choosing used car

Hi,

I would like buy a 2009 Toyota Yaris 1.0-litre manual. It has a Toyota service history service. Is 100k miles too much for its three-cylinder engine? What is average price, please?

Thanks. Sean

I currently have an option to buy a three-door 1.1-litre Peugeot 206 for €1,100. The car has 79,000km, from 2002, NCT until March and no tax. It looks in good condition outside from just a few pictures. Do you think this is good value? Similarly there is a five-door version with 94,000km, NCT until May from year 2000. It will be my first time buying a car and I don't have much experience with cars really so is there anything I should be particularly worried about/need to check?

Am looking at buying a used performance car; the one thing though that is slightly bothering me is the fact that it was a press car for the launch of the car at the start of 2014. Should I be concerned that it was driven hard and also what would the story be with the warranty etc? Would I be the first owner on the car as well?

Can you recommend a sturdy safe small car? I'm driving a Nissan Micra and would like to upgrade to a stronger but not much bigger car.

I want to buy a diesel car for a round trip daily commute of 160km, which is mainly motorway. As I have neck/back problems I want to pick up a comfortable and somewhat luxurious car. I was thinking the Skoda Superb Elegance Greenline 2 (2011), as I have a budget after haggling of about €16.5k. Do you think this is a good choice or do you have an alternative to this? And what is your opinion on private vs dealer sale of the type of car I'm going for?

Hello there, would a Skoda Octavia (1.4/1.6 petrol 2005-2007) be worth buying? Especially with a higher mileage of 150,000km and more? And would it be risky buying from a private seller? Dealers are dear...

Thank you very much for your answer

Rasti

How's this for an early Xmas present? I've just picked up my 2008 Ford Mondeo 1.8 TDCi from my dealer where it was in for its annual service. As usual they were giving me a report on how the service went and unfortunately they had to advise me that I'm going to need a lot of work done to my car, which I wasn't expecting.

Because of rust, repairs have to be made to the fuel tank, exhaust system (including a new catalytic convertor), the timing belt and a few other bits and pieces. All in all it's going to cost me over €3k. I've been with this dealer for a while and any work on the car was always done through them, so I trust them when they say the work is urgent. As the car has 193,000km on the clock I was expecting the timing belt to need replacing in the near future, but the other repairs have floored me. The car has always been dealer serviced. I had been planning on changing the car later this year, but now I'm not sure what to do. I could repair the car, but that will push back my plans to change the car and I'm taking the risk that nothing else would go wrong, while my car would continue to lose value.

Alternatively I could bring forward my plans to change, and hope the €3k in repairs that would have to be discounted against the trade in value by the dealer would still leave me in a position to do a deal. Any advice you could give would be appreciated.

Just to give you a good laugh, the weekend before I got the car serviced, my wife had ordered a new MINI Countryman to replace her Ford C-Max. We can't back out of that deal now. Had I gotten the service a week earlier, we could at least have postponed changing her car to replace mine! Timing is everything, I suppose...

Hi, we have a 2005 BMW 116i that ground to halt last week and turns out to be its dodgy petrol that caused the problem (i.e. petrol stretching ). We have been quoted anywhere from €1,500 to €4,000 to fit a new engine. At this stage would we be better to try and sell it as is or try and get it fixed as it has been a very problematic car.

Also thinking of buying a2006 Hyundai Coupé: what do you think?

What you think about the 2010 BMW X1? First baby on the way and looking for a crossover/SUV between €15,000 and €18,000.

I am thinking of buying an estate car as I need the extra space. Seems to be a lot of Astras out there, but want to get something fairly good with a budget of €12k-ish. Recommend anything in particular?