If you had £5k to spend on a car....

[WhereIsBlueRabbit]

....which of the following would you go for and why?

We're planning to buy a car in next couple of months. Looking for a 5-door hatchback with a good sized boot, cheap to run/insure, needs to be reliable and safe, mostly town driving/short trips but needs to be able to handle motorway driving as well.

We will buy outright (with a view to keeping it until it runs into the ground). I think we should aim for something under five years old with fewer than 100k miles on the clock.

My shortlist consists of the following cars:

Ford Focus - I think we would have to stretch our budget for this!
Ford Fiesta
Hyundai i20
Honda Jazz
Toyota Yaris

Secondary contenders are VW Golf, Nissan Micra and Kia Rio, though I think the last two may be too small.

Any thoughts? My dad is really sniffy about anything that isn't a Ford but I think we'd get more for our money with some of the other makes.

I wouldn't want over 10,000 miles a year - so no more than 50,000 if it is 5 years old. Means the car may have taken a battering.

Thank you - this is all really helpful. We are of the view that we'd rather get something no more than three years old and with low mileage, and run it into the ground, which excludes the Focus on price. I suspect the Seat Leon may be out of our reach too.

Mind you, so is the Toyota Yaris based on the incompetent arse who claimed to be a car salesman who we met this afternoon who tried to persuade us to spend way over budget but didn't show us any of the cars around our budget that were actually in stock...

For motorway driving, it would likely be once a month or so but we do live very close to a motorway so could imagine short distances on a regular basis maybe? I'm planning to book a test drive for a Yaris - have just started refresher driving lessons so not quite ready for the motorway but plan to take it on the nearest dual carriageway and see how it goes.

I have had Ford's for 9 years now and love them. I've had 7 fiestas and 2 focus's and I loved every single one of them. My husband has my focus now and I have a VW however whenever I drive his car I still love it just as much. Never had a single issue with any of my Ford's yet my VW I've had 4 weeks from brand new I've already had a couple of issues with it. The boot space in the fiesta isn't huge the focus is much bigger x

I'd love a Fiesta, but I actually came on here to make two suggestions.

1. VW Polo. DH had one for many years, which he sold 18 months ago with 205k on it and it's still on the road. It did threaten to die once before the end of its time with us, but my dad is a mechanic and resurrected it using old parts he had lying around.

1. Nissan Leaf. I don't know if fully electric would be suitable for you and your family, but we've had one for a year and have done 20k miles in it. We love it. Even my petrol head brother can't find anything wrong with it.