Miserly Car for under 4k?

[no_8wire]

Im doing a few km in the car now (average close to 700km a week excluding getting to work on the bike) so am wanting to get a cheap hack thats good on the gas.

Needs to have at least 4 seats, and be cheap to run sub 4k...and 60-70% would be at open road speeds so nothing to underpowered.

Any suggestions?
Have been thinking of a Civic/Integra or Corolla hatch but am open to any other advice.

[sik_gt_starly]

ae101 trueno, should be able to get a decent one in your price range.

Cheap to run, enough power without getting silly and make for a very fun car to drive

[Dell'Orto]

Would probably go for an AE111 if you were to go Toyota, 101's are a bit long in the tooth now, and arent that economical...mine gets ~13k per litre open road, and 9ish round town.

[thegreatestben]

d15b sohc vetec Civic ferio.
eg/ek

So good on gas/dort

[Bling]

Ae111/101 unless all 4 seats need to be roomy

[no_8wire]

I dont sit in them so I dont care if they are roomy or not

[FST4RD]

I have a 1992 Mazda Familia sedan, it has the 1500cc 12v motor. Heaps of room and a big boot. Mines done 290,000k's and still not blowing any smoke.
Also on the open road I get 7L/100k's, round town it's not that much worse.

[BZG Wagon]

Anything with a black-top motor


My BZ would hit 600km on just over 40ish litres on open road driving.

Otherwise use your bike more.

[no_8wire]

Unfortunately when Im not using the bike there is normally a reason, ie have to carry a bit of gear or passengers.
Blacktop toyota or eg civic then look the most likely.

[Santa'sBoostinSleigh]

I taxed my old mans old civic for a snow trip a while back as I was too lazy to put a wof on the caldina, I used way less gas on the whole return trip in the civic than I would have one-way in the caldina (and I was spanking the nuts off the civic the whole way too)
it was a 1.6L non-vtax NZ new 1991ish hatchback
from memory it had a 40L tank

[Leon]

Pretty much any Jappa 1600 should do the trick

Then just hope you get on that is a "good un". The only blacktop I owned just barely managed to get 10km/l on it's best day. So they aren't always great.

4AFE Corollas of the efi variety tend to be nice on gas too (had a couple of wagons fitting that description)

[rollaholic]

D15b not that flash imo, but get an EK for easy B series transplants ftw!

[no_8wire]

Well just picked up a Detomaso...should be fun...

Supposed to be great to drive and good on gas...(Although that will depend on how it handles in the twistys)

[toymato]

Good choice - I've got a detomaso. It does about 15km/litre and is so much fun to drive. Good choice - again!

[blindnz]

Ive looked a couple of times at buying one of these, but stuggled to build enough courage to buy one.
Are they really that fun to drive?

[no_8wire]

Yeap they are fun to drive, nice and light, and easy to throw around.

[toymato]

Easy to turn, sharp steering, nice oversteer function (which is a good thing and a bad thing if you don't know about it), good brakes, light car (850kg road trim), willing, but my bias is showing.

[ROBODISCO_20v]

Well just picked up a Detomaso...should be fun...

Supposed to be great to drive and good on gas...(Although that will depend on how it handles in the twistys)

My sister had one of those. Nice little car but was servery strangled. We ripped the factory intake off & replaced it with a civic pipe & K&N pod which made it go so much better.