Recommendations wanted for first time car buyer

[Zeakiwi]

How much time do you have for part time employment or busking (playing music on a street for donated money)?

What is the bus/ train network like ?

If the car is the obvious necessity, visit the Ford and the Peugeot service/ spare parts and say hello as you will likely be visiting/ paying them so see who you like the most.

How many cars get stolen in Dublin these days ? Security will be another cost.

[52Paddy]

How much time do you have for part time employment or busking (playing music on a street for donated money)?

This is an option which I will probably use to earn a bit more money. To be honest, I've made out my financial plan and, while I respect all of this advice [from all replies thus far], my question is mostly directed such as to receive feedback on the said cars. If I thought I couldn't afford it, I wouldn't consider buying one

What is the bus/ train network like ?

Bad enough. Besides, it's more to do with the amount of equipment I need to move about (recording programs, computers, guitars, banjos, keyboards etc).

If the car is the obvious necessity, visit the Ford and the Peugeot service/ spare parts and say hello as you will likely be visiting/ paying them so see who you like the most.

Good idea.

[Mark]

Seat Ibiza- Yes
Peugeot 106- Yes
Opel Corsa- No
Volkswagon Polo-Yes
Citroen Saxo-No
Ford Fiesta- Yes (if post 2001 model)

If any of you have experience of the above cars, please let me know the pros and cons you realised. And, if you can suggest any alternative cars, I'd be open to considering something else.

Thank you [/QUOTE]

[GridGirl]

My younger brother had a Citroen Saxo as a first car when he was 17. He's now 26 so we are talking a few years ago. When he had the Saxo he was continually stopped by the police and asked to produce his driving licence, MOT certificate and insurance certificate. I think we he had around 100 'producer' slips my mum went to the police station with him to complain and the police basically said they kept stopping him because he was young lad and driving a Saxo. My mum made him get rid of the car not long after. Since the he owned a Citroen C2, MG ZR, Civic TypeR and now a Honda S2000 and has only had a handful of producers during that time. Maybe my brothers situation is quite an isolated example but its something to bear in mind. Do similar things occur in Ireland and have they happened to any of your friends driving (similar?) cars?

[Mark]

You're right of course, the Saxo is a typical teenagers car, I think because of the relatively cheap insurance and the ability to modify it.

I'm sure Paddy is a very sensible fellow - he seems it. But there's always the temptation when you are young that your car must be 'special' in some way, which usually ends up making it look and perform worse and marks you out as a 'cock' much more than owning a BMW ever would.

[Eki]

http://www.ibherdesign.com/saxo-body-kit.html

[Malbec]

I wish you luck with your search for a car.

One thing I've never understood is the exorbitant cost of auto insurance in the UK. Everyone seems to fancy themselves as such phenominal drivers compared to the rest of the world. I remember the Top Gear episode where the guys had to pick a car based on insurance. Why are insurance rates seemingly so unbelievably high for everyone? Do you guys play dodge cars on the way to work or something, or is this yet another way the government taxes the living hell out of everything related to automobiles as they do with petrol?

I have a less than perfect driving record( I generally consider speed limits "guidelines"), no accidents of my fault ever. I drive over 30k miles annually and I have 5 cars fully insured, two of which are considered high risk (imported sports cars, high HP/large displacement engines, high repair cost, etc) and I pay $950 a year for my wife and I.

There are loads of reasons.

Firstly while insurance is compulsory the penalty for driving without insurance is about £200 and the police and courts often don't bother prosecuting. I can't remember what proportion of people drive without insurance but its somewhere above 10% and this means lost income and the insurance companies have to pay for people who have had accidents with uninsured drivers. Its a crazy state of affairs given that there are databases both for the total number of cars on the road and for those that are insured so it would be easy to find the uninsured ones. For some reason the government isn't interested in clamping down, never has been.

Secondly the insurance companies don't make a profit from selling insurance, they invest their income in funds. Whats left after payouts is their profit. Problem is that with the stock market crash they've lost a lot of money through their funds and are starting to pass that onto their customer.

Then there are the scams, deliberate accidents to claim insurance money which in some areas actually outnumber 'real' ones. Plus personal injury claims blah blah blah.

Personally I think insurance prices would come down massively if the government treated driving without insurance severely enough to deter people.

If my budget was limited to £800 I wouldn't buy a car since I wouldn't have enough money to keep it on the road. Its not worth it.

[Mark]

Of course there's going to be a new law coming in soon that a car must be insured, unless you have declared it off road (SORN). The same as existed for tax for a while but the only check when buying tax is that insurance is valid on the day the tax disc is due to start.

[Malbec]

Of course there's going to be a new law coming in soon that a car must be insured, unless you have declared it off road (SORN). The same as existed for tax for a while but the only check when buying tax is that insurance is valid on the day the tax disc is due to start.

But the problem has always been the penalty and the inability to enforce the law. If anything I think this change in law will only serve to increase the number of people who don't pay car tax too.

[Daniel]

Mark, why recommend the 106 but not the Saxo?