I suspect this has been asked before, and will be asked again, and used to be regularly aired in HJ's pages in the Telegraph, but elderly relatives are looking to change cars, and one, aged 85 is finding it increasingly difficult to get in and out of their current Skoda estate
I doubt the budget is much more than 7k, and the car might do nothing but shopping trips most of the time, but then bimble from Merseyside to Cambridge
Recommendations for something easy to access and cheap to maintain please
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£7,000 is not much less than the trade-in we got two years ago for our 2008 Toyota Verso. Not a great car by any means but very solid and at just the right height to require neither a climb-up nor a fold-down. Ours was a diesel but there was also a 1.8 petrol, which would be a better bet for bimblers.
Good dealers too.
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I'd second the Verso proposal, also a C max is just the right height too and nicer to drive if that's a consideration.
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Give it a little bit longer, I know the main driver is 85, and go for a B-MAX. Fiesta on steroids or look at a Fusion.
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Roomster maybe?
If he likes Skodas.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Sun 20 Apr 14 at 18:13
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Long memory haven't you !
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Ideal for an old person. Bit like small Volvos.
;-)
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>> Ideal for an old person. Bit like small Volvos.
>>
>> ;-)
>
Yes, there seem to be a lot of those in the car park on the advert for those Warner Leisure Hotels.
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Bet the car park at Viking River Cruises is well stocked with them too.
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Nah ! That's full of silver arrows.
Bigger the car the smaller the content. Loads if lilac and blue cauliflowers in them.
Lidl and Aldi are full of Skoda and KIA
Last edited by: gmac on Sun 20 Apr 14 at 18:42
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>>Lidl and Aldi are full of Skoda and KIA
Flogged mine, I bike there now. They've got cycle racks round here.
;>)
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>> What !?
>>
Sorry, I should have explained, in England we have things called televisions which are a kind of talking picture box and on them companies show short programmes called adverts in which they sell their goods and services. :-)
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We have "fast forward" in Wales to skip those bits...! :-)
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>> We have "fast forward" in Wales to skip those bits...! :-)
>>
Wow you have a VCR, is it a Betamax ? :-)
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The 85 yr old has given up driving a few years ago now - his missus, who ain't 80 (Yet) does all the driving. Verso sounds good, but I wonder about availability and ease of maintainance - they'd be looking to get it serviced by a man with a shed and some spanners rather than any form of dealership
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Vauxhall Agila B/Suzuki Splash
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MACK CH 613 tractor unit
... usually comes with a convenient ladder. My idea of an old person's vehicle.
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Honda Jazz? I thought it was the law that you got one at a certain age.
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Jazz is useless for height. MiL has one, she spec'd one within an inch of its life (only left out the sunroof), but you still feel like you're scudding along in a go-kart.
My latest injury made me acutely aware of how useless a Jazz must be to someone with arthritis.
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I drove 'her' Qashqai about an hour ago for the first time in a while. Astonishing how quickly I tend to forget how much I dislike driving while sitting high up and how tedious a manual is in traffic !
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Agree, last week, I drove 'her' C4 GP and hate the damned thing.
Eco-mode combined with the EGS is nasty, hesitant, rubbish piece of carp - don't let GB read this...
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Jazz is perfect for us, both in late 70s and stiffening up. Decent height of seats: much better than our Skoda Fabia Mk1
Auto is good to avoid stalling due to poor feeling in my trotters caused by sciatica.
Can be quite quick if one boots it hard. Economical otherwise.
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>> Jazz is perfect for us, both in late 70s
It's a firm favourite with folk of a certain age in my neck of the woods, and almost all are in pale blue metallic.
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>> Honda Jazz? I thought it was the law that you got one at a certain
>> age.
We have!
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This one depends to a great extent on what sort of creaky joints you have. The Jazz suits a lot of older people (high opening of the doors is helpful) - but as we can see not everyone.
The issue may not be height - it may be the distance from door sill to seat. When looking at cars last year, SWMBO had just had a knee op and we weren't sure how much better it was going to get (a lot better, fortunately, though she may need a replacement in a few years). We tried an Audi Q3 - good for height but a long way from sill to seat and she said it wasn't any easier to get into than her Mini Roadster.
So another Octavia was fine from this point of view, and she still has her Mini. You just have to try various cars out in showrooms: maybe go to a car supermarket where there should be several makes on one site. The higher-up superminis like the Jazz, Splash and Note are good ones to start with, or the smaller MPVs (Verso, B-Max, C-Max).
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The in-laws bought a C-Max for this exact reason. They get on well with it, although while most cars cant achieve their combined mpg figure in real world use, the 1.6 TDCi in this doesn't even get in the same hemisphere. Just pushes the small engine / big bodyshell thing a little too far.
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Bit late to this discussion due to travelling, but relevant. I have been visiting my 82-year old father, he has a Peugeot Partner Tepee. The seat is set at an ideal height as he can just slid into the seat, no crouching or stretching. It was my mother's mobility car, but being of short stature she found it a little high, so she had a collapsible step that she used to get in, then pulled it up with a piece of string! The biggest problem on most of the cars they tried was the depth of the sill, not the height of the seat which is largely surmountable with ingenuity.
I imagine the Berlingo would be pretty similar.
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That old question - WillDeBeest
