I am looking at Astras, and to date restricting my search to petrol and manual gearbox cars.
Are Astra automatics reliable? I imagine they are torque converter type automatics, not strange semi manual boxes.
Have diesel Astras any drawbacks? I understand they are not suitable for someone doing only short journeys, but my son Jonny does lots of long runs
There is an Astra on e-bay with 180,000 miles on it. Should I avoid it, or go for a cheap 9 year old car?
There are loads of manual astras about if that is what you want
seem to remember people having transmission cooler fails that saw coolant into the auto boxes on some astras even under warranty or just out ,but i can't remember what model, there are some semi auto boxes about too IIRC.
The 1.7cdti design (tractor juice edition) astra h estate that my brother is driving cost £875, had 75k on it and 12 months mot . (ebay private sale buy it now) so far i have binned the space saver and given it a proper spare (which i had anyway), and it had a small coolant hose leak after about 6 weeks, he's saving on fuel bills will pay for the car in less than a year (compared to the petrol astra he had)
I'd avoid cars with 180k on myself
ebay,auto trader etc you can narrow your search down to lower ,say less than 100k
don't rule out dealer part ex , some bargains to be had
the zafira 2.0 DTi elegance was a main dealer part ex, 9 months mot ,105k £500 , I replaced front and rear brake pads and discs for £70 (my choice, they where pitted), one brake line, serviced it . that has done 2000k since, i do need to repair the o/s/r door not locking (probably a broken wire in the door shut)
1.8 Vectra C all day long
Is a bigger car than astra (i think Terry said he'd be ok with smaller)
plenty of vec c about
there is that clutch / dmf flywheel fail issue with lots of vec c though
did you come across it Doc ? in our ownership
£1000 should see a tidy astra or vec c brought without major rust to deal with any time soon if you choose wisely Terry