Used cars of the week: cheap small automatic cars
* Our favourite small automatics on the used market * Real-world examples * All part of What Car?'s Approved Used scheme...
If you're buying new, our favourite small automatic car is the Hyundai i10. If you're in the market for a used automatic, there are a variety to choose from, but you have to pick carefully.
For example, what is an award-winning small car can be really let down by a poor automatic box; step forward the Volkswagen Up. In manual form, it's a former Car of the Year and a five-star car to boot but when specified with the ASG automatic gearbox it manages to get just a two-star rating.
It's not all bad news, though. Here's our pick of the best small automatic cars available in the What Car? Approved Used classifieds:
The 1.4 TFSI is our favourite engine and the S tronic automatic gearbox is a decent addition. We'd recommend buyers go for Sport trim which does without the firmer suspension that's standard on S line trim. This 2011 1.4 TFSI Sport has done 32,500 miles and is on the market for £14,000.
Ford has made the excellent 1.0T Ecoboost engine available with the Powershift automatic gearbox. It's a good combination. This model has only been on sale for a few months, so used bargains are hard to come by but it's worth looking out for. We found this '14/63 car that's done 2900 miles on sale for £13,500.
In manual guise the Clio doesn't bother the best in the small car class, but with an auto 'box it makes a decent proposition. Our pick is the Dynamique Media Nav 90 dCi EDC auto, none of which are currently available in the What Car? classifieds. We did, however, find this '13/63 1.2 TCE GT Line EDC auto with just 4300 miles under its belt. It's yours for £14,490.
The cheapest car on our list is this '12/61 Volkswagen Polo 1.4 85PS Match DSG. Thanks to its DSG gearbox, it's a much better buy than the Up and is the small automatic car to go for if you want a Volkswagen badge. This one has covered 34,000 miles and costs just £7490.
Visit our Approved Used Cars finder to uncover hundreds of other choices from Trusted Dealers.
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