Hi John,

First of all, your Yaris is probably worth anything between €500 and €2,500 retail, but to trade it in you’re likely to get derisory offers for it from car sales sites, so have a go at selling it yourself to maximise your return. And good news – yes, you can quite easily get a good, solid hatchback (that fulfils the small car part of your brief) with reasonably low mileage on it (sub-100,000km) for less than €5,000. We’ve seen good examples of all of the following for sale at this level, and you ought to be able to find similar cars in and around Galway for the same cash: Ford Fiesta TDCi, Skoda Fabia, Volkswagen Polo, Opel Corsa, Honda Jazz, Renault Clio and even some examples of older Volkswagen Golfs.