I owned a Golf a few years back and loved it, the only reason I got rid of it was because I was traveling into London for work via train and couldn't justify a nice car depreciating on the drive.

I drove the Civic yesterday and it isn't the best to drive, but ticks every other box. Like you say I think you just have to weigh it all up.If the Golf could take me to 150k miles without serious repair bills then I'd be pretty happy.

Interested to hear from people who have Mk7s that have done over 100k miles

I had a Civic 1.8 until last year and changed it for a 2018 1.4 Golf estate. Both are good cars. Reliability-wise the Civic is probably statistically better and main dealer servicing is much cheaper so, however you maintain it going forward, finding one with a main dealer history may be easier. However if you avoid the DSG I don’t think the Golf is inherently unreliable.

One thing that put me off considering the Golf is the electronic parking brake. However in use I am a complete convert. I hope it never need a repair but I am prepared to take the risk. In any case the main brakes are a weak spot in Civics and at the mileage you are considering it’s worth checking if it needs pads and discs. This is a £600 job using OEM parts.

These are very different cars to drive. The Civic is nice to potter along in but needs revs to get maximum power. I only floored it occasionally and rather liked hearing it work. The Golf has more low down power and makes less fuss but feels a bit more clinical. It’s a matter of taste but most will probably prefer the Golf for readily accessible power.

Visibility also divides opinion. I had no issue with the Honda spoiler as it’s only a horizontal strip in a large glass area. Others, like my wife, find it irritating.

Space wise the Civic is much better than a Golf hatch. Especially the magic seats. The seats and their coverings are also much better in the Civic.

Finally returning to reliability most Civics will be set to time and mileage servicing while Golfs are more often on variable servicing. This may mean it’s easier to find a Civic with an annual oil change history if that’s important to you buying a car with 50 k miles.

We had the exact same Golf for 3 years and it's now with my daughter.

Great, great car in pretty much all respects. Reliability-wise our turbo failed and needed replaced at 75K despite the car being driven sensibly and a good mixture of journey-types. There is also a common problem with the heater matrix where it gets blocked and only blows hot air out of one side. That also hit our car. It's on 90K now and has started using a bit more oil, maybe about 0.5L every 650 miles so nothing terrible. Hope that helps.

Just had a quick look online at what acceptable oil consumption is classed as these days.

One site (US obviously) states that a quart every 1500 miles is considered by manufacturers as acceptable. So given that a quart is around a litre then the golf is certainly ballpark (obviously I need to get a few more readings using the dipstick to get a totally accurate figure)

www.bellperformance.com/blog/when-is-oil-consumpti...e

I also found a quote on the UK VW forum from a well respected poster (think he's a VW tech) who states:

VW specify that unless the oil consumption is greater than 1 litre per 620 miles there is nothing wrong.

So we're using less than half of that.

Obviously not ideal but given the above and other articles online it seems to be accepted within normal limits especially for an older vehicle.

To me those figures seem horrendous for modern cars although the consumption also depends on engine size. Clearly there is a big oil capacity difference between a 1.0L European car and a 5.0L American gas guzzler. During 10 years of ownership my previous 2.0L Mazda never used enough oil between annual changes to make a top up worthwhile.

We had 3 Toyota Corollas, 2 Yaris's and my current i30, none ever needed a top up between services, which were about 9 to 10,000 miles apart.

US practice was for oil changes every 5000 miles or so, oil and petrol being so cheap there nobody cared much about consumption.