How to choose a car: from the way you drive to body style, powertrain and features

• Choose a car in this order: how many people and how much luggage you usually carry, where you drive, how far you drive in a year and how much you can spend on buying and running it. Body style, powertrain and features follow from that.
• The size of the car should be set by the seats you normally fill and the loads you regularly carry. A bigger body is rarely worth it for one holiday a year: a roof box or a hire car will do for that trip.
• Diesel suits regular long motorway runs, a full hybrid works best in town and petrol suits mixed driving. A plug-in hybrid or an electric car only makes sense if you can charge it regularly.
• Front-wheel drive is enough for everyday road driving. An automatic makes traffic jams easier, a manual is simpler.
• Spend money on safety equipment, good headlights and easy-to-use controls first, and only then on big wheels and styling packs.

Choosing a car starts long before you begin browsing listings. The same model can serve one driver well and make parking, carrying loads or the family budget harder for another. With used cars you are also choosing between generations, engines and trim levels that can differ considerably under the same name. That is why it pays to work from how you will use the car, through your budget, to size, powertrain and equipment. Specific cars for sale come last.

Start with four things: how many people you usually carry, what travels with you, where you drive and how many kilometres you cover in a year. Besides the total distance, the length of individual journeys matters too. The same annual mileage can come from short daily trips around town or from a few long journeys a month, and each pattern suits a different powertrain.

A car should handle an ordinary week, not the exceptions. Once a year you can carry extra luggage in a roof box or in a hired car, but that will not solve parking an overly long car every day.

The purchase price is only the entry fee. With a newer car, depreciation tends to be the biggest cost; with an older used car, servicing and repairs take a larger share. Higher fuel consumption hurts a high-mileage driver far more than someone who only drives at weekends.

Split your budget into three parts:

• Purchase: the price of the car and the costs that come straight after, such as a service or new tyres.
• Running costs: fuel or electricity, insurance, maintenance, wear parts and parking.
• Reserve: money for an unexpected repair you did not plan for when buying.

The best way to compare two cars is the total cost of ownership over the same period: the purchase price minus what you sell the car for at the end, plus the running costs. Divide the result by the distance driven over the same period and you get the cost per kilometre. Each item is covered in detail in the guide to car running costs, while budgeting and financing a first purchase are dealt with in How to choose your first car.

New or used?

A new car can be specified exactly as you want it and starts life with no one else's wear and tear. But you also pay for that newness, which a car loses fastest in its first years. For the same money, a used car gets you a higher class or a better-equipped version, although you also take on the wear it has already accumulated.

On a limited budget, you are usually better off with a mainstream model in a simpler version than with an older luxury car. Expensive technology stays expensive to service long after the price of the car itself has dropped.

Size class and body style are two different things. An estate usually has no more rear legroom than the hatchback from the same model range; the longer rear end mainly adds boot space.

For short trips around town, a small hatchback is usually enough, such as the Škoda Fabia IV (from 2021), Toyota Yaris III (2011–2020) or Hyundai i20 II (2014–2020).

Boot capacity in litres tells you nothing about its shape, the height of the loading lip or the space between the wheel arches. Trying it with a pushchair, a crate or whatever else you carry regularly will tell you more than a difference of a few dozen litres. When it comes to parking, allow for the width including mirrors and for the room needed to open the doors.

Seating layouts, child seats and luggage are covered in detail in the guide to choosing a family car, and the two body styles most often considered by families are compared in Estate or SUV.

Choose the fuel according to how long your journeys are and where you will refuel or recharge. The purchase price, consumption and servicing all feed into the result, so you cannot decide which option pays off from a single annual mileage threshold.

With an electric car or a plug-in hybrid, start from where the car will be parked overnight. Charging at home or at work is a completely different proposition from relying on public chargers alone. Anyone who buys a plug-in hybrid with no plan to charge it regularly is paying for technology they will not use.

Fuel and electricity prices vary from country to country, so base the comparison on what you would actually pay where you live.

Front-wheel drive is enough for normal roads. Regular hill starts on snow, unsurfaced tracks or towing a heavy trailer are reasons to consider four-wheel drive. When it really pays off is covered in a separate article on 4×4.

An automatic gearbox makes life easier mainly in traffic jams and stop-start driving. A manual suits drivers who want to change gear themselves and tends to be mechanically simpler. The word "automatic" covers a conventional automatic with a torque converter, a dual-clutch gearbox and a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Each behaves differently, especially when creeping in traffic and parking. So for the cars on your shortlist, it is worth driving them with both a cold and a warm engine and trying some parking manoeuvres too.

Safety comes before looks. When reading Euro NCAP results, look at the year of the rating as well as the number of stars: stars from different years can only be compared if the rating system changed little in between.

Sort the equipment by how often you will use it:

• Safety: autonomous emergency braking, good headlights, lane keeping and blind-spot monitoring.
• Everyday controls: parking sensors or a camera, air conditioning, a seat and steering wheel with plenty of adjustment.
• Long journeys: comfortable seats, cruise control or adaptive cruise control, good sound insulation.
• Personal preference: heated seats, electrically adjustable seats, a better sound system.

What counts is the equipment you will actually use, not the length of the list. Big wheels mean more expensive tyres and a harder ride, and sports suspension becomes tiring on poor roads. On an older car, every complex comfort feature is one more thing that may need repairing.

Visibility, easy controls and driver assistance for new drivers are covered in the guide Cars for new drivers.

The most expensive mistake is often made before you buy: you pick a category you do not need, or costs you do not want to carry in the long run.

• Choosing on fuel consumption alone: the fuel saving gets eaten up by a higher purchase price, insurance or servicing.
• Mistaking the model name for its qualities: two generations of the same model differ in space, controls and the engines on offer.
• Too narrow a brief: a single colour, specific wheels and rare equipment needlessly shrink your choice.
• Overlooking what you normally carry: catalogue dimensions say nothing about the shape of the boot or the room left with all seats occupied.
• Equipment "just in case": extras for hypothetical future use push up both the price and the running costs.
• Relying on your own inspection: a layperson cannot reliably spot hidden faults or an unclear history. For cars offered by Carvago, a technician checks the condition and history as part of the CarAudit™ inspection before the car is sold.

The result of your search should be a few suitable combinations of body style, engine and gearbox, not a single listing you "simply cannot miss". Questions for the seller, the contract and the handover are covered in How to buy a used car, and cars offered by dealers in Buying from a used car dealer.

Once you know which body style, powertrain and features you are looking for, you need enough cars to choose from so that you do not have to lower your requirements. Carvago has the widest selection of used cars: roughly a million cars from dealers in several European countries, so the choice in practically every segment is larger, usually many times larger, than on a local market.

Every car is checked by a technician before it is sold, as part of the CarAudit™ inspection with up to 270 checkpoints, from history and legal status through technical components and diagnostics to a test drive. You see the result before you decide to buy, and Carvago guarantees the condition stated in the CarAudit™ certificate.

Before the sale, Carvago buys the car from the original seller, becomes its owner and takes on the associated risks. So you buy directly from Carvago, even if the car comes from another country. Once the purchase is approved, Carvago uses a power of attorney to handle the paperwork, including registration in the customer's country, and as standard delivers the car to your door. You can drive off as soon as you take delivery.

How do you choose a car that two people will drive regularly?

Look for a wide range of seat and steering wheel adjustment and good visibility for both drivers. Seat memory makes frequent swaps easier, but it will not fix a poor driving position.

Is it worth buying a more powerful engine for towing a trailer?

Power alone is not enough. The weight of the trailer must match the permitted towing weight for that specific car and engine. The gearbox and the tow bar must be suitable too.

Is a mainstream model better than a rarer car for a similar price?

A widespread model with a common engine has readily available parts, more garages that know it and more interested buyers when you come to sell. With a rare version, expect parts to be harder to find and the car to take longer to sell.

Can a car bought through Carvago be financed?

Yes. Financing can be arranged directly as part of the purchase through financial partners that Carvago works with, and the application is handled online.

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