It’s easy to say premium brands like the BMW Tourers, Audi Avants or Mercedes Estates are the best but they’re expensive and in some cases offer no more load space than their saloons with 5 seats up.
A Mazda6, C5, or Accord estate may look good but again they cost.
The fact is the majority of these cars are company reps cars.
So what’s the best estate car when you’re paying with your own money?
Here are two real estate cars offering significantly more load space than their hatch backs.
The Ford Focus Estate has an entry price of £17095 subject to dealer offers. The Skoda Fabia Estate starts at £10980.
With the seats up the Ford Focus hatch offers 316 litres of space while the Ford Focus Estate offers 476 litres. With the seats down the hatch and estate offer 1101 and 1502 litres respectively. So there’s a significant difference in load space with plenty for holidays and trips to garden or furniture centres.
The shorter Skoda hatch provides 315 litres with the seats up, the estate 505 litres. With the seats down it’s 1180 for the hatch and a huge 1485 litres for the estate. That’s all in an overall length of 4.25m.
Both the Focus and Fabia estates have a good range of diesel and petrol engines. The Focus tdci and Fabia tdi may be attractive for their fuel economy and low emissions but they cost more to buy and diesel fuel is more expensive than petrol. Your mileage has to return savings over and above these added costs. My guess is you’ll have to do 45,000 miles before you start to break even.
The Fabia has interesting 3 cylinder petrol and diesel engine options. Their other diesels are 1.6 as are the Focus diesels.
It seems the 1.6 diesel is becoming the preferred smaller diesel engine. BMW demonstrated what can be done with a Peugeot 1.6 diesel engine in their Mini. Renault have now added a 1.6 in addition to their 1.5. I wonder what this means for the Fiat 1.3 and 1.7 diesels also used by Vauxhall.
Improved petrol engines still remain viable especially as they cost less to buy and petrol is cheaper than diesel. The Fabia uses the VW group TSI engines and Ford have the own variations, the EcoBoost being a great combination of economy, low emissions and performance.
EcoBoost is a combination of advanced injection, VVT and turbo technology. The Fabia Greenline option uses stop/start and energy recuperation technology previously only found as standard in more expensive cars.
Everyone must know Zetec is Fords value pack with sports styling. Skoda has now introduced the SE Plus which is a combination of their most popular features in a value pack.
So a premium brand may appeal but the Focus and Fabia Estates have as much if not more space with the seats up. The engines are economical, clean and can be quick. The advanced technology is there with more to come. Plus the trim levels provide a lot of equipment as standard.
So there we are, two suggestions for estate cars if you’re using your own money.
Regards
Ralph
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