Hmm....

Something not diesel - cheaper and faster.

a V10 diesel dodge ram! :)

Astra DTi is no where near as good engine wise.

Well my choice is thus:

Small and not wallet ripping for 25,000 miles a year. Medium and not wallet ripping for 25,000 miles a year. Large and not wallet for 25,000 miles a year.

A Fiat with the JTD lump.

Bravo - looks nice but expensive. Brava - looks OK and cheaper. Marea - ugly as sin, but dirt cheap, even with a 2.4JTD.

Not persuaded by a Fiat. Love the JTD not convinced about the rest of the package.

So will have to look for the Marea on eBay. :0

Yup. But can still be chipped. Handling probably 85% as good as a Focus. Good enough? Maybe.

Expensive, eccentric...

Seriously, they're not all that bad, and the Weekend actually looks OK.

What was the Ka worth? - probably a few grand? - for that you'd get a

That's a serious wedge of car for f*ck all cash, IMHO.

Personally, I'd go for something a little older, without leather and pay closer to a grand, though.

Hell, you don't even need a Weekend, so a fugly saloon would do the job admirably. Just make sure it's HLX spec., ELX is very nasty.

astra is even more cheaper if based in a vauxhall dealer and you can get a vauxhall partners discount :) guy at work has ordered the new 150bhp astra diesel, wonder what that's like?

He wants to do 25k miles PER YEAR, not between rebuilds.

Not sure at this juncture...

I suspect we'll take this as an opportunity to take some chips off the table and get something cheaper anyway...

Bingo. That's the current plan.

We could put the Weekend to use...:)

Noiser, not nearly as good to drive. Better inside and generally more toys. Go up a size and get a Vectra if you want a diseasel Vx, the new shape one is far better than everyone who's not used one extensively would make out.

My Volvo would have been in your pricerange, shoulda bought that when I was selling and you'd probably (a) not have rolled and (b) really ruined the other vehicles day...

Ba-dum.... tish.

Obviously, the same is now going to apply to Vauxhall, seeing as they use the JTD lumps these days.

It's rapid. Test drove all the current diseasels while trying to pursuade myself they were a good idea. Would have been a lot of finance and I found the Astra a bit cramped from the drivers seat. Best package was a 6 speed manual 150bhp diesel Vectra - even more so as a 1 yr old 54 plate for 9500 quid. LS spec though.

The engine is great, can't help thinking a 156 is the best place for it though.

The other thing that put me off was talking about them to a mate who works at a Vx dealer, something about software issues and regular issues with the ECU...

That'll be the Vx bits, then :-P

You git. It hurts when I laugh!

Yeah yeah yeah... fair point.

In orange, of course. :)