Hello there,

This will be a broad one I know, but...

My girlfriend let her MINI Cooper go at the start of the year; there was just too much to do on it. She replaced it, temporarily with a Mercedes A170, with the intention of selling that back to our (friendly) garage in June when she closed one of her shops (she assumed that only one car would be necessary and our main business car is a FIAT Doblo).

Now the automatic gearbox has gone on the Mercedes and she's looking for a second car (having recalculated and found it would, after all, be useful).

She wants something roomy (the A170 was almost big enough, the MINI too small; we need decent room without having to physically remove the rear seats), comfortable (the Merc was OK, the MINI... well, we're getting a bit old for that...), and 'fun' (hard to define, I know; I even had fun once driving a decidely dodgy Corsa). The car will mainly be used for journeys of around 10 miles or so, but has to be able to do the odd 6-700 mile round trip in a day.

We'll probably take a look at Qubos in the next few days, but I was wondering if there are alternatives? She would be suspicious of anything French, given the nightmare we had a few years ago with a Partner (which seemed to have been designed with the express purpose of being frustrating). Skoda Roomster? Horse and Cart? Teleportation device?

Budget's hard to say since we're abroad, but we have something in the region of what bought us a four-year old Doblo a few years back.

Any thoughts are welcome.

All the best -

Dave