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Circumstances have forced me into buying a cheap car quickly. After splashing out £700 on a 'S' plate Fiat Marea Weekend HLX, fully-loaded, which looks and goes well. Apart from the hideous name, do they really deserve the bad write-up that HJ has given it?
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It will only continue to be cheap if it is reliable. My guess is that HJ is only reporting what he's picked up over the years, but you could still be lucky. There must be one out there that isn't a dog, surely?
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When my neighbour moved in about 2 years ago he had one of these cars. He changed to a Renault Megane recently and that has been in the garage much more than the Fiat.
screwtape
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As with all old cars of this vintage, I reckon the key is to over-service them.
Change all the fluids, filters, plugs, and check the brake pads. Take out the battery (check codes first), clean it and all the connections, top it up, and charge it up. Cost, about £50.
After that you can't really do much more.
I think like all FIATs they have slightly difficult timing belts. If you want to get more than two years out of it, then change it (if you do not know its age), or do what a friend of mine use to do on £700 cars which was to run them till the belt broke, and then scrap it; quids in.
Funny enough, you might get 4-5 years out of it for push-bike money.
Edited by MW on 27/05/2008 at 11:49
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>>As with all old cars of this vintage, I reckon the key is to over-service them.
>>Change all the fluids, filters, plugs, and check the brake pads. Take out the battery
>>(check codes first), clean it and all the connections, top it up, and charge it up. Cost, about £50.
Not at all. Underservice cheap, old cars. Unless it's DIY you'll spend as much on changing all the fluids as you spent on the car itself.
The thing that will kill the car is generally not the fluids. Change the oil, OK. If it's a K-series Rover, it's too late to change the coolant.
When the belt breaks, throw it away. That said, iirc these Fiats have a reputation for breaking their belts, so that may well be money well spent.
You could buy a similar Mondeo (or Vectra) for similar money. Or an Audi A6... old cars are worthless.
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Funny you should say that about an A6 as there was an 'N' Avant version, on a front driveway for £895. Nice, but as it was only a 1.8 put me off. It's a lot of metal for a 'relatively' small engine to haul around. Now you'll tell me that would be the better deal. C'est la guerre and all that.
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Funny you should say that about an A6 as there was an 'N' Avant version on a front driveway for £895. Nice but as it was only a 1.8 put me off. It's a lot of metal for a 'relatively' small engine to haul around. Now you'll tell me that would be the better deal. C'est la guerre and all that.
125bhp and 20V of power will haul it around OK
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If I was into bangernomics, change that to when due to my present circumstances, I would spend some money on fluid changes but only cos I'm happy to DIY, in fact I enjoy it.
It reduces the chance of a breakdown leaving you stranded miles from anywhere, a pain even if you have breakdown cover.
I suspect that, with a bit of care, your Marea Weekend will last thousands of days more than its name suggests but then, I'm a great Fiat fan.
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A friend has one of these bought new from Trade Sales or similar must be 8-10 years ago.
Still got it and never mentions any problems, unlike their E-class of a similar vintage ;(
MVP
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125bhp and 20V of power will haul it around OK
No it won't! I regularly drive an A3 with one of these engines, it's OK if you rev it but there is not enough low down poke; must be dreadful in an A6.
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If you look on eBay, 2.8 quattro Avants from 1998 regularly go for £600 - with nothing wrong. (£750 with a full tank...) Those ones advertised in Autotrader for £2,000 presumably never sell.
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If you look on eBay 2.8 quattro Avants from 1998 regularly go for £600 - with nothing wrong.
But how can you know that for certain?
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But how can you know that for certain?
Because there are so many of them, some must be...
Actually, OP. It's much worse than you suggest. Your budget would have bought this 51-reg example on eBay. 170222411527 Specimens like yours seem to be closer to £400 - proving that the Audi is still twice the car of the Fiat... :)
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As with any car 9 years old, the make matters less than the condition - whether it's been driven well and regularly serviced. I wouldn't think that a Fiat is any better or worse than anything else at that age: indeed if it 'looks and goes well' it's probably been reasonably well cared for.
Good luck with it!
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Typical Fiat ....(no not the ususual claims) in that it was a large fiat against the likes of the Vectra and the mondeo and never got going in terms of sales. A real shame the 2.0 20v is an absolute peach the 1.8 and 1.6 are also good as were the later diesels with the JTD engine. I see about five of them on my evening dog walk all in daily use, all with out rust and looking tidy for their age.
The failure points are well known (there aren't many) and the Bravo/Brava/Marea forum is good.
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