Cracking deals on great estates

* Huge discounts on estate cars * Range of load-luggers, from good value small cars to plush executive expresses * Save more than £8000 on some models...

Cracking deals on great estates

What Car?’s deal diggers have been hard at work to unearth some fabulous deals on practical estate cars.

Whether you like to spend your weekends at the garden centre, shopping for antiques or simply carting around your family’s everyday stuff, estate cars are the answer.

The best deals this week are on a good value Seat Ibiza, fun Ford Focus, a Skoda Octavia, a vast Skoda Superb and the sporty but smooth Mercedes E-Class.

The cheapest estate car on this week’s list is the Seat Ibiza 1.2 TDi SE Ecomotive. If you don’t need huge load capacity, the small diesel offers an eye-catching official economy figure of 80mpg and has a range of close to 800 miles on a single tank of diesel. It isn’t the most refined engine in the world, but the SE spec gets you alloy wheels and air-conditioning. With more than £3000 off the list price, you can get your hands on one for a fraction over £12,500.

Autoebid.com can offer the talented Ford Focus at £3725 off the list price on a 1.6 TDCi diesel estate in Zetec trim. If driving enjoyment is high up on your list of must-haves on the trip to the local tip, then this is the car for you. Zetec trim is not especially generous, but you do get air-conditioning, alloys and Bluetooth and the higher-powered diesel engine is fast and frugal enough for most.

Fractionally more money gets you behind the wheel of the Skoda Octavia. These are good value before you apply a hefty discount, but with £2500 off the list price of a 1.2TSI petrol estate, it is a very compelling prospect. All Octavias are well equipped, but SE trim brings climate control and reversing sensors. At £15959 from Carfile.net, it might just be our favourite deal of the day.

If you want to move a lot of things, the Skoda Superb estate is perfect for the job. What Car? tends to favour the lower trim levels, and at present, Skoda dealers are have a good finance deals on all S and SE models, offering 0% finance over four years and free servicing for 30,000 miles. That’s a great way to control costs, but as a one-off deal, Carfile.net has the Laurin and Klement spec on offer with £4600 off the list price. That gets you a top-spec car for SE money. The supplied 2.0TDi engine is more than man enough to power this big estate.

At the top of the tree of this week’s deals, we have the Mercedes E350 Bluetec AMG. This is an estate car that is equally at home in the garden centre or the executive car park. The six-cylinder diesel is smooth and refined, although the AMG pack does firm the ride up over the standard E-Class estate. We usually advise against going quite this far up the E-Class ladder due to the price, but with £8400 off the list price, you can have this sleek load-lugger on the drive for less than £35,000.

For the full list of all this week’s deals, go to our regular deals round up story.