Need a new family car

[ichundich]

So our lovely car of many years is on its last leg, it seems :-(. So the question is: what to replace it with? We need a good amount of space for a family of 4. I'm not massively keen on SUV's because of their lower efficiency and space required; would rather have an estate or hatchback. Budget is up to £24,000 if we're buying (nearly new) or £400 for leasing. Is leasing more expensive overall though? Electric or hybrid or maybe just petrol? Please hit me with your suggestions.

We've just bought a 2yr old electric Nissan Leaf and we're very happy with it BUT - we had an old Suzuki Vitara before that and it was SO much more roomy! The care before that was a Daihatsu Terios which we were really happy with and did not want to get rid of - a lorry going into the back of us wrote that one off. It was smaller than the Vitara but still more roomy than the Leaf. So we prefer an SUV for space, but we love the speed and reactiveness of the electric car - especially never having to think about changing gear and never worrying whether we are going to manage to get to the top of a steep hill.

If you do choose electric remember that you really need to have home charging capability, otherwise you're going to worry all the time about having enough 'fuel' to do what you need to do.

Big fan of Skoda's. Octavia/Superb? So much space.

If you lease you never own the car. To me that’s a bit silly if you can buy.

Thanks Janedo82, I get that. But what are the benefits of owning the car? Does it work out cheaper than leasing? We've owned our current car, but have never leased one.

Those are on my (so far very short) list!

I've looked at the Leaf and agree it's probably too small. We used to have a Citroën C3 before, and that was a challenge in terms of space. How long does it take to fit the charging station on the house? Can it be done in a day, and do you fit it yourself? I like the ID4 (which is more of an SUV admittedly).

Skoda Octavia or Scala. Both lovely family cars

Volkswagen Tiguan, the best car I've had.

I prefer to lease, change it every three years and get a service plan too.

You have an asset at the end. You can trade in and use as deposit on the next one. Or you can run it into the ground and have no car payment

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@ichundich fitting the charging station is an electrician job. We had ours put in when we had a small front extension put on 4 years ago as a future-proofing thing so it only really cost what the charging unit cost, but it is quite expensive. The EV charging/electrical supply companies have a number of offers on which you should check out. On the other hand you can charge from an ordinary electric socket - if you have an outside one that is good. The most important thing is to be able to park your car near the charger/socket. We have a private parking area right outside our house and a charger already so a no-brainer for us. We have economy7 electricity and at present it costs us around £4.50 for a 75% charge overnight. That is around 100- 120 miles.

Thanks DilemmaDelilah. So I guess there is an outlay cost, but it should pay for itself very quickly due to lower cost per mile. Plus sooner or later all houses will need a charging station... Food for thought.

We traded in a Land Rover Freelander for a Ford KuGa Titanium, more room, better facilities and a much better car. Cheaper to run as well.

Leasing is way more expensive
Skoda's are fab
A couple of years old for best value

We picked up our Dacia Jogger in September and we love it. Loads of room and brand new starts at £18k

We’ve just got a Škoda Enyaq, it’s very similar to a VW ID4 but with more kit. It allegedly has a range of 300+ miles in optimum conditions. Škoda were offering the charger fitted for free a while ago, mine is through Motability so they fitted it for me. It’s a really roomy car and incredibly comfortable. I swapped my VW Tiguan, which I absolutely loved for it.

I have a Kuga plugin Hybrid, and it's one of those cars that does what it should with no fuss. Isn't ridiculously big, but has enough space that I'm not worried about my teenagers crowding me out of it, plenty of boot space (and those seats that move forward a couple of inches for when you need just that little bit more, plus split rear seats).

I like the PHEV because it means I fill up once a month rather than once a week (high mileage doing the school runs, and each school run uses up a full charge which takes a couple of hours to recharge), and it means that if I can't get to the petrol station today, I can just go tomorrow because I'll recharge (I get about 50km per charge - my journey is hilly , if it's flat you'd get more, also get longer in summer) and use the electric instead.

It's got enough toys (heated steering wheel is a gamechanger in winter, as is being able to have the car pre-warmed in the morning before we get in) that I don't feel that it's totally basic, but not so fancy I'll get upset at the occasional scraping against a bush when I meet a tractor coming the other way.

plus it's Ford, so spares are cheap and easy.

I highly recommend

Hello, I have an ID4 and definitely recommend it, it's an excellent car! It is an SUV but it's lovely and roomy with a massive boot and the giant teen can sit happily in the back. SO many useful or fun features too.

If you can get a home charger fitted then honestly electric is the way to go, it costs £5-6 to charge up and it does over 300 miles for that. I do it overnight and will soon switch to Octopus which will be even cheaper (I'm in a contract with BT at the moment).

Ours is salary sacrifice through work for about £400 a month. I no longer buy cars outright as they start costing mega bucks after the first few years when things start to go wrong. I like always having a new car every 3 years too.

Octavia estate. Best thing we ever did 🤣

I do think it's an adjustment to not own a car outright. We've been conditioned to aim for this and whilst I don't think that's wrong, it's ok not to.

I'm leasing too. Nothing else to pay apart from fuel/electric. No repairs, servicing etc. if something goes wrong I get a courtesy car with no issues and if something drastic happens they replace the car.

Moving into owning hybrid and electric cars that felt reassuring and there's no unexpected cost.

I agree with this. It's completely dependent on your circumstances but it doesnt always make sense to buy outright. Mumsnet tends to be very against leasing/pcp but it can be a better option for a lot of people.