what car?just passed test

[gavuk]

Daughter just passed her test first time after 60 leassons,now needs a car ,nothing fancy £500 or so,have been looking at corsa,micra,polo,saxo,pug 106 ,i'm interested if anyone has had experience good or bad with these cars or alternative suggestions ,nothing classic,reliability and ease of diy maintenance are my main concerns....look forward to your views ......Gav
ps.small motor 1.2litre for 18 year old driver

 

[eltis]

personally i`d never touch a citroen saxo, i currently have a vauxhall corsa b and they are easy to work on.... and cheap and easy to repair if something does wrong with them. you can pick them up for penny`s aswel

my corsa

can some one lend me an arch roller or should i just make one?

 

[zzr1200]

Corsa or Fiesta would be my choice. We needed a cheap second car, found an 'M' reg Corsa that had been traded in by a pensioner who needed power steering, sweet little motor.


We found our one in a dealers were it had been traded in, we paid slightly over the odds for it with a new mot and 6 months tax, cost us 700-00 but haven't had any problems in almost a year. Just don't buy it from a reversed capped chav boy racer, who's already killed the car.

 

[Amit]

mk3 golf is the perfect new car.

nice and safe and reliable.

Amit

 

[daf45]

Boring answer but I'd ask your insurance broker what they recommend...
They will favour some of those small cars over others.
My step-son is 17 in May and desperate to get rolling
For ease of maintainance I'd go fiesta or corsa, for lack of maintainance i'd go polo. Hard to find 106's and saxo's that haven't already had a hard life.
For me cheap will be the key 'cos I have a feeling the first one wont last much more than 6 months

 

[Justme]

Forget choosing a car. Contact the insurance company first & get quotes. Its likely that the ins will cost up to £4k. Best let them choose the car.

Justme

 

[Wozzaaah]

mk3 golf is the perfect new car.

nice and safe and reliable.

Amit

Good cars but wayyyyyy too expensive for a new driver to insure.

 

[malcolm]

Classic car insurance was a lot cheaper than modern car insurance for young drivers when I started. My first car was a Triumph Spitfire and was much cheaper to insure than a 1L saloon of the time. Might be worth a phone around Classic companies. 2CVs are fun.

 

[JayRS4]

Classic car insurance was a lot cheaper than modern car insurance for young drivers when I started. My first car was a Triumph Spitfire and was much cheaper to insure than a 1L saloon of the time. Might be worth a phone around Classic companies. 2CVs are fun.

Better make sure she can weld as well then

 

[rtcosic]

Classic car insurance was a lot cheaper than modern car insurance for young drivers when I started. My first car was a Triumph Spitfire and was much cheaper to insure than a 1L saloon of the time. Might be worth a phone around Classic companies. 2CVs are fun.

Been trying that for some time.
When elder 2 boys were under 21 they were itching to reach 21 because that was the minimum for classic insurance on my Jaguar.
By the time eldest got to 21 everywhere he tried had increased it to 25!

He started with a Land Rover. When he started the rebuild NFU did super cheap LR specific insurance for pennies. By the time he came to put it on the road......... Best turned out to be Liverpool Victoria.

Was doing well on my 'daily driver' until this year's renewal. Had unrestricted any driver for about £500 on old Rover 820!
Problem was I hardly got to drive the wretched thing because everybody in the family seemed to be borrowing it whilst their's was being fixed/replaced.
Renewal? £800 and no drivers under 25.
So went eleswhere.
At least I'm now the only one who gets to drive it.
To put youngest on the road in a few months as a provisional driver, best we have found for it so far is £1300! To insure in his own name was around £2'500 if memory serves.
Just for s**t and giggles he tried for his mom's S-Type. Eventually found one to quote - £4'000 if memory serves!

I'll repeat previous advice - get quotes for insurance and decide on the car based on insurance cost. Unfortunate, but necessary.
Don't assume smallest engined car is lowest group/cheapest. Don't assume all cars of same group are same premium either.
Middle son, just 21, got fully comp in his own name with no previous policy for a Maxda MX5 for £750, but cheapest for the old Rover was over £1'000. Go figure!

Watch out for the removal of the Driving Other Cars clause too.

Quite how we are supposed to give them the hundreds of hours of supervised practice necessary to become competant, safe drivers is beyond me.

 

[gavuk]

Thanks guys for the replies,Malc i like your idea BUT my girl has 50+pairs of shoes,and is already talking about a new outfit to match whatever car she gets ,so i don't think a classic will do, i fear,she may take after her mother and not her dad......Amit ,i think Wozz is right about insurance,good solid cars,my preference would be mk1 or 2 ,daughters would be mk5......So we come back to corsa,or polo or fiesta, i have a corsa which she can have in 2-3 weeks,but my ex has now offered to buy her a car,rather than wait !grrrrr women Gav

 

[madkayaker]

i started with a 2CV great fun.

 

[BIG JAY VTR]

i started with a fiat panda then went on to vauxhalls, astra, cavalier corsa, had hardley any trouble with them, the older ones are easy to repair and cheap on parts, my ex is just about to replace her old Lreg corsa sri for the new astra sxi, she says there aint much difference in insurance

 

[Justme]

i started with a fiat panda then went on to vauxhalls, astra, cavalier corsa, had hardley any trouble with them, the older ones are easy to repair and cheap on parts, my ex is just about to replace her old Lreg corsa sri for the new astra sxi, she says there aint much difference in insurance

Thats prob cos she is not 17 & just past her test.

I find the same for my insurance but again I'm not 17 (by a long way lol). For instance adding my 22 year old son on to my car increases the cost by just under 600%. Needles to say he is still on his motorbike.

Justme

 

[madkayaker]

insurance is the killer

 

[Archie]

I had a 106 and it was biblically slow. The brakes were also diabolical but at the speeds you were likely to be travelling this is fairly immaterial! Oh, and there's no power steering (or, at least, there wasn't on mine) so knowing what your average woman's parking is like this is also probably a downside! On the flip side there's not much to go wrong, the visibility is excellent (no enormous A-pillars) and the fuel economy is pretty good too. I had (briefly) a 1.4 petrol Polo in a very manly 'luscious lipstick' sort of colour! It's in a totally different league to the 106 and I'd be very happy if I still had it. The only thing worth mentioning is that they have a notorious weak spot in the door locking and all it takes is some low-life to stick a screwdriver through the door skin to pop it open. Don't ask how I discovered this!

 

[bawjaws]

ive worked on a fiesta (mk5) and a corsa before (same as in pic) and i need to say thet the fiesta was a nightmare, everything was so crammed in and hard to reach if you know what i mean, it took me 2 hours to change the alternator belt on it! and ive done others in less than 10 minuits!, the corsa however is very easy to get into so easy repairs (engine out in 3 hours!), and the older ones generally have timing chains rather than belts so no worries there, thats just for the repairs though and i dont know which is the more reliable or cheaper insurance, try some quotes on a comparison site

 

[Hitch]

I got a beat about 1.4 polo when Mrs H passed her test, £700 iirc, with only 12k on the clock. Messed about with it a bit bodywork wise, bit of a bodge i must admit

Had it 2 years next month, not spent a penny on it, bar 4 tyres, and 2 oil changes.

Insurance wise, it was cheap, about £400, with both of us on it. Bear in mind, she was a new driver (but 25)and i got 9 points...

Fiestas/Corsas are dear compared to polos, from the few people i know that have them.

I reckon a 1.0 polo if you can find one

 

[Paul.]

My son had a k reg 1.0 polo for his first car at 17, £400 with a full mot, cost £750 to insure third party F&T, We used confused to find the insurance and had quotes from £750, to £3000, Admiral came up best price.

 

[dazzis]

well me 42no no claims bonus and 3 points, lad 22 6 points and 1 years no claims, pay £22 a month for our morris minor, so cheap insurance is out there, not trying to be funny but get her an old rattler for her first car as it wont be long before it gets bumped, insurance these days is a rip off