Need to get fuel costs down. Advice please.

telecaster

Wife drives: 2003 Kia Carens, Annual Mileage about 14500, current mileage 80000
I drive: 2005 Seat Cordoba, Annual Mileage about 5500, current mileage 50000

Between us we spend over Eur350 per month on petrol, and I'd like to get it down.

Looking at this website the miles per gallon on the cars is 43.5 and 34.9 respectively.

We don't need a car as big as a Carens. I'm thinking of trading both in to get two cars which are more fuel efficient.

Not fussed about type of car, colour or extras etc. Just want 1 reliable economic family car for the wife to drive and a second smaller car in case I need to be somewhere and my wife has the car. We live in a remote area so on occasion both cars are needed.

I don't want to put any money towards a trade, merely swap stock with a dealer.

Looks like Fiesta, Corsa, Citroen C3, Golf territory is the way to go?

All advice welcome

thanks.

PS Yes, I know Step 1 is ''swap cars with wife"!

Best thing to do with the cordoba is to hold on to it, 43mpg is quite good and any improvement on it achieved by trading it is a false economy.

The likes of a 1.6 petrol Avensis would achieve savings in fuel over the Carens.

Might not be pleasant reading but it will save money and be more cost effective than replacing both.

Edit, swapping with a dealer is a non runner, sell the Carens privately is the way to go, take what you get.

colm_mcm

why not swap cars?

Bigus

Your cars are probably worth a lot less than you think and everybody is trying to trade down from 1.8 's

2003 Karens asking 2100

http://cars.donedeal.ie/for-sale/cars/2709152



or new model 04 with only 63000 miles only asking 2775

Jesus Shaves

Why not change your driving style

Getting to a higher gear as quickly as possible has been proven to decrease fuel consumption
Never drive over 55mph
walk when it is viable

kearney13

Buy a diesel and run her on the green stuff :P

Alanstrainor

43mpg out of that engine in the cordoba is pretty damn good imo. As Colm suggested, why not swap cars?

Actually OP, what you need to do is to find out what mpg the cars are actually returning before even considering to change them

Henry Ford III

Get rid of the Kia. Use 1 car.

bazz26

No garage will give you a swap without looking for money from you. Can you live with just one car? If so get rid of the one you can live without.

Nissan doctor

Keep the cordoba and sell the Carens and get a golf/passat 1.9tdi or maybe an older astra diesel or similar. These will be very cheap on fuel and don't have the DPF/DMF/common rail issues that modern diesels would have doing lower miles.

166man

I'd give the Carens a good clean take some decent pics and put it up on donedeal. Then with whatever you get for the Kia I'd try and buy a Peugeot 406 HDI or something like that. Should be very light on fuel and very reliable.

Dardania

Would the simplest soluyion be for your wife (the high mileage driver) to drive the more efficient car? It looks as though she is driving the least efficient one...

I also echo other posters about driving more efficiently - a good way to track that is to use spritmonitor.de . You can also compare with other people.driving the same car as you

Bearcat

kearney13 wrote: »

Buy a diesel and run her on the green stuff :P

Well half the country does......it's rampant.

mawk

dont forget too, that the best weapon in saving fuel is weight reduction.

take out any crap in your cars that you dont need. get a can of tyre goop and take out the spare, jack etc.

if you know someone with a garage, you might be able to get the ecu remapped to a more economical mode, at the expense of acceleration

removing weight really makes the biggest difference.