Dh and I have a car each, we have had them both for a long time, dh has a old micra which we bought for £300 as a emergency (after his car died) in hope it would last us 6 months whilst he found something better, 3 years later he still has it as it went through 3 MOT's but now its time to get rid, he just uses it for driving to work in, we use my car for weekends and I use it for the school run, its a bigger car (Picasso) and has been well loved (is very tatty and now on its last legs). We would like to replace both cars (both are likely to fail their MOT's which are in June).
Option 1 is to buy my dream car (new shape VW beetle) for me, it would be ok to do the school runs in during the week and ok for me to drive around in on my own but not practical for taking the dd's out in (not much room in the back), would be no good for taking on holiday as the boot is small, dh would then have to buy a small(ish) but practical 4 door car which he could use for work and we could use for trips out with the kids.
Option 2 would be we buy a family car (medium sized) which I would use during the week and would be practical to use for family trips out and holidays, dh would buy another old banger for driving to work in.
Now, option 2 is probably the sensible option but I so want a VW beetle 
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So if we were to buy a medium sized family car, what would you recommend ? we don't want anything too big as we want it to be cheep to run and we are limited on space (we can fir one medium and one small car outsie our house), we have looked at the 'Nissan note' which we both really like but this would be the top end of our budget, I like the VW touran but dh does not (and they tend to be over our budget unless high millage), any other suggestions?