I'm after a car with personality...

I'm after a car with personality...

Hi Shane, I'm after a car with personality, test drove an 08 diesel TT and a 2014 automatic petrol VW Beetle. The TT had an amazing interior, and felt very luxurious , but do you think diesel car tax will go up a lot? I found visibility very poor out the rear window of the TT, and am afraid of very high future repair costs. I've had a starlet, renault 5, golf, astra and cleo, none made my heart full of joy, Would streaching the budget and going for a newer car make more sense in the long run? Thanks

Our answer:

Hi Pamela,

OK, lots of questions here. Let’s go through them… Diesel car tax? Honestly, we have no idea and if we did we’d be down Paddy Power putting the heating money on it, but it is certainly a possibility for the future, especially on older diesels, which are the threat to health. We don’t know exactly when and by how much.

TTs do indeed have very poor visibility, but they are nice to drive. Body repairs, if you hit something or something hits you, would be pretty pricey, but all the mechanical bits are taken from the VW Golf, so general servicing and parts aren’t as bad as you might think. The new-shape Beetle is well worth a look though — arguably as characterful as the TT, but at much lower cost.

Buying a new car can make a lot of sense, in financial and reliability terms, but actually as you’re looking for a ‘characterful’ car you’re probably better off buying around one-to-two years old, when the worst of the depreciation has faded. Other than the TT and the Beetle, it’d be well worth looking at a Mazda MX-5 (if you don’t need rear seats), a Fiat 500 Abarth (hard to find but brilliant fun), a VW Golf GTI (all of the TT’s performance, less of the bills), a Peugeot RCZ (a French TT equivalent and gorgeous with it), a BMW 3 Series Coupe or 4 Series (predictable but really satisfying), or maybe a Toyota GT86 (wonderful to drive, utterly reliable).
Shane O'Donoghue

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