My wife and I are looking for a second car. Our current car, a Skoda Superb is our current and only car and is, and will continue to be, used for commuting and long distance driving (ie to Wales, Scotland or Poland and back).

The second car will be for commuting (25 minute commute each way per day) and popping into town, and occasionally going to visit parents 25 minutes away. In the future, we hope to have the need of putting a pushchair in the boot. It also needs to be a safe and strong car. We have a budget of up to £4,000 and are happy to buy from auction.

The current list of cars contains VW Golf (pre and post 2004 model), Seat Leon (pre and post shape change), Honda Civic (New shape), Skoda Fabia (new shape) Vauxhall Astra (2005-2009 model).

While this gives us quite a wide variety of cars to choose from, the plan is to keep the car until it dies.
Hence, it has to be long lasting, economical both in fuel and a low car tax, inexpensive to repair and service.
Mileage is not too much of an issue, but it must have full service history if it is a high miler. All my cars I have owned have happily gone over 100,000m (Land Rover 90, Saab 9000, Volvo 850, including current Skoda Superb), without too much trouble, but they were all second hand.

So, I suppose, after my waffling, my 2 questions are:
- Which cars should I go for, avoid, knock off the list or even add?

- Should it be a petrol or diesel?

I look forward to hear your pearls of wisdom.

Kind regards

Happy Driver