Yes, that can be the trouble with Minis.

It was so good to see that fine woman in the Soutth West as excited as a schoolgirl at the prospect of her seriously quick car, it seemed a parallel for your MiL.

I have no doubt you'll find her something good.

Though they are getting a little older now, for a couple of years, circa 2008/9 Toyota fitted the Avensis 1.8 petrol engine into the Yaris, known as SR model, sadly no autobox afaik but should be a nice drive with that sort of power to weight, they do tend to be low mileage and generally well looked after plus Toyota reliability, lower cost than the budget mentioned, just a thought that that tame wolf in sheep's clothing might put a sparkle in her eyes.

One other suggestion, slightly left field and fairly rare, Toyota iQ was available with the 1.3 engine, and the auto is the CVT transmission, stopped production in 2014.

Edited by gordonbennet on 27/06/2019 at 11:13

Writing off cars in your late eighties is usually a sign it's time to stop driving. So far it seems this 'totally competent 89yr old' woman has written off her car, then soon afterwards caused £1500 worth of damage to her new car (and goodness knows how much to the other cars involved). Do let us know in another five months how much more grief and carnage this over-confident hazard on wheels has caused - and whether or not she is still insurable.

Leaping to assumptions there John. There was no mention of the circumstances of either the old car being written off and the new one being damaged in a car park. Do you not feel it is possible that the OP's MIL was not at fault in either case?.

' my MIL has just written off her Ka...' plus the tone and content of the OP's description of the car park incident led me to feel that the possibility of faultlessness in both cases was highly remote.

Old age not only increases the likelihood of causing a collision, it also decreases the ability to react and avoid collisions caused by the faulty driving of others. There are lots of OAPs who have had collisions which were legally not their fault but which they might have avoided in middle age.

Edited by Avant on 21/11/2019 at 23:08

Avant, I wonder why your edit substituted 'Old age' for 'Senility', thus detracting from the accuracy of my post. Perhaps you mistakenly thought it was a rude word?

I agree. It's a medical term of long standing - but perhaps unfortunately the rather insulting tone of the word Senile has rubbed off onto it ?