About to buy a 2012 Mk1 Auris TR 1.6 Petrol

[Lum]

So I'm in need of a new car in a hurry as work are switching me from company car to car allowance. I was going to buy my old company car (2014 Focus Estate Titanium Nav 1.6 diesel) but as of Tuesday the gearbox main spline is knackered and the lease company are unlikely to fix it. The lease ends on Monday! Annoying but also !Removed! lucky as I nearly bought the damn thing for £6650!

Local used car place has a 2012 Auris 1.6 TR, manual, 40000 miles on the clock, that I'm 95% certain I'm going to buy for £6200*, second choice option is a Mk2 Skoda Octavia 1.4 FSi. Basically unless the Auris turns out to be awful on a motorway test drive tomorrow morning, I prefer it over the Skoda somewhat. Hell I'm already looking up how to replace the head unit etc. (This car does have bluetooth and MP3, but none of the touchscreen or LCD display gubbins, so I'm gonna go for an Android one.

Does anyone have any tips for what I should be looking for tomorrow when I inspect it more thoroughly? rust spots to check etc. etc. MOT history shows it passed just fine in march and every MOT previously, and it seemed fine on the short drive, engine looks almost brand new, but I haven't given it any serious examination yet.

Also, is it a feasible job to retrofit auto lights and auto wipers from the higher spec models? 🙂

*maybe a bit less since that price includes an RAC Warranty, which I understand isn't worth the paper it's printed on?

[alan333]

12 hours ago, Lum said:

So I'm in need of a new car in a hurry as work are switching me from company car to car allowance. I was going to buy my old company car (2014 Focus Estate Titanium Nav 1.6 diesel) but as of Tuesday the gearbox main spline is knackered and the lease company are unlikely to fix it. The lease ends on Monday! Annoying but also !Removed! lucky as I nearly bought the damn thing for £6650!

Local used car place has a 2012 Auris 1.6 TR, manual, 40000 miles on the clock, that I'm 95% certain I'm going to buy for £6200*, second choice option is a Mk2 Skoda Octavia 1.4 FSi. Basically unless the Auris turns out to be awful on a motorway test drive tomorrow morning, I prefer it over the Skoda somewhat. Hell I'm already looking up how to replace the head unit etc. (This car does have bluetooth and MP3, but none of the touchscreen or LCD display gubbins, so I'm gonna go for an Android one.

Does anyone have any tips for what I should be looking for tomorrow when I inspect it more thoroughly? rust spots to check etc. etc. MOT history shows it passed just fine in march and every MOT previously, and it seemed fine on the short drive, engine looks almost brand new, but I haven't given it any serious examination yet.

Also, is it a feasible job to retrofit auto lights and auto wipers from the higher spec models? 🙂

*maybe a bit less since that price includes an RAC Warranty, which I understand isn't worth the paper it's printed on?

IIRC the newer shape came out in 2013 so I assume it's the previous shape you're looking at.  We owned an 11 plate 1.6 valvematic TR auto for about 1.5 years, bought in May 2014 for £8k with 16k miles on it, and sold (traded in) Sep 2015 for £5200 with 26k miles.  These figures make your one seem expensive, but I haven't researched prices recently.

The auto box on ours was dreadful (it's actually an automated manual), and by far the worst auto box/engine combo I've ever driven.  Since yours is a manual I won't bore you with the details.

The engine, while really smooth and quiet, lacks low down torque but does come alive when you get the revs up (this might really annoy you since you're coming from a torquey diesel).  It revs quite high at motorway speeds too (even tho the auto in ours had 6 gears).  Fuel economy IIRC was mid 30's on the daily commute but towards 50mpg on a run.  Ours always wandered really badly and never felt surefooted  - it wasn't one of those cars which you could hold the steering lightly on motorways, it needed two hands and constant corrections.  Similarly it tramlined really badly at slower speeds too, and on a couple of occasions went into a small understeer slide on wet roundabouts where any other car wouldn't have.  The lack of roadholding  is the main reason it got sold (the auto box coming a close second).

The seats are small but soft and comfortable, and it was an easy car to drive (aforementioned problems excepted).  It had good kit with keyless entry/auto wipers/lights etc and was generally a nice place to be.  The stereo was ok but we never managed to play music via bluetooth, IIRC we could only ever get hands free or music, not both (we ended up leaving an ipod connected instead).  The contacts memory only holds 10 numbers too (or was it 12 or 15, can't remember), and they can't be added using an iPhone, we ended up using some ancient nokia to add them.

If it were me, I'd make sure I went a decent test drive at motorway speeds and see if it feels ok.  Also try a stretch of road which has differing cambers.  I haven't really read of others with similar roadholding problems so maybe ours was a one-off, but it really was bad enough to sell the car on.

As a side note, my Father owned a low mileage 11 plate Octavia 1.4 auto for a few months before he passed, which was a far better car at roadholding but was road noisy.  It returned 50mpg easily (on a couple of days of really trying I got over 60mpg believe it or not).  And just as a final point - my Mother owns an 06 plate Focus auto which still sits better on the road than our Auris ever did.

Hope this helps 🙂

 

[Lum]

I took it for a motorway run down a bit of the M4 with terrible lorry ruts that one made me travel sick while driving a Fiesta, and it was surprisingly good. Took it back down the single track lanes and again it handled better than I expected, though I wasn't expecting much excitement tbh, my days of Japanese turbo nutter cars are long behind me (BE5 twin turbo Subaru Legacy B4 RSK and LNA31 Nissan Cefiro SE-4)

Only problem I could find was a bit of damp in the boot, apparently a common problem with these and in this case seems to be from the n/s light cluster rather than the vent. It's noted on the invoice and hopefully getting sorted before I pick it up.

Not too bothered about coming from a diesel, the Focus has been problematic from day one. It took them two years to find that the plug for the charge cooler pump had been tapped into the loom despite me telling them every time that something is wrong with the intercooler, because obviously women don't know anything about forced aspiration, right? It's never felt right pulling off from a standing start, and now I just have to hope the gearbox lasts until Monday as I've got a load of tip runs to do before it goes back to the lease company. A fitting end for a rubbish car.

 

[Countrylad]

The £6,200 price sounds reasonable, but for only another £500 you could have the 2013 model (with 40-50K) which was better in quite a lot of ways. Including that the 1.6 petrol model came with better multi-linked rear suspension. Just saying.😁

My 2014 Auris Touring (1.6 petrol) has been a good buy - I've had it two years now, taken it all over France, and the engine is pretty bomb proof, and the rear load capacity is remarkable. Sadly, though, they didn't make a Touring from 2013 to 2014, so it might not turn up on your radar. But have a look around on Autotrader anyway.

Is the RAC warranty any good? Well, I got my money's worth out of mine, many years ago, when my Focus threw a seized caliper pair 6 months after I bought it. And the wife got a new aircon compressor (£600!) when hers failed on her three year old Golf. (Golf/Passat/Skoda aircons are all prone to early failure, BTW.) Not always a daft idea. 

Whatever warranty options you decide to go for, the bottom line is that an extended warranty from warrantydirect etc will cost you about £250 a year. Stick that into your calculations and see where it takes you?

Final question: Is the local dealer with this 1.6 Auris reliable and established? I still think you'd do better to splash a bit more cash and have the 2013 model, though. 

[Lum]

This one has 40k on the clock and I kinda like having the last of a particular model run, means it has all the bugs fixed! 🙂

Apparently only the TR has the dual zone climate control (the higher specs don't, which seems odd), which was a huge factor for me to avoid arguments with my GF! I'm gonna be replacing the radio soon.

Out of interest, this think is for the Mk2, to replace the USB/AUX connector with one with standard wiring, will it physically fit in a Mk1 replacing the one that's in there?

[Lum]

Would help if I linked to the thing in question:

https://www.tme.eu/gb/details/usb.toyota.02/power-car-accessories/perpic/c8304-usb/