It.s a risk but a bigger risk buying diesel, allow for set of injectors dmf dpf egr (worst case) servicing, nore expensive oil. Distances for regenerations, Don't forget anything ex A.Lee will be "well used" to say the least, and how long will your little angels really want to travel with you. i suggest a small estate car, ie astra/cruze petrol, cheap for bits, room for plenty of kit in side for £10k you can find a new cruze petrol if you look and will get the peace of mind of 3 years new warranty. will also get pre-reg zafira .6 or meriva.

I would not recommend anyone to buy a used diesel, purely because you do not know how it has been used, and at the risk of repeating myself, A used car warranty is expensive toilet paper unless the car is still under manufactrers warranty.

Edited by oldroverboy. on 12/02/2014 at 16:25

Petrol - no-brainer at 5k miles/year - cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain particularly over 10 years.

Modern diesels have DPFs - which you'll kill at that low mileage / short journey routine - and extended warm-up time of diesels will mean the fuel saving isn't as much as the statistics suggest in short journey use.

Your arguement to justify a diesel even for a relatively low mileage is the same one I have used in the past, I did 37,500 miles in my 1 series BMW and over 5 1/2 years i owned it I calculated I saved almost £3000 plus I never had any of the much discussed diesel issues. Even without the savings I would probably still have bought the diesel since the petrols available were gutless beasts that drank fuel at an alarming rate when you thrashed them to get decent performance.

Having said that when i bought my last new car I bought petrol since with the newer small turbo petrols its very difficult to justify buying a diesel. I bought a Seat Leon 1.4 TSi 140 PS. It has the same power that my BMW had but is much faster, the BMW averaged 48 mpg over the time I had it, the Seat has averaged 45 mpg so far. Factor in the lower price of petrol and that increases to almost 48 mpg thus my fuel costs have remained the same. The Seat is £30 a year RFL, again the same as the BMW.

You mention an estate, I suggest you consider the Skoda Octavia Estate and the new Seat Leon Tourer both of which you can get with the 140 PS 1.4 engine. Forget the VW and Audi's, they are simply way to expensive for the same car. If you want good economy forget the Mondeo diesel, we had one, averaged 38mpg.

I love diesels but when petrols this good are on the market why risk big bills. I would not have said that 12 months ago but owning the TSi has proved to me how much things have moved on.

I have up to 10k to buy a car. We are low users, about 5k miles a year, half of which is short city journeys. The current vehicle is a Picasso petrol which we've had for about 10y, and I would like to replace with something that will do the same job of being cheap to run and lasting a decade while shifting a family of five. As the three smallest are going to be all big by the end of that next decade, I need it to be quite a large vehicle. I have in mind the C4 Grand Picasso, S-Max, Galaxy (ex Addison Lee perhaps), Zafira, or maybe an estate like a Mondeo or Passat.

Question is, diesel or petrol. I know the conventional view is low-users should go for petrol, but does the 10y cycle change this? I think it might. The argument against diesel is that they can throw up a big expensive bill, possibly at the £2000 level. This is scary right enough, but the savings per year say for a C4Grand Picasso 1.6 diesel versus 1.6 petrol are about £419. Over ten years that's £4200 assuming a stable tax regime and fuel price ratio. Given that the massive diesel bug out mught not happen, isn't that a risk worth taking?

Ultimately, only you can decide if it is a risk worth taking.

I wouldnt even think about a diesel with you mileage, and the time you want to keep the car. However, if you want a biggish car, be careful with your choice of petrol. Small engines are all the rage, but anything under 2.0 litres is going to feel out of its depth when you fill the car up. You could get a turbo'd small petrol, but again, its introducing things that could cost you in the long run.

How about a 2.0 Honda Accord Estate?

Just a thought... If I stretched it to 12k, I could get a new Zafira 1.7 diesel. Does the a Vauxhall lifetime warranty cover these high cost diesel problems?

"That 1.4 is pretty amazing though, a lot of power for the economy. I wish there was an MPV that used it."

The VW Touran does, although this may not be as romy as your Picasso. The Skoda Yeti has the 1.2 105 bhp TSI engine which is said to be more than adequate. You'd need to try one and see if it does the job for you.

I woyuld certainly have one of those over any Vauxhall. I would imagine the Vauxhall warranty covers manufacturing defects up to 100,000 miles (first owner only), but that as mileage mounts they would reject more and more claims as being due to wear and tear.

We've moved away a bit from the OP's query. No harm in thread drift, but let's not lose sight of it.

To your list of Touran, Octavia and another Picasso, you could add the Toyota Verso and the bigger Skoda, the Superb, which has the sort of rear legroom your kids may need eventually if you keep the car for a long time, as you intend to.

As you can see, there are plenty of pros and cons of both petreol and diesel. I personally would go for petrol on balance - but if you do decide on a diesel, there seem to be fewer problems with Ford 2.0 litre engines and the VW/Skoda/SEAT 1.9 diesel.

Hello. New here!

I'm in a similar situation/dilemma, though with two little 'uns. The low tax of diesels is definitely tempting...

Regarding the DPF mentioned by other posters, the Peugeot dealership I was in recently assured me that one motorway trip a month was enough to keep the DPF happy (or FAP, as they call it), and that it wouldn't need replacing until well after 100,000 miles if looked after in this way, so if they were being honest that side of things shouldn't be an issue for you.

Don't know if the Peugeot FAP is any different to other filters put on diesels these days, though, or if the newer Peugeot diesels are reliable in the long term!