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so, I figured id gather some opinions to help me out... due to changing circumstances, I need to do around 100km a day of driving probably for a few years, and so fuel consumption is now an issue.

I am looking to buy a cheap (3-5k) car that consumes as little fuel as possible. I guess reliability is a factor, no point buying a cheap economic car only to spend 2K on repairs!! what do you guys think could be a good option? ive been looking around, and a cheap hybrid was suggested, like a Civic hybrid, they are in my price range, and do 5.2L/100.

My missus had a TS astra years ago she brought it new. Absolute ripper of a car cheap as to run and never missed a beat.

yeah a lot of the small buzz boxes are around that sort of fuel economy range, but also keep in mind what your doing with it .... I recently use my parents Suzuki swift, and while it got great economy and has plenty of go for what it is, it also does about 3000rpm at 110kms .... I'm not sure too many of the small cars will be geared to do much less, but just keep it in mind if your doing a lot of highway driving with it.

personally i'd be trying to find something with cruise control too

I've heard the swift is one of the best. They apparently just go and go and cheap to run.

I drove one of the company cars few months ago at the sydney office, buzz box 1.2L inline 3 micra. It was fanged around Sydney all the time and averaged mid 6L/100, highway it was around low 5L. Not a lot of go top end wise but good around town and the engine sounded tough as hell. I'd take the sound of a inline 3 over any 4 anyday of the week.

Overall it was pretty good as a cheapy simple car. I like simplicity over form.

yeah I like the swift as a small car, and this thing was doing about 5L/100km when I drove it on the freeway was actually 20km/L ... freakin backwards dash!

Holden202T wrote:yeah I like the swift as a small car, and this thing was doing about 5L/100km when I drove it on the freeway was actually 20km/L ... freakin backwards dash!

lol yeah my company car was is like that too, but it only manages 10-13L/km. (7.6-10L/100km) so pretty piss poor for a "economical" 1.5L. I get slightly better out of my V6 holdens with more than twice the capacity and a shit load more torque and HP. And its bloody old school pushrod.

Suzuki Swift, Holden Barina (both the old Suzuki model and the newer Opel models), Hyundia Getz (my mother has one that my sisters uses and it is very economical and reliable but the seats are uncomfortable after a while).

Yeha I always recommend my customers for cheap maintenance & reasonably economical & seem to last a bit longer than other euro type designed cars without hving to spend as much on them when they get long in the tooth the Hyundai range.

If it were me personally now with how good they are I would probably look for a turbo diesel, can get Mazda6's but with high(ish) Km's for close to the high end of what your looking at... but also been told the mondeo's turbo diesel's are really good too & at a guess seeing the rebadge eachother possibly the same thing.

Depending on price of LPG in your area I'd consider that.
I do about 130km of mostly highway (ave ~70km/h) a day on a VY V6 wagon on LPG and get around 400km from 50 Litres. Works out about same cost as a small car but more comfortable and something I can work on in most cases. Mines done 365,000+ km at the moment and the VT I had before it did 400,000+ before it was written off when somebody did a u-turn in front of me.
In my area LPG is usually between 50 to 60 cents litre before the discount docket, last month was good as around 47 for most of it.

geez! thats cheap LPG where you are, I haven't seen those prices in many many years, almost 10 in fact.

Its around 90c here and costs more to run a car on it than ULP due to the usage.