I have the 2013 model and it's great. Fuel economy in real life is 55mpg round town and 72mpg combination of motorway at 'about' 70mph combined with 50% fast A roads. It is surprisingly nippy for a 1.6D, large boot, 'magic rear seats' are handy (rear seat base fold up to give almost flat floor with full height and rear doors open 90degrees). Drove Civic and Golf, Golf was bland inside, felt much slower (too much turbo lag), and everyone has a golf or A3. That combined with vw/audi/seat dpf and flywheel issues Civic was easy choice. Had it 3 months now and it's great.

Image courtesy of http://www.bland.com/golfzzzz

i have a honda civic 2003. a third of my age lol. but its engine is good. never fails. the only repair i needed in the past two years was changing the ABS.

i suspect my car will outlive me... haha

The bag a banger comments on leases always make me laugh , clearly if people wanted a banger they would not be looking at a 2k a year lease deal thread . I personally have been lucky with "quality" used cars in the past . I bought one car really cheap and overall in the 3 and a half years I had it for it cost me £1900 including the purchase price but then at the end I was driving a 12 year old car that was starting to look and feel its age not a brand new car .You can get lucky buying used especially if you know what to look for and can do some of the more minor work yourself , but some people do not wanna play luck,do not know what to look for or do not have the time/tools/skills to fix up their own car they want a reliable measure of how much a car is going to cost them before hand and leasing provides this . Not to mention some people are just plate snobs and so what if they are its their money . I am looking at leasing when the quality used car I have now finally conks out . I have a young family now and work full time , I would rather not be saying to my kids "no daddy cannot take you to the park this weekend he has to rebuild the gearbox on his car "

Kinda . The idea for the leasing company is to charge you only the depreciation that the car will experience during the time you lease it + A little bit extra on top as their profit .

If you went out and bought this car cash and kept it for 2 years putting the same mileage on it as the lease terms if the leasing company are doing their job properly you should be able to sell the car and have the overall cost of owning the car come to less than the lease .

But there are a few problems/risks that you then open yourself upto
1)You need the capital up front to buy the car outright , not everyone has this much cash lying about , you could of course get a bank loan or something but then you are adding to the cost of depreciation by the amount that the interest on the bank loan is coming too .

2)You now own the car , so selling it is your responsibility , obviously the leasing company or car dealer who you are leasing the car from already have clear established resale relationships set up . You could end up lumped with the car for months longer than you wanted whilst trying to get a decent price for the car through a private sale

3)Even if you have the cash there is no guarantee that you will be able to negotiate the same discount as the leasing companies who are buying the cars in volume or negotiating special deals with the dealers that supply the cars because of the volume of custom they bring .You might find it harder to negotiate the car for the same price a leasing broker or company can .

4)You are now gambling against the depreciation of the car with your own money . If something unforeseen happens like another emissions scandal with the make and model of car you have chosen then you could end up severely out of pocket . I wonder how many people who currently have cars implicated in the VW emissions scandal on leases that are due to expire are glad that they leased rather than bought . Anything could happen to the resale value of the car overnight and you would loose out as a result .

For what little you might save by buying a family car outright rather than leasing the risks to me seem too high . I can see why people invest their capital in expensive supercars because in many cases as the cars are rarer and only available from a small number of dealers and sometimes only in limited numbers a supercar would hold its value pretty well , maybe even sometimes gaining value .

Nice little runabout.

Up to date picture.

I have the 2013 model and it's great. Fuel economy in real life is 55mpg round town and 72mpg combination of motorway at 'about' 70mph combined with 50% fast A roads. It is surprisingly nippy for a 1.6D, large boot, 'magic rear seats' are handy (rear seat base fold up to give almost flat floor with full height and rear doors open 90degrees). Drove Civic and Golf, Golf was bland inside, felt much slower (too much turbo lag), and everyone has a golf or A3. That combined with vw/audi/seat dpf and flywheel issues Civic was easy choice. Had it 3 months now and it's great.

Agree about the golf, A3, etc. I'm sure they're great cars but I just find them a bit boring. Having said that, the Golf R deal last week was fantastic, but insurance, fuel economy (10k miles a year for me) and lack of built in sat nav put me off. Plus my boy racer days are long gone!

i have a honda civic 2003. a third of my age lol. but its engine is good. never fails. the only repair i needed in the past two years was changing the ABS.

i suspect my car will outlive me... haha

Image courtesy of http://www.bland.com/golfzzzz

That was from Hondas "golden era". Good cars, well priced. Today, perhaps not so much.

I think one showing the side of all the cars would prove your point even better. they all look like a box