BEST CITY CARS
This category excels at tight parking spaces and narrow back lanes. You’ve got all the tech and good levels of safety - but not the sky-high fuel bills
KIA CERATO
If you want a medium-hot hatch or sedan that doesn’t shout, but is happy to be tipped into corners and given a squeeze of the accelerator on some quiet backroad, the Cerato has a GT-Line you might like for just $36K.
Cerato is a sedan or hatch that gives you enough without being excessive. Choose from a modestly equipped ‘S’ to a more fruit-filled ‘Sport+’ for low $30ks and a resale value that keeps Toyota on its toes. Cerato is a good quality, affordable second car, a sensible option for learner drivers, with a bunch of potentially useful safety gear like AEB and lane-keeping.
If the GT-Line is not to your liking, the 2L atmo petrol engine with standard epicyclic automatic transmission on Sport or Sport+ offers compelling value without the harder edges (or seats). Think cloth seats, dual-zone A/C, factory satnav, foglights and auto-headlights with LED DRLs.
MAZDA 2
A good value first-car that offers enough room and creature comforts for just about everyone.
A 1.5 petrol four is all you need to zip around town and park in tight spots. Choose between hatch or (a surprisingly sexy) sedan, with a simple model range and a price that starts at $26K.
Get a bit of leather and alcantara on the seats, six speakers with DAB+ radio, and AndroidAuto/Apple CarPlay (standard), two USB ports to satisfy your ‘connected’ kids, built-in satnav, LED auto headlights, proxy key with push-button start, front parking sensors and a 360-degree camera to avoid those touch-parks.
If you’re keen to teach the kids how to change a spare wheel and learn a manual transmission, this is a very good but not poverty-spec vehicle to do so. Great resale value too, with decent customer support from Mazda.
HYUNDAI i30
A frugal, versatile hatch that offers a variety of configurations, from smart, quiet and comfortable small-family commuter transport to a fast, spicy pocket-rocket.
If you like driving hard and fast, the ‘N’ is the king, above a more civilised, lightly dialled-down ‘N-Line’ which is a more spine-friendly i30. Or, keep turning the tempo down to a features-first suburban-focussed Highlander with sunroof and heated leather seats. Or there’s a simpler, no-frills base model, with harder, kid-conscious and wipe-down cabin materials.
For the price, you get Aussie-tuned suspension that’s firm in the N-Line, with a punchy 1.6 turbo-petrol offering quick throttle response, bitey brakes and snappy dual-clutch gear-changes. Or you can have nice leather seats, a premium stereo and appreciate a boot big enough to be more useful than the average hatch.
TOYOTA COROLLA
The white printer paper of cars for the easy, simple-minded consumer who doesn’t want flashy design or innovative tech, but just wants an affordable, reliable, adequate no-nonsense car that’s got good resale value and is even cheaper to service.
Despite Toyota’s attempt to make it look exciting, Corolla’s vanilla-ness fools nobody - but this can be a good thing.
If you need black-and-white, inoffensive transport for your family, staff or clients, the Corolla is made for mediocre, average driving. That’s why it’s one of the highest volume selling vehicles in history. It isn’t nearly as nice to sit in as a Kia or as nice to drive as a Mazda, but it doesn’t need to be because what you get for $32K is pretty hard to argue against. Hybrid won’t save as much fuel as you probably think, so save as much money upfront as possible and only get the features you really need.
SUBARU IMPREZA
A new Impreza is just around the corner here in Australia, but it remains a reliable and well-built family sedan/hatch capable of avoiding wheelspin on low-traction starts, steep inclines and skittish driveways thanks to permanent AWD.
Decent boot in sedan, reasonable fuel economy, great handling and driver feedback. Good array of safety features for the money. Get ‘S’ for the swish LED auto headlights and side camera to dodge those city kerbstones.
Considering the $36.5k price, a 2.0i-S sedan or hatch with this powertrain is a unique option in this segment, making it ideal for drivers with no ambition for soft-roading but whom might find themselves in tricky, unfamiliar areas but don’t need a bigger, brawnier 4WD.
It’s why Impreza is a good option for elderly drivers who don’t have the reaction times of other motorists but who still value their independence. Same goes for young drivers who don’t need an expensive SUV, but have mindful parents that want them driving conservatively and smartly as they gain experience. Prevention is the best cure for bad driving, after all.
MAZDA3
If you need a nice car with luxurious cabin, loads of equipment, perky engine, and sharp handling, but at half the price of a Mercedes and comprehensively more reliable - the Mazda3 is such a smart purchase.
You get a bunch of desirable features on a modestly-priced variant, such as heads-up display, tyre pressure monitoring, dual-zone climate, power folding mirrors, LED head/tail lights, electric driver’s seat with memory, paddleshift, radar cruise and rear parking sensors. But the equivalent-spec medium SUV would demand about $5000 more.
If you want leather on an SUV, you’re shopping around the $45K mark, whereas on a Mazda 3 you’re looking at $40K for a ‘GT’ variant instead. With the logo covered up, you’ll swear it’s from a ‘premium’ German brand.
Ongoing expenses for a small conventional car are less. Fuel economy is virtually always better, too.
MG3
The MG3 is all about price. It’s immensely popular right now because despite the SUV rage, small, affordable hatchbacks still have a solid market presence, which is great for resale value, meaning lots of people will want them, therefore they retain their value better than undesirable models.
But MG3 does have some questionable safety laurels, namely because it hasn’t been crash tested by ANCAP, nor EuroNCAP.
Having said that, MG3 is light, small, not particularly powerful, not particularly expensive to run, nor service. The styling is good enough without being some exuberant carmaker’s self-indulgence project, and there are the necesities for moden connectivity.
The MG brand has grown significantly over the last five years and is now a genuine top 10 contender with good sales volume and decent support.
POPULAR CITY HATCHBACKS TO AVOID
Honda Civic: A $47,000 ‘affordable city car’ the Honda Civic is not. It’s about $15K more expensive than a Mazda3 with no tangible advantage. Nor can you haggle on the price because Honda uses the ‘Fixed Price Promise’, so you don’t have to negotiate - just pay the ransom, kinda thing.
Volkswagen Golf: Drives nicely, good build quality and is nice to sit in, but that’s about where the goodwill from Volkswagen ends, and it gets worse the longer you’re in bed with the brand. Customer service is poor; dealerships often look for expensive unnecessarily add-ons where they can.
Skoda Scala: Never heard of it? That’s because interest is low for a similarly priced, stripped out Golf. Hence sales are nowhere on this car, while other models are booming: 60-ish units a month is dismal. Skoda is an IQ test: Will you exchange the same money for a cheaper, nastier VW?
Mercedes-Benz A-Class: Low-end Mercs are known for poor reliability and the bad customer care that follows, at head office and its dealerships. Also, you can’t negotiate on a Mercedes anymore, so it’s the best price (for them) or nothing.
Audi A1: The A1 is just a VW Polo in a thin, low-cut party frock and it wants to party hard with your wallet. Paying more means you lose more in depreciation after just one year and there is nothing substantial about an A1 you can’t get in a much better-value Mazda, Subaru, Hyundai or Kia.
Ford Focus/Fiesta: Both of Ford’s heroic small cars have been consigned to the history books. If only they’d handled the PowerShit Transmission debacle a bit better, maybe sales wouldn’t have nosedived since 2018. Avoid any new-old stock laying around in dealerships.
Fiat 500: An irrelevant, unreliable, poorly supported small car from Fiat Chrysler AKA Stellantis, one of the worst brands for customer care in Australia. Fiat has barely sold 400 cars in the first half of 2023, so unpopular is such a brand, meaning a 500 is increasingly worthless as time passes.
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