After owning its sister car, a smart forfour, for just a year some pointers before ordering.
If it is the turbo model satisfy yourself about reliability before ordering. Ours did about 15,000 miles before the turbo went and it was off the road for about 7 weeks awaiting a new part.
Are you are happy with regular visits to the fuel station? They have a small fuel tank (about 30 litres ueable) and mpg isn't brilliant, less than 40 round town.
The rear engine means they take many miles to warm up, ensure it has heated seats.
Fit winter tyres. They are absolutely useless in snow without.
Edited by daveyjp on 30/09/2018 at 10:18
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Thanks for the reply.
Sorry to hear about your turbo problems. It's hard to determine how reliable the car is, because there don't seem to be that many of them about. Statistically, it's probably not the safest possible choice in terms of reliability, but nothing's 100%, is it?
At the risk of getting a bit too soap opera-y, the situation is this: I've been furiously saving money in a ratesetter account for the deposit and balloon payment on a 0% finance Fiat 124 Spider. My father passed away last year, and my mother, who was until recently remarkably hale and hearty for her age, has recently developed some fairly serious health problems. As a dutiful son, I need a practical vehicle for transporting Mum around in, which the Spider really isn't, and I can't reasonably justify the expense of running two cars.
Having done a fair amount of research, I've settled on the Twingo as the least objectionable suitable car, and discovered that the difference in price between a second-hand job with most of the features that I want and a brand new car with all of the (available) features that I want is small enough that (or so I thought) the easiest option is just to buy a new one.
For the amount of driving that I anticipate I'll be doing, a tankfull should last about a fortnight, and fuel economy isn't my top priority (see the bit about the Fiat Spider, above).
Heated seats are part of the aforementioned option packs, for Mum's benefit. I'm not that bothered about being fireside cosy when I'm driving (see the bit about the Fiat Spider, above - although, to be fair, the Lusso Plus that I was planning on buying does come with heated seats).
Thanks for the tip about the tyres. We don't generally have too many problems with snow in town, but I'll bear it in mind. What do you think the problem is? The weight of the car? The RWD?
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And consider using a broker - Broad speed are offering about £1k off top spec Twingos ATM. I have no connection other than my father purchased a C class Merc from them and the whole process was fine.
HTH
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I'm curious as to what led you to the Twingo?, is it just because you like the looks of them or is it to do with this particular spec you talk of?. In terms of design and layout, you don't make too much sacrifice with the packaging of the Twingo's rear engined layout. As the engine is on it's side, the boot floor, while obviously not as deep as it's front engined rivals, has a reasonable amount of floor space. But other than it's very tight turning circle, the layout does not offer anything else over it's conventional rivals. From what i have read, the Twingo (and Smart ForFour) are brilliant in town due to the aforementioned turning circle and size, but out of town, it is a mixed bag. Strong winds on the open road for example, affect them much worse than others due to the combination of their height and lack of weight over the front. Incidentally, regarding them being useless in the snow, this is almost certainly to do with tyre choice as opposed to the engine being at the back, probably 'low rolling resistance' tyres geared towards maximum economy, not outright grip. If anything, the layout should be better, at least for traction. Of course the other side of this is that the layout is probably going to exaggerate the effect of the front wheels sliding wide when trying to corner (again, due to the lack of front end weight), if the Twingo had a front boot (i don't think they do?), you could put something heavy in there like a bag of cement to counteract this.
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I confess, looks are part of it. The Twingo isn't particularly pretty, in fact it's fairly nondescript, but I really don't like the toy SUV look that's in fashion at the moment.
Given that I will mostly be driving it in busy town traffic and trying to squeeze it into tight parking spaces, the advantages that you've mentioned are not unimportant.
I'm a night worker, so I've mostly been spared the unpleasantness of rush hour traffic for a fair few years now, but I'll have to deal with it to keep various appointments. Obvious solution: automatic transmission. The Kia Picanto is butt ugly, the Hyundai i10 is more expensive, as is the smart forfour, and everything else has a robotized manual box, which just strikes me as a fundamentally daft idea. Reviewers have been fairly negative about the Twingo's EDC, but my understanding is that it's basically the same unit as the Fiesta's Powershift, which has been highly praised, and the few comments that I've been able to find from auto Twingo owners indicate that they love it. It's a bit of an unknown quantity, admittedly, but sometimes you just have to try things for yourself.
The crosswind issue is a little bit of a worry, but again, comments from actual owners of the car suggest that it's really not a big deal.
The bonnet does seem a bit rubbish. It's a fiddly looking slide forward contraption that gives you access to the fluid caps, but there's no storage space there.
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I confess, looks are part of it. The Twingo isn't particularly pretty, in fact it's fairly nondescript, but I really don't like the toy SUV look that's in fashion at the moment.
Given that I will mostly be driving it in busy town traffic and trying to squeeze it into tight parking spaces, the advantages that you've mentioned are not unimportant.
I'm a night worker, so I've mostly been spared the unpleasantness of rush hour traffic for a fair few years now, but I'll have to deal with it to keep various appointments. Obvious solution: automatic transmission. The Kia Picanto is butt ugly, the Hyundai i10 is more expensive, as is the smart forfour, and everything else has a robotized manual box, which just strikes me as a fundamentally daft idea. Reviewers have been fairly negative about the Twingo's EDC, but my understanding is that it's basically the same unit as the Fiesta's Powershift, which has been highly praised, and the few comments that I've been able to find from auto Twingo owners indicate that they love it. It's a bit of an unknown quantity, admittedly, but sometimes you just have to try things for yourself.
The crosswind issue is a little bit of a worry, but again, comments from actual owners of the car suggest that it's really not a big deal.
The bonnet does seem a bit rubbish. It's a fiddly looking slide forward contraption that gives you access to the fluid caps, but there's no storage space there.
Not sure what or where you have been reading about the powershift, but in actual fact it has caused Ford so much grief they (quietly) dropped it, with the current small auto Fords are now using a lightweight torque converter auto like the Mazda 2 (PSA group have also taken this sensible route). I am not sure of any specific problems re the Twingo and the ForFour, but only way i'd be taking on something with that type of box, would be if i was planning to get rid of it before the warranty was up.
Re. the i10, yes the top of the range version might start off as being more expensive than the Twingo (by £610), but how about once you'd added in all your option packs?. I had a quick look at the Twingo price list and the packs (there is actually 4 packs, but i'm assuming you were not talking about the 'rear door bin' pack?) add up to something like £1350. The top of the range i10 premium SE comes with heated seats (and steering wheel) as standard, so that is £250 right there (taking the price difference down to £360) but i'm not sure about other spec/option comparisons. Also, the 1.2 is only marginally down on power compared to the Twingo 0.9 TCE (87bhp vs 90bhp), the Hyundai's torque converter auto may be less efficient, but i'd have far more confidence in its reliability than any of this dual clutch malarkey. On top of that, as you are buying new, you'd have Hundai's excellent 5 year warranty as reassurance.
I really like the looks of the Twingo myself, i think it is a much better looking car than the ForFour, and i love the rear end styling which has more than a nod towards the wild mid-engined R5 turbo (you may be too young to be aware of that!). But i'm afraid i wouldn't have one with that gearbox.
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Thanks for your reply.
From what I've read, at least some of the problems that Ford have had with the Powershift have been more to do with US customers expecting it to behave like the TC shifts that they're used to, rather than any particular serious mechanical shortcomings with the unit itself.
The Hyundai i10 is my second choice. A factor against the i10 is that my current car is an 08 SIII which I bought with three years left on the warranty, and I was less than thoroughly impressed with the service I received from various authorized dealers. Mostly niggling little things like handing the car back with the headlights misaligned after a routine service and somehow managing to break the CD player, but it's a factor. There's a little local garage that's an authorized Renault service centre and seems to derive the majority of its income from that, so I'm presuming that they do good work.
I appreciate your comments, but at this point, I've done enough research to convince myself that a new Twingo is my first choice. I'll willingly concede that I might well regret the decision, but at the moment, my primary focus is balancing my work commitments with providing my Mum with the care that she needs.
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