UKH

Wife is after a new car. She runs or cycles to work so only the occasional weekday drive. Two growing youngsters (equals paraphernalia, bicycles etc). Often away on trips at weekend minus me if I'm working, so it needs a big boot and to be able do cover 400+ mile round trips in some degree of comfort (present car is Peugeot 206SW which isn't exactly plush). 

Obvious lookout are estates and the usual suspects are on review - Octavia, Focus etc. Three to four years old age range. 

She wants petrol. Now I realise that there have been massive advances in tech and engineering but... I'm struggling to get my head around the smaller petrol engines that seem to drive most cars. I can see the hp/Ps and can see they all have the measure of my remapped diesel turbo VW Caddy. Still... 

Is it just the way it is with (the rightful) eye on emissions etc? Am I unnecessarily worrying about these engines longevity? Driving like a lunatic isn't in her mind (nowadays) but the ability to push it on a quick overtake is always a good option. 

Assurances welcome. 

Thanks 

Stuart 

TBH I'm of the same opinion. I can't see a highly stressed 1.0 litre turbo that has to lug an Octavia round lasting for 150 to 200k miles like the larger diesels do. The cynic in me thinks they'll be good for the length of the warranty / end of the PCP and by then the big players will have affordable petrol hybrid engines available.

I just bought a low mileage 16 plate Kia Ceed estate (1.6 turbo diesel). Still qualifies for £20 road tax, gets a real world 60mpg, I don't drive into emission zones and it'll last till I retire in 6 and a bit years time.

I exchanged my old 1.9 tdi Octavia estate for a 1.2 petrol Fabia estate.

The 1.2 is fine for around town and not bad for longer journeys but sometimes you have to work the engine hard.

I do miss the low down grunt of the diesel.

I can’t see the engine lasting as long as the diesel especially if the car is heavily loaded.

A 1.4 petrol Octavia would be a better family/long distance vehicle.

The new 1.5 petrol VAG engines have issues.

Some posters on this forum say that their 1.5 petrol engines are fine but having read the VW, Skoda and Seat forums I wouldn’t be buying one.

My wife swapped her 2.0 petrol Audi TT for a Toyota CHR hybrid.

It’s much slower and gives a completely different driving experience, much less frantic than the TT.

The mpg is obviously much better on the hybrid.

The annoying part is that thanks to the bizarre road tax system we both pay over £100 road tax whereas if we’d bought older diesel cars we could have much lower tax rates.

In reply to:

Thanks for your interesting input and opinion. 

Stuart 

Throwing a bit of an oddball into the mix, and I am not knowledgeable about longevity, mpg, emissions, tax or even value, it's just one of the many hire cars I've used in the past few years....

Toyota C-HR.

I had one of these for 5 days in Feb 2018 which you may recall saw heavy snow and ice that brought a lot of England to a standstill. The Toyota coped fantastically, I was quite impressed. But I wasn't bundling kids and bikes into it, nor was I buying it, nor was I booting into quick overtakes (due to the overall conditions, like a blizzard up the M1 that clogged the adaptive cruise control sensor which was a blessing as it rightly and deliberately disabled the cruise control that I should not have been using anyway )

 

Depends how often you go away at weekends but could you not just rent a big car when you need to go long distance and buy something small? It has faff factor but saves on depreciation, maintenance, insurance and tax. And you don't have to compromise over boot size, you just rent an SUV or a van when you go away. 

Those designs will have done the miles on a dyno and in road testing long before they hit the showroom floor. Every now and again something subtle or unforeseeable is missed that becomes a problem as the operating environment changes subtly but significantly (eg Nikasil bore linings) but these are generally pretty simple engines in tough, known materials (some have switched back to iron blocks for example) able to make a lot of power across a wide speed range because the turbochargers and the electronic control are very sophisticated.

It wouldn't unduly worry me, not least because older 'simple' cars came with plenty of gotchas too.

jk

Exactly. Modern engines are so well designed, sensored-up & tested that all the problems likely to occur aren't likely to happen. Rewind back to the days of mechanical engines with carbs - high revs were an issue due to ignition & fuelling problems which wouldn't occur at normal revs, and of course no rev limiter to stop things spinning beyond their reliable limit. Modern engines simply go into limp mode when something runs out of spec.

I’m more put off by the driving experience of a small petrol engine turboed to its nadgers than I am by mechanical worries.  Driving big engined, variable geometry turbo diesels and recently an EV have hyper sensitised me to high revs when motorway cruising, and to having spare power on tap when doing so.

If you’re not convinced, test drive the EcoBoost and 5-litre variants of the new RHD Mustang...

I'm sure that's true but that still doesn't stop design/ manufacture flaws popping up well after the car is introduced.  On our Rapid's first service I can remember the service manager assuring me that there would never be problems with the timing belt because this model had a chain, good for the car's lifetime. A mechanic who happened to be nearby diplomatically corrected her saying that they had reverted to using toothed belts. It turns out he was right and that we were the lucky ones. It seems the chain's "lifetime" has been modified to something in the order of 50,000 miles or 4 years.

Yeah, they often do "fix" issues by changing the service requirement.  The classic one is the PSA 1.4 diesel which will soon start irreparably eating turbochargers if you don't change the oil the conventional way by dropping it out of the drain plug (most garages other than their main dealers who know about the issue vacuum it out of the dipstick hole, which doesn't clear this engine properly).

With that specific engine I would not buy a used one unless it had full main-dealer service history or the seller had done all the servicing themselves (with parts receipts), and when asked about how they serviced it volunteered knowledge of the issue and how to avoid it without being prompted.  If it was serviced at Kwik-Fit etc, no chance.

To echo jKarran and dyno testing, a relative who's job before retirement involved selling testing software to companies like Ford, in some surprise commented that a friend's Ford Focus should be good for 200.000 miles after they'd had some issues with it (circa 15 years ago). I got the impression from them that 200.000 miles is what Ford aim for to do with drive train longevity.

I can only speak from personal experience. I’ve got a 5 year old Leon 1.2 TSI, with 80,000 miles on it. Never missed a beat. I tend to keep cars for quite a while, I’ve had this one for 4 years and plan to keep it for at least another 4.

In reply:

Again, thanks for the food for thought. 

Throw caution to the wind and buy this

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201906018571475?price-to=450...

where have all the V10 s gone?

You won't get the 1.5 vag on anything less than 2 years old.

The 1.4 isn't a car to tow with, but otherwise seems OK. (you 'Officially' need an extra fan if you do fit a tow bar apparently) 

I got my 1.5 before any issues were known, but don't have any big issues other than the flat spot.

I had a psa 1.6hdi previously and had no issue with that either. Over 120k miles on it any no engine issues.

Perhaps I'm justlucky with bad engines. 

I recently had a hire car - Seat Ibiza 1.0 FR. I believe it was the 115bhp version.

I was very impressed. It pulled from low revs cleanly right through the redline. Sat easily at motorway speeds doing 55mpg and on a German autobahn pulled all the way to 120mph without fuss.

There is a lot going on in that engine. Imagine our 2.5tdi 88bhp VW Transporter T4 engine in comparison! It will be interesting to see what their real world longevity is.

Recently got a Skoda estate with the 1.0 petrol in it. Obviously can't comment on the longevity, given "recently", but I'd expected it would be a bit of a gutless thing suitable for low company tax/road tax when I took it for the test drive despite the online reviews saying it was ok, and ended up buying it. It's got reasonable poke to it and I can do 50-55mpg on varied trips (maybe up to 60 on a trip that's heavily motorway, but I've got a lot of A and smaller roads on my local roads). I've got to be careful to be in the right gear more than previously pulling away or rolling towards roundabouts or whatever, but then my previous vehicle was a diesel transit so had a fair amount of flex in terms of what you could get away with (pulling away in third or whatever) so maybe not the fairest comparison on that front... Doesn't feel stressed at 75-80 on the motorway, it's only doing a few thousand revs in 6th at that point 

Nah, it's the 6.0l W12 engine you want

Yes, forgot about that. 

It just surprised me after BS 's post that looking at the Phaetons in Autotrader not a single v10 diesel was listed. Something with that amount of power and torque in a largish saloon shouldn't have had a very hard working life so I thought a few might have stayed the course. Perhaps people are hanging on to them......

I don't think the V10 came into the UK in large numbers. I mean, the Phaeton didn't come here in large numbers, and the "standard" was the 3.0 or 3.2 V6 diesel. 
Also I put in a max of £4500 on the search that is linked. I imagine any V10s are commanding double that. 

I've been surprised at what you can get for under £5k on a Phaeton. When I was considering one a couple of years ago I decided £8k minimum. I tested one at a dealer that was old and tatty and £6k. The ones on my link look smarter! Slightly tempted again! I've even finally seen two in the wild, for the first time (to my knowledge)

I had a Honda Civic as a hire car for a fortnight two years ago. I don't remember the exact model and spec but I do recall looking it up at the time (after my first 20 mile journey in it) and it was a 3 cylinder 1.0l think (actually marginally less than 1.0l !) and it was a perfectly nice drive. If any minor criticism, then it was gutless at pulling away from a standing start, but I am comparing it to a Nissan 350Z so possibly not fair

In 2018 there were only 63 V10's and 27 W12's known to the DVLA - they were always rare as pretty well anyone in the market for one bought an A8.......there were more bentleys sold with the w12 engine than vw phaetons. Sadly, they will probably fade away as i cant see many people doing home servicing on either of those engines, and i for one dont fancy paying the bills for anyone else to service one - have you seen under the bonnet of a w12??!!

She's managed to get a pool car from work - 1.4 Octavia. It's the bee's knees apparently so it looks like the first preference will be the one she goes for. 

Thanks 

Stuart 

IMO the Caddy is well overpriced compared to other similar mini vans. I absolutely loved my Berlingo which I bought new (a version change made the remaining old model cheaper than the year old used ones) and sold completely clapped out with 250.000km. However, it had a 2.0 Diesel engine, so I cannot say anything about the current petrol versions.

CB

I read somewhere that for the average car, roughly half the co2 equivalent emissions from a car are in the manufacture. Therefore it makes better sense to keep an less efficient car on the road a long time than buy a new but more efficient car more frequently. I can't vouch for that being correct but I'm using it as an excuse to buy a very old Landy to do up

Some years ago (not that many), the ubiquitous Landy defender came up as the most environmentally friendly car over its whole lifecycle. Probably because they just last so long.

I've recently bought a Skoda Yeti 1.2 petrol automatic having not had anything but diesels since the 1980s. I'm amazed how perky it is when you put your toe down. But the fuel economy is terrible if you drive it like that. I've had to retrain myself to treat the pedals like they're made of glass. I went on a 15 mile shopping trip today and drove very gently, barely noticeable acceleration and not over 60 mph on the dual carriageway. Computer said 49.8mpg. Before I'd got used to it it would have been about 35 at best.