I'll repeat Andy's advice - dont!

Unless you have a lot of experience of mending old cars, go for the most modern you can afford, but don't buy anything French, or Vauxhall!

I'll dispute Andy's advice about Ford prices, as I recently bought a Yaris for much less than a Fiesta.

I'd say any small engined car for a couple of years for cheap insurance to build up your no claims. Perhaps something like a Panda?

Always go for a manufacturer who has a dealer nearby, saves travelling miles for parts that motor factors don't stock.

Buy locally, if you have a problem it's up to you to return it to the seller.

My experiences wih Peugeot have also been positive. Owned a couple of 205s, several 306s, two 307s and a 407 over the past 20 years. Why so many? I've gone off to other marques and been disappointed so gone back to Peugeot.

I've made sure I've bought cars with service history and maintained them and kept abreast of things to look out for or deal with from a peugeot forum. They're cheap to maintain and easy to fix.

Tom must have bought a lemon in his time, so now needs to tell everyone to steer clear in some bizarre act of revenge. I once had a crappy Ford Escort but I don't need to post on every Ford thread telling people to steer clear!

Edited by Gibbo_Wirral on 24/08/2015 at 14:04

Now i'm going to disagree entirely with the collective.

80s and 90s cars are the best of all worlds, they do near enough everything that the moderns do, apart from control the car for you, however they are now getting on a bit and finding the right car won't be simple.

Ignore dealers completely, you want to buy a car of this age from people who have looked after them, preferably from new but with as few owners as possible.

You need either to be fairly mechanically minded or to have some good friends who are, particularly you will need someone competent and tame on tap for the odd bit of welding.

I'm a member of another forum dedicated to older cars like these bought cheaply as possible, in the £hundreds and only an exceptional car will cost £2k and that will need to be a rarity such as a coupe or very special edition, and near enough perfect.

What would i be looking for, well 240 Volvo's are fine, but consider a good 7/9 series too, the saloons in particular are very cheap to buy and if looked after a good one has many years left in it.

Also consider Merc's 190 (one of the best cars they ever made), Toyota/Datsun/Nissan anything that has been old chap owned and is rust free.

Actually in all honesty consider anything, there's so much pleasure (and frustration) to be gained from these cars, whilst the moderns are OK they are to people like me as boring as hell and i wouldn't give you a thankyou for one, nor all the electronics within which will see them scrapped long before the last 200/700/900 Volvos are off the road.

Don't even think about £2k for your first step into semi classic/banger world, £500 will do so long as its got a long MOT and runs well enough, you're bound to make a few wrong choices along the way, haven't we all, but if you get 6 months out of a £400 jobbie and it packs up and you get £100 weighing it in that aint a bad start.

Rust is the killer, and take not a blind bit of notice of people who tell you modern cars don't rust, they are the people who never get underneath.

Check out classic insurance too, usually 20 or 25 years old vehicle to qualify.

Nearly everything from that period is a pile of rust. Very few exist and most likely only classics of interest have bee restored. Any Vauxhall i owned rusted in 3 years so what it would be like now i've no idea. Volvo last well and their maybe a few around. The classic world is expensive and many good tend to be around £3000 >

Probably the best one to drive would be the Volvo 340 - but in 360 guise, and preferably the 360GLTi variant. That 2.0 lump from the 2/7 series was really unstressed pulling around a (moderately) light hatchback.