My daughter has to replace her Toyota Corolla and can go to £5000-£6000 maximum. She averages 5000 miles a year, mainly short journeys with the occasional longer trip each month. For this reason, a petrol car, manual gearbox and engine capacity of 1.0-1.2 litres seems desirable and also four doors are preferred. She is single and has no great storage capacity requirement. However, reliability, ride quality (akin to the Toyota Corolla), economy and low running costs, eg. insurance, road tax, servicing and maintenance, are important.