Don't buy either a nearly 10 year old car is worth £ 500 max. there will be no warranty and any warranty given will be subject to lots of exclusions. and i very much doubt if that transmission would be covered.

Read HJ's car by car guide first.

tell us your usage, (we see the budget) and if it is for town/urban/suburban or rural, how many people for.. and mileage.

Edited by oldroverboy. on 10/07/2016 at 21:11

My opinion?

It doesnt pay to run your car accross to Italy, especially if its old. Its much much cheaper and far less stress to hire a car over there for two weeks.

8 years old is a danger zone for cars as in my experience (vag) thats when the first wave of major repairs will hit. They most likely need brakes/discs, some suspension work, and possibly dmf/dpf/dsg all expensive

You may be right about the short "lifetime" of DSG type automatic gearboxes, which are not for me - but this does not apply to Torque Converter (TC) gearboxes, which I know have a much longer trouble free life. In my case 128K miles, and another I know of is working well at >80k miles. But they need to be properly maintained ie the ATF "oil" changed/half changed every 50k mls despite the fact that some are made out to be sealed for life. I was told this by a member of The Fed of Auto Transmission engineers when he last changed the "oil" for me. He knew what he was doing and his advice was accurate.