My mother has always been a bit of a girl racer and ever since I passed my test and, "stole," her Renault 5 1.4 TSE, she has complained that the cars she has owned have felt slow. Considering that they have been a '99 1.6 Clio and more recently an '02 1.4 Lupo, this might sound a bit surprising as both of them seemed quite nippy to me. She is now looking to replace her Lupo and there are some considerations that make selecting a replacement quite tricky. It can't be much bigger than the Clio was, because of our small garage, it must have 4/5 doors (unlike the Lupo), must be well built (unlike the Clio) and (this is the really hard one) it needs to be an automatic, due to a slight disability. It has taken my father and I some time to convince her that an auto is the solution and it really is, but now I come to searching for the ideal car I find that as a rule, auto boxes in cars this size are attached to feeble engines. For example the post '02 Polo's only have autos on the 1.4 which on a heavier car than the Lupo will obviously be (even) slower. We'd rather avoid a new car as it seems wasteful in terms of depreciation, but surley something in the region of £6,000 plus about £3,500 for trade in on the Lupo should get us somewhere? Frankly we'd spend more for a Polo GTi, or something, but they just don't exist as automatics. Equally if it would fit in our garage a Golf GT would do just fine, but it won't fit so thats that! Please help!
Answer
Hello,
This is very nearly an impossible combination of criteria. So before I start, can I ask, have you considered moving house? Or parking on the street?
A VW Polo GTI will do 0-62 mph in about 8 seconds. A feeble 1.4 litre Polo will take 12 seconds. As you say, most of the brands offer similarly pathetic performance.
A BMW 116i (which is only about 300mm longer and wider) will do 0-62 in 10.2 seconds. It comes in automatic and as a premium brand car it is well built.
A Ford Fiesta 1.6 Durashift automatic is not badly built (those days are gone), is the right size and will get to 62mph in 11 seconds. Finally, the racy-looking Suzuki Swift 1.5 Auto will get there in 10 seconds, but you may argue the build quality is not there. I would respond, that it is very reasonably priced.
Keywords:
nippy-city-cars, quick-small-cars, fast-city-cars, automatic-city-cars, small-automatic-cars, suzuki-swift, ford-fiesta, bmw-1-series, bmw-116, vw-polo