First Buy

UndertheBridge

Hello

Hoping I can get answers to a few questions!

Basically I'm a 20 year old girl who knows nothing about cars, but is on the lookout to purchase one!

It will be my first car, already have driving experience on my parents 1.3 Opel Astra diesel, currently on provisional license but hope to sit the test in January!

I ideally want a 1.1 car (I'm thinking about the cost of tax here), maybe a 2000-2003, hoping not to spend anymore than 2000 euro.

I have a few cars in mind, namely Peugeot 206, Opel Corsa, Toyota Yaris. Have browsed through the Auto Trader and noticed that these seem to be all petrol cars. I have heard that diesel cars are cheaper to run so I would pay a little extra for a diesel car if that is the case. However is there such a big difference, even for a small car? I wont be using it for extremely long journeys, a 10 mile round trip to work each day and a few trips here and there to friends an hours drive away or so maybe once or twice a week.

Is there any diesel models out there that would suit what I would be looking for or is the diesel being cheaper theory a waste of time?

Thanks for your help!

bazz26

You will find it difficult to find a small diesel car like a Yaris, Corsa, etc in Ireland as they tended to cost alot more than their petrol equivilants at the time. That and the fact that the petrol models give very good mpg anyway only a few would justify paying a premium for the diesel over the petrol model.

Given that you do very low mileage I'd stick to petrol, on your budget your more likely to get a nicer petrol small car. I'd recommend the Ford Fiesta as great first car, 1.25 litre gen of an engine and they were really well equipped for the time with things like air conditioning, cd player and alloy wheels.

Something like this:
http://www.driving.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carID=201028198775467

Owen

+1 Bazz, great car. Something like that would be a great first car, plenty of toys, pep when you need it, low insurance, and easy to resell when you're finished with it.

Conor_M1990

http://cars.donedeal.ie/for-sale/cars/1486467

Id go for one of those anytime they will never give you a days bother once there looked after and it would still be cheap to run

djimi

At that kind of engine size and where itll do lowish mileage then youre wasting your time looking for a diesel.

L1011

The smallest diesel on the market in Ireland is the "1.3" (1248cc) Fiat unit and this usually held a 2-3,000 price premium when new over the 1.1 petrol unit. Its also rare enough, there are currently no Panda's with it for sale on carzone. So I'd just stick with petrol, particularly at that mileage.

It was also only introduced in about 2003, so most cars with it would be out of your pricerange; and bigger diesels from that era will have higher tax too.