Quote:
Originally Posted by thorns
I have recently got my driver's license, and I've decided to buy a new car. I would like to hear opinions about if the Civic would be a good buy..  Currenly I'm stuck between 1.6 Citroen C4, 1.6 Peugoet 307, Hyundai i30 and 1.8 Civic sport (which is the most expensive of the bunch). Baggage room is important to me, as is safety. I've heart a lot of complains about civic like "poor visibility" and so on. Is this really an issue? Are most of the other problems talked about in this forum fixed in the 08 models? Thanks for the advice.. |
I would take something like a cheap, used old car, as big as you can get - I know it sounds crazy but:
- you can say that you can really drive after the first 100.000 km (I know nobody with a fresh license thinks so but that's the truth) and if you have an accident, the bigger the car and the cheaper to repair, the better for you. If money is not a factor, buy new, but rather big than small
- do not buy an overly fast car, it tends to be risky for novices
- consider that if you master the driving of an old car without too many TLAs on board (TLA= three-letter-acronyms as ESP, ESR, ...) you will be able to drive any car later, but not vice versa. Also, on many "simpler" cars the steering gives you more feedback from the road, which is favourable for learning driving dynamics.
My first car was a stone-age Fiat 125, it had no
ABS no ESP nothing but REW (rust everywhere
) but after three years (and my first 100.000 km) I could drift it through a curve on ice (without ice it was too lame to drift with 75 or so HP and 1,3 tons). Try this with today's gizmos...
Alternative: make an additional special driving security training (expensive but very useful) and then buy whatever you like and can afford - but make the decision after the training to avoid disappointment. Here we come to your list: All the cars you have listed are front-wheel drive, nothing wrong with that but there are drivers who will always prefer rear wheel drive and there are some good reasons for both - in short, a front-wheeler is better for lazy cruising but a rear wheeler is better for sports driving and probably for learning too...