Anyone else driven one of these? I wasn't aware of these cars today until I stumbled across one at a local dealer so I took it for a test drive.

To my surprise it was very nippy and just good simple fun and revved nicely to 7.5k, when I got back to the dealer I had a look at the details, it has a 1.3 twin cam yaris engine tweaked in the UK to 110bhp as standard. It also only weighs 850kg and has 0-60 time of 7.9 seconds and a combined 46mpg and fairly low tax. Only 250 of them were made in the UK,

Im tempted to go back and make an offer on it, I can't think of a faster more efficient car for 3.5k plus it's a bit different.

I test drove a Suzuki Swift Sport last week which although has sharper handling it didn't feel as quick as the Sirion.

Anyone else driven one of these? I wasn't aware of these cars today until I stumbled across one at a local dealer so I took it for a test drive.

To my surprise it was very nippy and just good simple fun and revved nicely to 7.5k, when I got back to the dealer I had a look at the details, it has a 1.3 twin cam yaris engine tweaked in the UK to 110bhp as standard. It also only weighs 850kg and has 0-60 time of 7.9 seconds and a combined 46mpg and fairly low tax. Only 250 of them were made in the UK,

Im tempted to go back and make an offer on it, I can't think of a faster more efficient car for 3.5k plus it's a bit different.

I test drove a Suzuki Swift Sport last week which although has sharper handling it didn't feel as quick as the Sirion.

One of these?

Daihatsu Sirion | evo Car Reviews | Car Reviews | evo

Sounds like a decent package, performance-wise, but not exactly a looker is it? :eek:

If it's the same as the one linked above, and compared to the Swift....

Steve

The Daihatsus are good cars, very reliable and very good dealer support from the importer. They are virtually owned by Toyota and were the first Japanese manufacturer to import cars into this country. As for it having the Yaris engine, not quite true, the Yaris has a Daihatsu engine as do alot of Toyotas.

A friend of mine had one of these for a couple of years. I got to drive it quite a few times, but was never very impressed. Overall, it was okay, but not my cup of tea. He tried to say it was like a baby Type R, with the engine needing to be revved to get anything out of it. However, unlike a Type R, it was devoid of any character and it was quite tiresome having to rev the nuts off it every time you needed to make progress.

The handling was reasonable, but the ride was very firm and after any sort of lengthy journey, everyone was ready to get out. The plastics were very cheap and marked way too easily and the steering wheel was positioned too low to get a decent driving position.

On the plus side, his particular car had nice alloys, was an attractive shade of grey and was cheap to run. As for the quoted 0-60 time, we never saw anything like it.

However, don't let me put you off.

One of these?

Daihatsu Sirion | evo Car Reviews | Car Reviews | evo

Yep thats the one

It's certainly had to be at high revs to get perfomance out of it, but that was part of the fun in my opinion, it's certainly not a motorway car, dashing round town and up the B-roads is more it's thing. Agree about the plastics, but once you start driving it doesn't matter.

Bomb proof reliability and low running costs also make it tempting it's only done 30k, one owner from new with FSH, plus there rare.

Yep thats the one :thumbup:It's certainly had to be at high revs to get perfomance out of it, but that was part of the fun in my opinion, it's certainly not a motorway car, dashing round town and up the B-roads is more it's thing. Agree about the plastics, but once you start driving it doesn't matter.QUOTE]

As long as you are happy with this, then it is the car for you. I've nothing against cars that are a bit cheap here and there - I ran an original Panda for nearly 4 years and loved it.

I guess my problem is that this particular friend of mine constantly tried to say the car was in some respects on a par with another friend's Civic Type-R. After two years of this I now have a bit of a 'thing' about Sirions. Sorry