A Bleg for Auto Advice
So, my wife alas, had little fender bender with my dearly beloved high mileage Honda Insight (2000) and I’m in the market for a new car. I’d made the promise to myself to continue to upgrade mileage … but that isn’t going to be possible ’cause nobody makes a higher mileage US car than the manual transmission 2000-2006 Honda Insight (with or without MIMA). I’m thinking of going for a slightly elderly used gas sipper as a stop gap in the hopes that in 4-5 years I’ll be able to get the car I really want, i.e., that can get better than 150mpg (or 2/3 gallons per 100 miles if you prefer) on dry summer roads. Oh, don’t worry, no real damage was done, my wife is uninjured (and nobody else was involved).
Looking around this morning, it seems a 5 speed manual Toyota Yaris, Kia Rio, VW TDI, or Ford Focus look like the best bet. What do y’all think? Any other suggestions? It’s replacing a two seater so it doesn’t have to be large and likely when I turn it over it will be handed down to one of my girls, who are fast (gasp) approaching collegiate age.
Suggestions?
Filed under: Mark O. • Offbeat Questions
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Everyone I know with a VW TDI (three people) loves it. When we test drove one years ago, my wife was surprised it was a Diesel. They’ve gotten better since then.
Expensive to repair, though. The old cheap VW Bug is a thing of the long past.
We put 215,000 on the last VW we bought new, a Jetta. The Passat Wagon, an automatic, sadly, lost its transmission at just under 100,000 miles — way too expensive to repair (too much electronics).
Our son’s 2002 Ford Focus sits at about 125,000 miles — but we don’t think it’s viable enough for long-distance travel (i.e., to college). So he’s auto-less at school. It works well, but I agree with that assessment pretty much.
Our Toyota is a Camry 4-banger. Starter motor died. Minor air conditioning switch issue. 160,000 and doing well.
Check the price of maintenance on the VW TDI versus the Toyota Yaris. That might be the difference between joy and sadness of ownership.
Ed,
We’ve 140k on our TDI Golf. I know about VW. I’m waffling about a Yaris/Rio with 60k vs a VW with 160k both on used markets for about the same.
We have a really good diesel motor shop near us (they mostly do big diesels, i.e., long haul trucks … but do a bang up job on our VW for a good price).