Peugeot 206 / First Car

[mycarsavw]

I'd second the Ibiza / Fabia suggestion, but also add to it - if you can find one - the Seat Arosa 1.4TDi - a smaller car, but nippy, very economical and apparently very nice to drive (I've not driven one myself, but I know a few people who have including my step-dad)...

Arosa is a decent car but the boot is pretty much pointless.

I had one as a loaner and couldn't even fit an archive box in the back without dropping the rear seats.

If you absolutely have to have one, make it the GTI (edit, think SEAT call it an Arosa Sport (1.4 16v) - VW equivalent is a Lupo GTI)

If you like the Ibiza/Fabia, don't rule out a Polo. 1.4 16v petrol is a nice engine on the revs.

[Rave]

Bumping this just to echo Zak's thoughts- for your first car, which you say is just going to be a runaround anyway, why rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish £3.5K? Just buy a 10 year old 106 with 30k and FSH off an old lady for £1k. If anything goes wrong it'll be buttons to fix anyway- when I bought my 106 I discovered it had a stripped thread on the OSF hub so one of the wheel nuts wouldn't do up. A replacement strut was £25 from a local breaker, and I paid a backstreet mechanic £45 to fit it.

And if you buy a 15 year old 106 instead, for <£500 (probably £300) you may well find you can get classic insurance on it. My 106 Rallye (fairly nippy) cost me £190 to insure fully comp with unlimited mileage. That's as a second car- normally, for reasons I don't understand, your NCB doesn't count for second cars. Admittedly I am 30 with 7 years NCB- but classic insurance is generally very cheap, and the definition of classic seems to be anything over 15 years old, even if it's a generic old banger. I'm going to try and insure my Mondeo as a classic next year when it turns 15.