In an attempt to save money, my wife, two small children and I are about to leave London and move to a rural location where the country lanes will not be gritted during winter. I will continue to work in London, and will be commuting by train every day - the local train station is just over two miles away from the new house. I think we will need two cars - first, a family car which can cope with icy/muddy country lanes and which has good passenger safety for our two little nippers, and second, a cheap-but-reliable secondhand car whose main function will be to take me to and from the train station every day.

Reliability is a concern, as I often work until late in the evening, and we want something that will start first time when I get back to the train station car park at 11.00pm. We currently own a secondhand BMW 318i '56 registration, with just over 20,000 miles on the clock, which we would trade in or sell. Living in London, we only used to cover about 4,000 miles a year, but this is likely to increase once we're living in the countryside. We could spend a further £10,000 - £15,000 - but the less we spend, the better.