Be Excellent To Each Other

Unless you already have a car, in which case you might find your policy for that car covers you (third party only) for other cars that you don't own (which you don't until the paperwork goes through).

Some dealers will also offer free 7 day insurance with cars, but probably not at your price range.

That'll only work if the car already has an insurance policy on it taken out by the previous owner which hasn't been canceled yet. It's unlikely.

PS, please remember not to become furiously angry when driving, CG.

Yeah, definitely doesn't work - the car must already be directly insured by the owner. Something my father recently found out to his cost.

With my car, I was given a week's free insurance by the dealership so I could drive it away and still have time to insure it myself. It really wouldn't have been necessary though as setting up insurance takes minutes and if you're buying from a dealership, you generally have to wait a couple of days after putting down your deposit before you can pick up the car as they do an inspection of it first. That gives you time to go home, get some online quotes and have yourself fully insured before you even pick the car up.

I've never bought a car that hasn't been insured by it's owner, TBH, so it's never been an issue.

I've been driving for years, and as discussed on another thread recently, I hardly ever scream and shout and beep and show fingers to those FUCKING ARSEHOLES on the road who need to DIE.

No fear.

Driving furiously is actually a proper offence. So be careful out there.

Insured so anyone can drive it?

No, but it doesn't have to be. I'm insured to drive any car legally allowed on the road, so as long as any car I'm driving has insurance of some kind (thus making it legal), I'm good.

Am I right in thinking I can't go for any 'trade' listings on auto-trader? Presumably thats just for business to business?

and does this look any good?

CG, thhat looks OK, but at the end of the day your car is going to be a subjective experience. When I got mine, i made a list of things I would not compromise on for features. These were sometimes trivial things like a CD player, electric windows, main beam headlights that click on and off rather than pull to turn on and off; but also power steering/ABS brakes. Make a little list to narrow down your search.

As far as that car goes though, it's done very few miles for its age. Normally you should allow 10-11,000 miles per year, so that's only really done half of what it could have done, which you could count as making it slightly newer.

Oh, and if you're going to go private for god's sake take it out on a good long test drive. The last thing you want to do is buy a car, and then realise it makes a high pitched rattle when you go above 60mph on the motorway or something.

One 2nd hand car I had had a small creaking in the sunroof or vents or somewhere and it eventually drove me insane, but I'd only done a ten minute test drive so didn't notice it to start with.

Don't think so - i just think those are cars being sold by dealers.

As Chris says, that means it's a dealer.

It's the most obvious advice in the world but if you phone a private ad, always say "I'm phoning about the car".

Not "The Civic" or anything.

Because if they're a dodgy dealer pretending to be private they'll have to say "What car?"

I do like that gen of Micra, but I'd rather have the older Civic on balance.

Looking at those two cars, the Micra isn't bad. The Kia looks huge for a 1.3l car, though - the Micra isn't going to be fast by any means, but I'd bet my hands that the Kia will be dog-slow.
Ugly too, IMO.

I wouldn't trust the Kia. If it was a Hyundai with the 5 year warranty that'd be different.

My ex-wife used to drive a 1.0 litre Micra of that generation. I drove it a few times when learning and shortly after passing my test while trying to find a car for myself. It was a nice car, but as you'd expect for a 1.0 litre, it was about as fast as a snail glued to a piece of wood that had been nailed to a manhole cover.

The 1.3 will probably be a bit nippier, and insurance will be very low indeed I should think. The only issue with it as far as I can see is that it's an automatic. If I remember rightly, the Micras used a CVT automatic box which, at those engine sizes, probably isn't particularly brilliant.

Yes, avoid CVT or "Wheezeomatic" as we used to call it.

I'm going to have a look at this on Saturday. A brief chat with the guy on the phone and I've already knocked down the asking price to £3k. Opinions, car-me-shrewd types?

Looks OK. Recent Clios are decent enough cars. Find out exactly what happened to that car, and what level of repairs were done to it. That price isn't a bargain (although it's OK), so move on if you don't get a satisfactory explanation.

Check the number plate on the back matches the front.

Seriously though, ask which bit was damaged and get them to show you what and how they repaired it. If it's a good job they won't be cagey about it. Check the panel gaps around the doors, wings and so on and look for overspray under the bonnet and under the car.

Yeah, you'd be happy enough there I'd say.

Is that the generation of Clio with the dodgy bonnet catch?

Category C write-off in march. I'll ring the guy back and ask him for more details about the 'damage'. If he doesn't mention the fact it was written off, it'll put paid to that.

He's mentioned it in the ad: if it needed a certificate from VOSA to put back on the road, it was a CAT C write off.

I'd avoid it mate, TBH - it's not cheap enough to be worth the hassle.

One tip that I saw on the telly somewhere was to run a reasonably strong magnet along all the panels (without touching and thereby ruining them all with it, obviously); if the attraction significantly weakens, there's a bunch of filler there.

This won't work when looking at Ferrari F40s and the like, made of fibreglass and carbon fibre, so check first.

Clios are shit, I wouldn't have one even if it wasn't a cut n shut.

Go for a Civic or similar. Japanese engines are rovry.

My second tip:


Avoid write offs
Avoid girl cars

I've got to ask - what do you drive?

Lacesensor. Yesterday.

I had an 05 reg 1.6 Dynamique Clio and it was a brilliant little car. Not sure what the 1.2s are like to drive, however.

When I started this thread I said I had about £2000 budget. I have just bought a VW Fox Urban for £7200. Fucking hell.

Did you have to take finance for it then, or a personal loan, or did you have some savings stashed?

Amusingly they were able to offer finance at a fixed rate of about 9.2%, which was better than the loan I'd applied for at 12.2%. I can only pay a 30% deposit maximum, which is what I've done, and the rest is payments over 2 years of about £215 a month. I can (and will) settle early for a penalty of 1 months interest, which I can handle. Total payable will end up being about £7500 which includes 3 years of servicing, metallic silver paint, 1 years tax, a full tank of petrol, and new mats.

I sat there for 3 hours determined to screw as many extras out of them as possible. I am tired now

When you say in the Mafia thread that you bought it "brand new", you didn't literally mean "brand new" did you? i.e. with just delivery mileage?

Please tell me you didn't.

Too late to change your mind I guess but you can get a lot more car for your money if you're willing to stretch to £7,000!

Yep, brand spanking. It's ok Gaz, on the whole I'm happy. I was aware at that point I could have got a larger car with a few miles on it for about the same, but remember I was keen to get a sub 1.4 car so that it would be cheap to run. For me I think this is a pretty good fit.

If you're happy, that's all the matters. I couldn't buy a brand-spanking-new car though knowing that it'll drop 40% in value as soon as I drive it off the forecourt.

Depreciation isn't an issue for me, and I'll tell you why - I don't plan to get a new car until this one breaks down and becomes useless. I'll keep it for as long as humanly possible to the point its not worth scrapping

That's an odd theory - a Mondeo ST24 would set you back about £2k, and £5,200 would get you a lot of petrol.

In answer to previous question Grim, an Astra.

I'd never buy a new car. Couldnt stomach the idea of "losing" that much money off the get-go.

It's only an odd theory if you're figuratively made of money, Grim...

£5200 will buy you, what, 4300 litres of petrol? (prices may go up as well as down).

The ST24 appears to do about 18 mpg, let's call it 4 miles per litre. So that's only 17,000 miles, which you might use up in a year.

A smaller car like the VW Fox will use less than half the fuel, so the difference could be made up in a couple of years (depending on the mileage). And it'll still have a decent resale value in 4 years.

Or instead he could have picked up a small car for £2000, and been saving money from the outset. Either way, seems pretty sensible to me.

3 years servicing would be a large, LARGE chunk of that too.

The Fox is a neat if sparse car, a VW like that should outlive God. Good choice I'd say.

Yeah I got the 3 years of servicing includd. With their fixed finance rate, and if I live up to my plan of settling the full balance early, then I'll save more overall than I would have if I'd taken the *other* loan without the 3 years of service. Make sense? Perhaps not