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Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - Lookingforamotor
I’m looking to get a cheap ish car around £4500

I need parking sensors and have been looking at Honda jazz which fit into this bracket but they are older ie 59 plates with approx 70-90k miles (some with lower on auto trader) . Other options are Ford Fiesta 2013 plate with 80-90k miles , Suzuki SX4 2012 plate with 45k miles, or something else?

Oh actually just found this which I think might do the job!
www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202212212682276

Any better options than what I’ve linked ? Grateful for advice
Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - Adampr

It kind of depends on what you want in a car;

Annual mileage?

Manual or auto?

Usual trip length?

Motorways?

Passengers / luggage?

Speed?

Reliability?

Fun?

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - Lookingforamotor
Happy with manual or auto.

Unusual trip length short but with occasionally motorway so don’t want something too small / horrible and slow.

Me and another adult and child passenger wise

Speed something like 10-11 seconds to 60 would be slowest I’d go - I’d prefer10 or less I guess.

I’d like something that’s nice to drive if possible. I drove a Kia picanto 18 plate recently and it felt like a boat!
Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - badbusdriver

I would suggest not getting too concerned about 0-60 times. They don't really count for much in the real world (unless you frequently find yourself accelerating from a standstill to 60+mph?) and don't necessarily reflect how lively a car may feel.

For the record, no £4.5k Jazz is going to hit 60 in under 11 seconds, and neither will the 1.4 Fiesta you linked (and that is the manual gearbox, for an auto, add at least another second).

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - Adampr

I thought speed would be the issue. Most small, cheap cars are a bit glacial...

I have recently done the same sort of search and the main options (with input from this very forum) were:

Toyota Yaris 1.8SR (from about 2008)

Honda Civic Type S (from about 2008)

Suzuki Swift Sport

Possibly, if you find a good one, a first generation (2000-2005) Mini.

I ended up with a Renault Twingo 0.9tce, so you might consider that, along with the Smart ForFour, which is the same but uglier.

Before that, I had a Seat Toledo. With the higher powered 1.2 TSI, it has bags of space, goes pretty well and is very competent on the motorway.

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - badbusdriver

I thought speed would be the issue.

I'm not so sure. In the OP's first post, no mention at all was made of performance. It was only in response to your question that the OP came up with the 10-11 second 0-60 time (which the Fiesta they provided a link to doesn't meet).

Most small, cheap cars are a bit glacial.

Performance size and price have no direct correlation. A small cheap car can be fast, a big expensive car can be slow. Depends on the power to weight ratio along with the expectations of the driver/buyer.

We had a Daihatsu Sirion 1.0 (68bhp, 890kg) for three years and even on motorways I didn't find it lacking in performance.

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - Adampr

I had a Seat Mii (74bhp, 929kg) for four years and it was severely lacking on hills and joining the motorway. A shame, because it handled nicely.

Anyway, I agree with the gist of what you're saying but I did find a real shortage of smaller cars with reasonable performance. I appreciate hot hatches exist, but they're both expensive and uncomfortable. I also appreciate that the main market for small cars is urban and shopping trips so people aren't that bothered about speed.

I just think there is a bit of a niche for putting a decent sized engine in smaller cars for people who just don't need much space. Small capacity turbo engines are part of the solution but, potential reliability issues aside, they seem to be a little short on refinement at motorway speeds.

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - sajid

Had a jazz both a 53 plate and a 57 plate both mark 1 they have the idsi

Engine uses 8 spark plugs if u driving motorways they do consume more fuel

If i remember 70 mph engine rev 3500. At present i got a yaris 15 plate deisel a lot more economical plus it has a turbo engine torquier, 70 mph at 2200 revs best i did was 66 mpg

Maybe deisels would be the answer

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - paul 1963

My son has just sold his pug 107 after a painless 6 years with it, had the same engine as BBD's Diahatsu, certainly never felt underpowered.

Wonder how many Fiat pandas with the 100bhp engine are still about, I followed one yesterday and it did have some get up and go!!

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - badbusdriver

Had a jazz both a 53 plate and a 57 plate both mark 1 they have the idsi

Engine uses 8 spark plugs if u driving motorways they do consume more fuel

If i remember 70 mph engine rev 3500. At present i got a yaris 15 plate deisel a lot more economical plus it has a turbo engine torquier, 70 mph at 2200 revs best i did was 66 mpg

Maybe deisels would be the answer

Maintenance costs are higher for a diesel than a petrol and if anything goes wrong on a diesel, it will cost much more to fix than a petrol equivalent. The OP's budget would mean a diesel young enough to have some kind of emissions equipment like a DPF. This brings its own potential very expensive problems to the party, so very unlikely that diesel is the answer!.

There is more to the running costs of a car than just MPG.

Older Honda jazz or newer fiesta - budget £4500ish - badbusdriver

I had a Seat Mii (74bhp, 929kg) for four years and it was severely lacking on hills and joining the motorway. A shame, because it handled nicely.

The year we got our Daihatsu, we went (from Aberdeenshire) to Wigan and then on as far as Coventry to visit relatives. It had no problem maintaining an indicted speed of 75-80mph all the way down. On the way home coming up the steepest section of Beattock, the speed slipped down to 65mph, so I changed down to 4th and got back to 70 which it happily held till we got over the top.