i am looking for a secondhand car for the missus (not to swap i hasten to add!) anyone know what fabias have low car tax bracket? preferably diesel. have a budget of about 2 grand. any advice would be appreciated. cheers

Ignore car tax, when averaged out over the period it covers the difference is largely irrelevant on the cars you'll be looking at in this price bracket. You suggest low bills are your goal here but omit the crucial info. How many miles does she do each month? Is it mainly motorway? If it's less than 1k a month you're probably wasting your time with a diesel, even if it's 2k a month you probably aren't going to save anything that you'll really notice.

A few weeks ago I started a thread on running costs and the feedback was 2p/mile saving for TDI vs my mpi which isn't exactly the most economical of petrol engines (41.x average over 8k). So doing my 2k a month i'd save £40/month or £480 a year, if you do 500 miles a month it's only £10/month or £120 a year, the price gap between petrol and diesel is only going one way and that's not helping things. Factor in the cost of a turbo, timing belt, DMF/clutch, EGR and you either buy an SDI to remove DMF and turbo from that list or end up in danger of paying more out and that's before you consider the higher insurance on a TDI and the higher service costs, in short you'll have to do a lot of trouble free miles to make significant savings.

A 2k TDI is going to have a fair few miles on it and you pay the 'omg look at the mpg's ' tax as even people who do 6k a year are telling everyone how much they 'save' by going diesel so the world thinks they need one even if they would be financially worse off by getting one.

Then again if she does 3+k a month then SDI or TDI makes more sense

one other option is to look at something like the new citigo on pcp / solutions

if you put the 2k in as a deposit and do 10k or less a year the monthly payments can be quite reasonable and you get the servicing thrown in for 3 years,no road tax ever due to under 100g CO2, no congestion charge if you drive in lond plus you get a little car that all but runs on fresh air

worth a look if nothing else for a comparison

if not the greenline fabia's have £0 road tax (just ordered one, can't believe the 1.2tdi does 68mpg urban and 83mpg combined and 94mpg extra urban)

Im half asleep so will make this quick. Im finding running costs tough going from a 1.9 sdi to a 1.2 12v petrol. put £30 in the sdi and your good for over 200 mile, £30 in the petrol and im filling up again at just over 90 mile... driving styles much the same, petrols just been serviced as well.

For 2K you are not going to find a Fabia in the low car tax bracket, I wouldn't worry about the car tax since no post 2001 Fabia will be that expensive anyway.

Confirm above comments. We have a 2000 SDI and 2004 TDI 1.4. Car tax higher on SDI. Both good reliable cars at 120 and 160K miles respectively. Another factor when thinking of short journeys is that diesels take a lot longer to give heat. The SDI isn't too bad with the heater warming after a couple of miles, but the TDI can take 7 to 9 miles before there is useful heat into the car.