Need a car under £10k. Can you recommend any of these or any others?

[FatimaLovesBread]

We're wanting a car that is cheaper monthly than our current one.
Has anyone got any opinions on the following or can you recommend any others?
Skoda Fabia
Skoda Octavia
New Kia Rio
New Kia Ceed
Old Kia Ceed
New Peugeot 208
Ford Fiesta

New shape Fiesta looks sporty, as does the new Peugeot 208.

HOw much are you spending? Have you looked at the Alfa Mito?

Alfa Romeo Mito

I've got a fiesta, the model before this one...complete bottom end of the market 1.25.

It's fine for me, DP and 2 teenage DC, you can fit 3 adults in the back - but you wouldn't want to do a long journey like that, you'd also struggle to fit an adult between two car seats in the back, though if they're slim you can do.

Boot's not fantastic, but I can fit a full trolley of shopping in it, it's pretty good on fuel and nippy enough in low gears, the small engine is annoying with a lot of motorway driving though.

I've had it since new about 4 1/2 years ago, it's not started once - but I think I left the boot open and drained the battery, other than that I've had no bother with it.

It's dead easy to park, rofl

How much do you spend on your current car per month? How much do you want to be spending per month? What car do you currently have, and how much are you likely to get back for it? Or is it on finance?

How many miles do you do per month?

The reason I ask is that buying a new car is unlikely to save you money - dropping £10K on a new car will cost you £3K in depreciation in the first year, or about £250 per month. You're not going to save £250 per month by changing unless you currently have an M5, C63 or something similar.

If you're changing from a 5 year old, £3K hatchback to a £10K, new/young hatchback, it will cost you more money.

Current car is an 09 Ford Focus Titanium. I love it but we seem to have the bad one of a batch as its had lots of little things go wrong with it, that was fine when it was under warrenty but we can't afford to have it in and out of the garage.
The trade in value would cover the outstanding finance.
We pay £325 a month for it on HP and would like to cut this by at least £100 if poss.

I know tht new cars depreciate a lot, so if we were to get a new car I'd rather get it on a PCP type deal rather than HP.

The sensible head is saying get a cheaper, older car. But then we keep getting attracted by shiny new ones.

We are expecting our first child later this year so would need to be five door and fit the Babystyle Oyster in the boot. DH wants diesel for the higher MPG and lower emissions.

DH does about 30 miles a day for work, plus out and about at the weekend, quite often motorway runs.

Thanks for the comments so far

We have a vauxhall meriva. Got it for 8k when it was 11 months old. Brand new it was worth 18k . We pay £215 a month, the car repayments are £175 the rest is my insurance. It's an all singing and dancing model and drives really well.

My advice is go to car lots and look. If you do buy from a dealer...haggle. They want to sell, so you are in the position to bargain with them.

The seats in the back of mine all move independently of each other so it's easy to fit car seats. We have two full car seats and room for a booster in the back. Boot is big.

You can also haggle on brand new cars, if it's midweek, and the dealer hasn't sold much that week.
I've always had Vauxhalls as my dad used to work for them. I've had 3 brand new ones, and never had a problem with them.

We went to look at Skodas yesterday. Got some figures for the Fabia and we're going back tomorrow to test drive.
It's was on a 3yr PCP deal, if we like it, how would we go about haggling down a bit?
It came with 0% VAT so that knocked off a fair chunk of depreciation, also had two years free servicing so that's another £300ish.

we have an old Kia Ceed (it's a 58 plate but is the model before last) & it's fantastic. It cost £10K (with 0% finance) when we bought it at 18 months old/just under 15K miles, & after 2+ years & 70K miles we are still delighted with it.

The 7 year/100K mile warranty brings massive peace of mind (previously had a very troublesome used Mondeo which cost us a fortune)

Servicing is around £200 a time at intervals of 12.5K miles, which would be once a year for most people.

if you buy a diesel car now you need to ask about the Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) - they can be troublesome, particularly if you don't do a lot of high speed motorway miles on a regular basis.

\link{http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/fuels-and-environment/diesel-particulate-filters.html\AA DPF advice}

older diesels don't have them. 2 years ago I part exchanged an 02 diesel Zafira for an 08 Mazda5, not knowing about the DPF thing; after less than a year, with some issues, I ended up trading back down to an 04 Zafira (low mileage) because I don't do a lot of miles & a DPF used wrongly can be very expensive. I lost money on the deal but I'm a lot happier!

\link{http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201223474734435/sort/default/usedcars/price-from/7000/price-to/8000/maximum-mileage/up_to_20000_miles/fuel-type/diesel/model/ceed/make/kia/page/1/postcode/ub70bd/radius/1501?logcode=p\08 reg Ceed with 16K miles, £7.5K} - LS is top of the range (the next model went 1, 2, 3 - 3 was top. Don't know about newst one)

I think you get the balance of the 7-year warranty but you'd need to check that out

\link{http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201213460073177/sort/default/usedcars/price-from/7000/price-to/8000/maximum-mileage/up_to_20000_miles/fuel-type/diesel/model/ceed/make/kia/page/1/postcode/ub70bd/radius/1501?logcode=p\59 reg GS, same price} (lower spec)

I don't know when the DPF was introduced on the Ceed. Our 58 doesn't have one - 59 might do

There are a lot of low-mileage Ceeds on autotrader at £7.5-8K

Thts interesting reading about the DPF thank Ponders
Our current car, an 09 Ford Focus has one and we haven't had a problem. There's at least 2 60mph roads between our house and DHs work so I assume it will be passively burnt off on these. We also do motorway driving every couple of weeks which according to the article helps too (more excuses for DH to take me shopping)
In our car I think it's in the catalytic converter so will be close to the engine but I'll check when we go test drive the Skoda today.

Some good prices for Kia Ceeds, I'll show them DH. We've ruled out a brand new Ceed as too expensive. But as I pointed out any new car will have the three year warrenty, so the draw for the Cee would be getting an older one and still having the remainder of the 7years, which other used car makes wouldn't.

We have an 09 ceed and I love it - would get another in a heartbeat. Huge boot, comfortable for both DH (6' 3) and me (5'4) to drive, fun to drive, easy to park. And the long transferrable warranty is a real selling point for me.