Thoughts on Pug 306 2.0 HDI?

They are a nice little car, great in the town and can return 50mpg easily. They handle fairly well. They're about as fast to 60 as a Ford Ka so not that good, but what you will notice is the mid-range power, 30-50 range. It's very good. As for being chipped, forget it. It's probably been owned by some idiot boy racer that has turned up the pressure to try and make it faster. It will probably be a bit worn out. Check the local car cruise sites to see how often it's been featured. People only chip them for two reasons. To make them a bit more responsive, or to thrash them to hell and back.

I personally wouldn't touch it. You're better buying an "unmolested" one. Plenty about, so don't be in a hurry.

They are better than the new 307, I drove one of them for a bit and they are vile. The Focus diesel sport is far better.

Cheers Simon. The owner of the chipped 306 is giving me the runaround (arranging to phone and not bothering etc) so I suspect they're trying to hide something. I'm hopefully going to see an unmolested one tomorrow so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be a nice example. I'll post my findings here :-)

Dave

Just keep in mind the depreciation, and possible issues that we don't see at the minute that will appear 4-5-6 years down the line that you get with current 4 year old pugs.

I've had two 306's both with the 1.9 turbo diesel engine. Loved them both, had central locking issues with the second, and a pair of drop links but nothing else went badly wrong in the 93,000 miles I had it. Brake pads averaged 40k and front tyres about 30-35k.

A work colleague ran a 99V 306 Meridian HDi for four years and 86,000 miles with nothing more than routine servicing.

Now running a 2004 206 SW with the HDi engine and that too is proving very good. No engine related problems in 70,000 miles. I change the oil at the recommended 12,000 intervals, and have used Millers XFD since day one. I never have to top the oil up between services and it averages 53mpg on very mixed driving with a fully loaded boot and air con usually switched on. Servicing is very cheap. In rural Worcestershire I've yet to have a service bill exceed £200, although they are quoting me £260 for the 72,000 service.

Sounds reliable, very reassuring. I suppose I'd get very different answers if I'd asked about a Renault DCi engine ;-)

What's your thoughts on the 206 driving position? My wife and I both love the look of the 206 but have ignored it as it gets slated by the motoring press for its poor driving position.

Dave

LOL!

I must confess, I'd considered a Punto with a JTD engine, then the drugs wore off ;-)

I love the look of the Punto, especially the HGT, but there are so many bad reviews of them that I saw sense and crossed them off my list. I owned a couple of Unos a few years back and they were very reliable and nippy rot boxes, but nowadays Fiat seem plagued with reliability issues. It's a pity because their engines were rock solid years back- I inherited an Uno ( is that name derived from 'Ooooh- no handbrake!'?) with 140K miles on it and it sounded like new though a bit gutless. The 70K mile engine I replaced it with was as tight and sweet running as any I've had and served me well until the rest of the car had to be swept up and put in the bin! Even the tyres and windows were rusty...

I had a loan of a Fiat 127 once- pug ugly but went like greased lightning for an ancient 1100 runabout. The brakes barely worked- it made driving very interesting! It was my uncle's car given to him by the Fiat dealership he worked for, and for a 'company' car it was very poorly maintained. Once the oil pressure light kept coming on because they never serviced it and the oil was so low, and he just drove it home. He chucked some oil in and the engine went on to do several tens of thousands of miles until it was scrapped due to corrosion.

Dave

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Head Gasket Terror?