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gothick

[Poll #711826]

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From:

rufusuk.livejournal.com

Not voting, as I don't have an opinion on any of those cars. However one thing I recommend is that you check out the safety scores for any car you are interested in. The EURO NCAP tests rate the safety of a large number of cars (results for superminis are found here - http://www.euroncap.com/content/safety_ratings/ratings.php?id1=1 ).

I never paid much attention to safety ratings before, thinking that all new cars must be pretty safe. But then I saw an episode of Top Gear where they showed what cars of different ratings looked like after a crash. It was a real eye-opener. A 4 star car when crashed preserved the passenger cabin space. A 3 star car had some denting to the cabin space, and you'd get some injury. A 2 star car had the cabin space completely mashed. It made a real real difference.

When I was car hunting, I narrowed my selection down to 4 and 5 star cars only.

Hugs,
R.

From:

gothick-matt.livejournal.com

In the main, these cars are 4-star; I have been looking out for the NCAP ratings, but I hadn't thought to look at all the NCAP ratings to see what else was out there, so ta for the link! I'm going to take a look at those 5-star ones (except for the Punto, because (a) it's a Fiat, and (b) it's significantly larger than any car I'd call a Supermini!)

On the other hand, if they'd been doing these tests back when my car was made, then I doubt it would've scored even as high as two stars, so the only way is up, really... I suppose I have quite a blase attitude to safety; it probably stems from only doing about 4,000 around-town miles a year, which I imagine does a lot more for your safety than choosing a four-star car over a three-star car.

From:

gothick-matt.livejournal.com

...in fact, I just saw that the Seicento, which replaced my current car in Fiat's line-up, is the lowest-scoring car in that list, coming in at one-and-one-struck-out stars. So I'd guess mine would have trouble getting one star...

From:

ahnlak.livejournal.com

Hmm... if you're not a fan of Fiats because of their dealers I would also cross Citroen off the list. Kavey's little AX was a lovely little thing but the dealers were almost universally crap (as were every Vauxhall dealership in London, but I did find a competent garage in Knebworth eventually).

As for the rest, I've been very happy with our Honda and every Honda dealer I've dealt with; the Jazz may not be the most exciting car in the world but if it's a Honda it'll probably be reliable and fairly cheap to service :-)

From:

gothick-matt.livejournal.com

Okay, the Citroen can go, then. I've had enough of crap dealers.

I do think the Jazz is probably too boring to be on my list. But it does some interesting practical things, and I did have a very reliable Honda before myself (well, actually it was a Rover, but it was that 216 model with a Honda engine in a rebadged Honda Concerto bodyshell...)

My problem, I think, is that the car I want is a MINI Cooper S which gets serviced by a Honda dealer and is as reliable as a Toyota, drinks the same amount of petrol as a Smart, and is as cheap as a Fiat. Hmm. Something's got to give, I'm just not sure what it is yet...

From:

gothick-matt.livejournal.com

Well, so far that's one vote for a ForTwo, one vote for a smart Roadster, and one vote for a Mazda RX-8. Hmm. And having discussed it in Another Place^TM, I'm all confused about what I want now.

I might go and see if I can have a look at/drive in a smart Roadster this weekend. There's a dealer about five miles away...