The Friday Question: A compact sedan for my wife!
Good day all – My wife wants a new compact sedan, it must be a compact sedan, no hatches, no compact MPV’s, it must be a sedan. We’ve drawn up a list which we’ll take a look at tomorrow:
- Honda Civic – 1.8l
- Nissan Sylphy
- Ford Focus 2.0
- Roewe 550 1.8T (or MG6 should it come out before July)
- Mitsubishi Lancer (imported, or wait for the domestically produced one)
- Dodge Avenger (I’ve had a hankering for an American car for many years – dont ask why, but this one is imported and rather pricey at 180,000rmb)
- Honda City (new model – 1.8l)
On the sidelines is the Mazda 6 sports sedan, its a little bigger than the compacts listed above but its recent price cuts ahead of the new model arriving has made it quite attractive, but the steering is rather heavy for a small Chinese girl to drive, oddly she doesnt want a car from the likes of Chery, or BYD, despite me pointing out the economical benefits of buying a BYD F3DM.
I may, or may not drive this car on a regular basis, but we would both like something that has decent safety standards, and If Ill be driving it, I’d like it to have a bit of grunt.
Suggestions please!
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Ash,
Why not to buy a chinese one, like an Changan 2.0 Sedan or a Geely FC-2 model?
The Roewe 550 is also a good choice, I believe! Anyohow concerning the others believe that the Civic is a good car but with too less space for luggage. The Focus is also a good choice, mostly because its project comes from the S40 from Volvo, so the safety conditions from this last one are much more higher than normal Fords.
Regards,
Jorge Irineu Hosang
why does she prefer the civic from the 550? with all due respect it wouldnt surprise me that it’s because it costs more…
Jules, we got them down to the same price. The wood on the 550 interior is rather cheap, and the engine sounded awful on the test model we drove.
OK! that’s great to hear!!! I didn’t beleive you could put these two cars on the same price. What price is it for which models by the way???
forget my comment – stupid me didnt look above.
are these AT?
Of course AT.
Roewe 1.8T 16.68万
Civic 1.8 VTI (Luxury model) 16.78万
You could however go for the black interior on the 550. That gets rid of the fake wood and looks a lot more classy!
The black is okay, I guess. The 550 we tested sounded like there was a bag of concrete under the hood.
I saw one of these too:
http://www.chinacartimes.com/2008/07/31/roewe-550-sports-edition-spotted-again
It’s DIRE.
Unfortunately I’ve read some poor comments on Roewe. We love this car but decided to take another angle on our research: how many complaints would we find on the net regarding brands/cars.
Sadly, Roewe was a loser. Poor customer service, design flaws not covered by the warranty (because they can’t even fix it!), everlasting repairs… seems they really managed to get the Rover legacy there….
The winner is Honda. The Civic is the car with the least issues in the first few years, with a great customer service. Toyota is on a par. Mazda a little below (70% of their new 3′s have a default on the gasket, but the service is here to fix it)
VW/Skoda comes next and Ford/Chevrolet etc on 3rd place
This is a first impression after 3-4 hrs of search on chinese blogs, and as always, user comments are not always 100% reliable themselves. But the frequency of complaints for Roewe owners was a sad surprise…
We’ll probably go for a Japanese – I can’t be f-cked dealing with constant car issues.
also, my point above was really that you can’t trust a chinese brand at the end of the day – and the same goes for all those Joint Ventures. The value associated with each brand abroad is not quite the same once in China. I’ll take the car with the least complaints…
Problems with a Roewe arent actually problems, they are HERITAGE.
lol – true, you can really say it’s a Rover
How come the VW Sagitar was not on the list?
Because its duller than a 1000 yawns?