Recommendations for a diesel - €6k

philboy

Hi,
I currently have a 00 1.8 Ford Focus Petrol and it's costing me an absolute fortune and would like to upgrade to a diesel.

I do approx 25-30000 miles per year. I don't really have any preferences as such except that it has good MPG and looks half decent.

I am looking at the Opel/Vauxhall Astra 1.7Cdti and like the look of them in the 3 door option. What other diesels would be a good choice around €6k?

Thanks

liam7831

Honda Civic 1.7 diesel great yoke, scarce enough as not sold here though

bandit14

Hard to beat a toyota avensis d4d goes forever and pretty good on mpg as long as your not all city driving,very good value out there at the moment Cash IS King!! Best of luck

Leonard Hofstadter

bandit14 wrote: »

Hard to beat a toyota avensis d4d goes forever

That most certainly is not true for an Avensis that is within the OP's budget, the newer 125 bhp models from late 06 onwards are very reliable (for a modern diesel), but the older ones give DMF trouble and can develop gearbox and injector problems as the miles pile on.

The older 2.0 TD is pretty much bulletproof but they will all have intergalatic mileage at this stage, the last of them were made in early 2000 anyway.

A good option OP would be a Mondeo 2.0 TDDi (not the TDCi as that can suffer from injector failure) or anything from VW, Skoda, Audi or Seat with a 1.9 TDI engine (do not get the 2.0 under any circumstances if reliability is a primary concern). A Focus 1.8 TDCi is very unlikely to leave you by the side of the road either.

One word of warning with anything from the VW group though is that the likes of the Passat and A4 have become very popular with boy racers, so get one without big wheels, tinted windows, lowered suspension etc etc. An unmolested one should be fine.

Try and get something with as much service history as possible, do not be fooled into thinking that low mileage is automatically a good thing, history (especially recent history) is far more important than the number of miles on the clock.

A Vectra DTi would probably be reliable as well (although likely to be glacially slow with only 99 bhp), but only go for the Vectra C (the ugly looking one that came out in 2002), the Vectra B was probably the worst car Opel built in the 90s.

Bpmull

Have a look at the skoda octavia 1.9tdi reliable and very economical. Also the Astra diesel is a great car I have a 2008 1.3 diesel and they are a great car very comfortable reliable the 1.7 version is even better. It really is reliable. Both my parents have octavia's so I'm speaking from my own experience when I say the Astra and octavia are great cars.

philboy

Thanks guys. I really do like the look of the Astra 1.7, they do seem hard to come by at good value over here with reasonable mileage. Lots in the UK but by the time I got it across and VRT'ed, my budget would be well blown. Also, most of the 1.7 versions over here seem to be the basic life model. Is a trip to the UK worth it for a car worth 6k (I could push to 7k if I really had to but would prefer not to).

The sister has an Octavia and seems happy enough with it. I'll ask her later about it.

Which of the Seat's are a good buy?

Not too sure of an Audi, they seem over-priced and have most lower priced ones have massive mileage.

Very true about the Passat's, so many of them here in Galway 'pimped' out to the last, they look terrible

Leonard Hofstadter

The Octavia is the most over-rated car on boards! They're certainly not a bad car, but they're not as amazing as they're made out to be. The group think here that Octavias are great cars is even worse than the general public's group think that the only cars that are reliable are those made by Toyota!

UK cars are more likely to have service history, they will be much better maintained (usually, but not always) and usually will have a much higher spec, so don't buy their equivalent of a Life or Club model Astra, try and get an SXi or Active or one of the higher spec models with a/c, alloys, fogs etc etc.

captainspeed

captainspeed wrote: »

The Octavia is the most over-rated car on boards! .............. The group think here that Octavias are great cars is even worse than the general public's group think that the only cars that are reliable are those made by Toyota!.............

I think there's only a minority of Octavia lovers on here to be fair.

philboy

The average VRT on a 2007 1.7 Cdti Astra is approx €1,000. If I was able to get a nice model for under £4,500, that would be €5,600 and factor in say €400 for travel costs then that would bring it to €7k total.
For that 7k, I could get something like either of the following:
£4,100 Astra 1.7 Cdti Sxi with 75k miles or
Similar spec to above for £4,500

Is this UK reg car from donegal as good? higher mileage but would save the hassle of going over to the UK. http://cars.donedeal.ie/for-sale/cars/3884850

I'll be over in the UK in late January of 2013 so I could always just get a one-way flight and take a ferry back if I could pick up a bargain over there.

irishproduce

Gonna hijack!
Can I ask for expert advice?
Wife wants to change her 07 Suzuki Swift GLX, look at my previous posts, she wanted it, got it, loved it BUT...

She travels about 250KM a week to work on dual carriage ways. Its costing her about €200 - €250 a month in petrol. I tried searching mpg but cant be sure of definitive answer.
She wants to move to diesel.
So, she is gonna change it.
She will add about about €1000 - €1500 to get a different car.

I heard somewhere that the higher engine size in diesel the better efficiency (less fuel used) but not sure about that one.

Any advice? What should she get?
Thanks

Stheno

irishproduce wrote: »

Gonna hijack!
Can I ask for expert advice?
Wife wants to change her 07 Suzuki Swift GLX, look at my previous posts, she wanted it, got it, loved it BUT...

She travels about 250KM a week to work on dual carriage ways. Its costing her about €200 - €250 a month in petrol. I tried searching mpg but cant be sure of definitive answer.
She wants to move to diesel.
So, she is gonna change it.
She will add about about €1000 - €1500 to get a different car.

I heard somewhere that the higher engine size in diesel the better efficiency (less fuel used) but not sure about that one.

Any advice? What should she get?
Thanks

Why not start your own thread rather than hoping someone will see your tagalong to an old one? Most people see the start date and move on

Anyway, your wife needs to work out her mpg properly by brimming her tank, and noting how much fuel goes in, then seeing how many miles that covers and working out the mpg.

Once she knows that she needs to see how much she will get in trade in value for her car, as opposed to what she will pay for a diesel, then check out how long it will take her to recoup the investment in a diesel car based on how much extra she pays compared to the fuel costs.

I reckon she might see a return based on her car after maybe three years?

This thread has inspired me, I'm going to set up a website with every car ever made and do a cost to change comparison and return on investment with breakeven point and maybe even net present value for car owners.

I can launch it independently and sell it to boards to reduce posts, but gain income by redirecting such queries via a script.

Senna

irishproduce wrote: »

Gonna hijack!
Can I ask for expert advice?
Wife wants to change her 07 Suzuki Swift GLX, look at my previous posts, she wanted it, got it, loved it BUT...

She travels about 250KM a week to work on dual carriage ways. Its costing her about €200 - €250 a month in petrol. I tried searching mpg but cant be sure of definitive answer.
She wants to move to diesel.
So, she is gonna change it.
She will add about about €1000 - €1500 to get a different car.

I heard somewhere that the higher engine size in diesel the better efficiency (less fuel used) but not sure about that one.

Any advice? What should she get?
Thanks

That's working out at 19-22mpg in her swift!!!! if its mostly dual-carriage way she should be getting double that. Either your figures are wrong or that swift has a serious problem.