Cars - Advice/Opinions needed please!

[Davey]

Well, my Alfa garage always treats me well... as they should, unless they get rid of a regular customer :P

seriously.. the only things that have gone wrong on my 156 are the things that go wrong on ANY 12year old car. so it's not unreliable at the least. The trim squeaks a bit, and it doesn't like winter a whole lot, but so far it hasn't done me wrong.. and i only paid 2k (with all the services included) for it.

[Stevepage]

I've been looking around and apparently the Honda Accord diesel is the most reliable car out there (or at least one of the most). I can get a nice one within my budget even though insurance will be quite a bit. But I turn 25 in July and I'll be keeping the car for at least 4 to 5 years. Worth it?

[ToneMonkey]

The accord is a fairly big car, so depends if you need the space.  Nice cars though, my mate spent 6 months finding the right one and then parked it in a ditch within two weeks (black ice).  What's the budget?

[Stevepage]

The budget is about £4000, £4500 maximum. I'm expecting higher mileage but as it's apparently a very reliable car I'd expect it to last me 5 years at about 10,000 miles a year.

[Ratrod]

Well, my Alfa garage always treats me well... as they should, unless they get rid of a regular customer :P

seriously.. the only things that have gone wrong on my 156 are the things that go wrong on ANY 12year old car. so it's not unreliable at the least. The trim squeaks a bit, and it doesn't like winter a whole lot, but so far it hasn't done me wrong.. and i only paid 2k (with all the services included) for it.

My 156 had little problems as well. Battery died after 7 years. A relais blew in the Selespeed system. That was an expensive one because the car had to be towed and it took a while to diagnose. At one point the spark plugs needed changing. It's quite an exotic system with distributorless ignition and two sizes of spark plugs made from exotic metals. Most mechanics wouldn't dare touch it. I did it myself and it was quite easy.

[ToneMonkey]

If anyone wants to see real unreliability, buy an Aprilla.

Mine cost me £1,200 to fix and it didn't even make it home from the garage.

Steve - If your looking at Honda's then you can't go too far wrong with anything with the VTec engine.  It's probably the best petrol engine there is, so long as it's serviced properly.  My mate who parked the Accord the wrong way up now has a VTec Prelude and loves it.  If you want a hell of a lot of car for your money, then Honda Legends are a good deal nowadays, although you may end up looking like your granddad  :lol:

My Beemer has still got at least 150,000 miles left to go on it.  Sure you don't want that, it's the auto version of this badboy (in silver):

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201050375427459/sort/pricedesc/usedcars/price-to/2000/model/3_series/make/bmw/postcode/le94jf/radius/1501/page/1/keywords/316?logcode=p

Going cheap to forum members  :lol: