The girlfriend has a 40mile each way drive to work. Mainly dual carriage way so nice and easy. Problem is that current mazda 323 2.0 V6 is returning about 32mpg (much worse on short runs). Its a 1995 N-reg so not worth very much and is also drinking a lot of oil. However its been totally reliable and only cost some tyres so far.

Is it worth the effort to change to a diesel? Budget is very tight, only about

 

32 mpg doesn't sound too bad to me - especially for a V6 engine!

 

Tracey's Petrol Honda Jazz returns very good motorway mileage - doubt you'd get one for a

 

Whilst it's still reliable, it will be cheaper to keep the current car.

Diesel cars rarely work out cheaper unless you do a LOT of miles. We're talking well over 20000 miles a year.

 

Pug 106 Diesels do about 60mpg! Cheap to buy & service.

 

Work out the squirt vs depreciation:

A new Golf is much more expensive to run than an ancient 323!

You will normally see the 'fuel saving' is merely purchase justification!

 

My ex-g/f has a 2.0 TDI Golf in normal driving it returns about 45mpg and if pushed I've seen 35mpg...

On that basis a quick back of a fag packet calculation gives you around

 

I used to have a 1.4 106 Diesel and it was *very* cheap to run.

HOWEVER

It wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, 80mph was a struggle and any kind of incline would require some major cog-swapping!

My recommendation would be a 306 D-Turbo. Torquey, quite rapid, cheap to run and relatively refined for a cheap car. Be aware that build quality is not up there with VW, though...

 

Nice, AV Ben

 

Thanks for the replies.
Im tending towards keeping the 323 for a while now while its going strong.