£3,000 Focus - what about car tax costs?

David wrote: || On 17 Apr 2007, Chris Whelan wrote: ||| ||| The 1.6 is adequate, but has a very high top gear. If your motorway ||| miles are in a hilly part of the country and you like to maintain ||| brisk progress, the 1.8 might be better for you. ||| || || || I am the OP and your post made me think of Vehicle Excise Duty. || || As I am buying a car made at about the time of the change to emission || based pricing (March 2001) then would it noticeably affect VED costs || if I went for a Focus 1.6 or Focus 1.8 made before or after that || date? || || As I mentioned, I haven't bough a car in years and years soI am truly || out of touch! || || I do approx 3,000 miles a year (1,500 miles on local runs and 1,500 || miles on 140-mile Motorway journeys).

My 1.8 (51 reg) TDCI Focus estate accelerates and has a top speed which is in excess of my normal driving requirements, the road fund licence cost £110 a year and it appears to go on forever with 25 quid's worth of diesel in the tank.

I paid £3,000 for it s/h, have run it for eight trouble-free months, and if it turns out to be anywhere as reliable as many on this group reckons that Foci are, then I think I will be well pleased.

Let me answer indirectly: I have the petrol 1.8, my brother has the

1.6. The gearing on the latter is so wrong that 10-20 (or even 100) quid on the tax each year don't come into play, in my opinion.

Kostas

If £70 a year makes such a difference, you can't afford a car in the first place.

So it's a difference of £70 is it. Is that for both the 1.6 and 1.8?

So after three years it would have cost £210 more in VED to buy an April 2001 car than a Feb 2001 model. Mind you £210 buys a half- decent radio.

Where did you look that data up because the govt website only shows data for new cars?

If you spend 95% of your time 1 or 2 up on level motorways at 75-85mph, then the 1.6 is fine, and will give early 40's to the gallon.

It's plain frustrating and thirsty on busy, push on B / A roads [1]

[1] compared to the 1.8 which is an altogether different beast. Tim..

Don't buy a Focus Zetec 1.6 Auto whatever you do. I did 120 motorway miles in one today and it cost me £20 in fuel... I could have gone in a Bentley Brooklands for an extra £10 fuel. Should have.

Manual Focii are great on fuel though, 1.8 doesn't seem any worse than a

1.6, so personally I'd spend the extra £20 or whatever on road tax and drive the 1.8.

The Wikipedia (and I guess other sites would agree) has a chart for the Focus engines which shows: 37.4 mpg for the 1.6 33.8 mpg for the 1.8

That's about 10% or 11% difference.

Perhaps it's not so small a difference after all.

In news:Xns9918DDD06947FD92F1@127.0.0.1, David wittered on forthwith;

Thing is, in real life the 1.6 gets driven a fair bit harder than the 1.8 due to the performance deficit, so the 1.8 tends to be better on fuel.

This is only from experience of having had 130 of them on fleet at any one time from '98 to '01, so by I could be wrong.

Our fuel costs were nearly always lower with the 1.8 than the 1.6, but that might have been because our cars were harder driven than most.

A hard driven 1.8 will use more fuel than a hard driven 1.6, and a lightly driven 1.6 in urban use /may/ use /slightly/ less fuel than a 1.8 - but dawdling in any Focus is something that gets harder and harder to do once you discover just how brilliantly they respond to being driven harder.

"Pete M" wrote in message news:f0bdf0$vcd$ snipped-for-privacy@registered.motzarella.org...

Over 65k miles, my 1.8 averaged 34-36mpg driven over very varying roads, between leisturely and at 9/10ths of maximum V.

Very occasionally do you need to drop lower than 4th in A road circumstances, most overtaking manouvers can be accomplished in 5th quite happily, the same cannot not be said for the 1.6.

Mine was running the ST airbox, and Bluefin though which further bolstered torque and over 5500rpm response, but you very rarely needed to go there.

Tim..