Dear Alex,
Because of an increasingly painful left knee, I wish to swap my 2015 Fiat 500 1.2 S with 54,000 miles for an automatic car of similar size. I would also like greater performance for occasional hills and overtaking. I don’t carry rear-seat passengers or large loads in the boot. I can afford £4,000 on top of the trade-in value. What should I consider?
– CW
Dear CW,
The part-exchange value of your car is about £3,000, depending on its condition, so I would estimate your total budget at £7,000 or so.
But the difficulty you’re going to have is in combining greater power with an automatic gearbox. That’s because small automatics tend to be in far shorter supply than their manual equivalents, yet in high demand. Consequently, they usually fetch more on the used market. In other words, you might have to compromise.
You could, for example, buy another Fiat 500, this time with the Dualogic automatic gearbox and the 0.9-litre two-cylinder TwinAir engine. This would certainly offer more power (89bhp) and keeps you in a make and model you already know.
The downside is that the TwinAir engine is rather noisy and the Dualogic gearbox, which is of the automated manual type, can be quite jerky, making the combination rather difficult to drive smoothly.
Here’s a demonstration of how much it will cost to upgrade to a quicker, automatic version, even of the same car: I found a 2015 500 TwinAir Dualogic with 55,000 miles – which would fit the bill – but you’d have to pay £6,995 for the privilege.
So how about something that’s reliable without a greater performance? My go-to would be a Hyundai i10, which has a dependable torque converter-type automatic gearbox and a solid reputation for reliability.
A tidy-looking 2015 1.2 Premium with 58,000 miles and a full service history will be about £6,475. With 86bhp, the i10 should feel perky enough, although it’s slow off the mark, with a grinding 0-62mph time of 13.8 seconds.
Would you be prepared to live with a slightly larger class of car? If so, a Skoda Fabia would be my suggestion.
The Fabia isn’t quite as reliable as the likes of the Toyota Yaris, but it should cost less to run than your Fiat, as long as you can buy a well-maintained example and dodge the costly problems that can occasionally crop up with the DSG automatic gearbox.
You can just about afford a 2015 1.2 TSI SE with 60,000 miles and a full history. It will be both perkier and more comfortable than your Fiat.