting more of a case for a diesel. However a 2.0l Accord petrol is a pretty good shout. Super reliable and pretty economical. Otherwise Skoda/Mondeo/Aventis are the sort of cars you want.

unklehomered – Member

As others have also had my problem is injectors, its going to a special place for a detailed test on them (my garage only has basic diagnostic thingamabobbs for this), so if they can’t be hit with hammer/wiped with a damp cloth/what ever you do to them, it would be 1k+.

I had to learn about this earlier this year… A brand new injector for most of the 2.0s is £135 (or a remanufactured one can be a little less- I can’t see any reason to buy a refurb though with new ones at this price).

You also need a special tool to remove them which is about £15 (the big socket- you don’t need the injector setting tool people mention, that’s bollocks, you just need a 13mm spanner and eyes), and you need software to recode which you can do with any windows laptop and the fsuper dongle and software which cost me about £15… (and also reads and clears fault codes- really useful to have)

The actual fitting and removing is pretty simple, it’s a little fiddly but roughly as hard as changing a bottom bracket- I’ve got good at it now, it takes about 10 minutes.

But it’s an expensive diagnostic obviously, you don’t want to be doing it unless you know it’s got a bad injector/injectors. What’s the symptoms, smoke? Mine had 3 out of 4 fail over a short period from 110000 to 115000 miles so it does seem a bit like if one goes, plan for the others.

And yeah, if you keep it, egr blank should stop the choking up thing.

Northwind, cheers for that, very helpful.

The local garage’s basic equipment for testing showed 2 really bad (returning too much fuel to the fueltank I think he said?) and two not great. But he did stress their equipment was basic and they usually send to an auto electrics specialist nearby. I can’t do without the car right now so was going to give them a call and go to them direct. The symptoms which caused me to go the garage though are exactly those described by an EGR video I just watched , drop in power, flashing glow plug light when going over 2k (ie using turbo). So might try that too, but it does sounds like injectors on the way out as well.

Hmmm…

Huge cheap estate? Volvo v70, Octavia Diesel, Honda Accord, Passat, Avensis, Mazda 6 (very nice), Saab 95 estate.

No worries, STW more or less told me what to do so just passing it on! Was surprised how simple it all was after the horror stories tbh but diagnosis was dead easy for mine (enormous clouds of smoke!)

I drove a mondeo with a fubbered EGR when I was car-hunting, that was no fun at all… Lurch lurch lurch. It didn’t throw a fault but the mk3 has a couple of different variations on the egr theme. Mine is a nice basic vacuum one with no sensors, easily cleaned and easily blanked 😉

Did you work out for yourself which one wasn’t working or get someone to do that for you?

My old mk3 2.0 petrol mondy certainly ticks the reliability box, but fuel consumption is in the low 30s or less pootling around town. Nice simple car tho with very little to go wrong

Honda Accord petrol estate.

Wouldn’t bother with a diesel if you only do that many miles per year.

I know you said you want to put the bike in with the wheels on and seats down, but the accord was the only one which would take my 160mm travel bike in the boot with the seats up easily (wheels off, but nothing sticking in the air or over the rear seats, just goes in nicely flat on the boot floor with clearance for the rear mech etc).

If you spent £2k sorting your current car out you’d save £2k