Hello Thomas,

Well, you really need to stick to cars with engines of about 1.0-litre to 1.2-litres in size, because the insurance premiums are steep otherwise. Obvious choices, for your budget, are things like the Ford Fiesta 1.25 or the Opel Corsa 1.2, and you’ll be looking at cars from around 2003-2005. However, if reliability is what you want, you could do a lot worse than a circa-2002 first-gen Toyota Yaris 1.0. It’s a bit funkier than a Nissan Micra (which is also in your budget) and should be bullet-proof, cheap to run and insure.