HONDA HR-V 1.6 3dr 4WD (1999)

Fun and quite cheap to buy, uses a bit too much petrol

My partner and I wanted something a bit fun as we were entering our more mature years! The HR-V grabbed our attention, initially, I'll admit, cos of those silly 'joy machine' adverts on the telly. We went and had a look at it and we were really taken. We were always a bit concerned about any sort of 'quirky' cars, as sometimes they're just made of plastic and just fall apart, but we met someone on holiday who had one and they said it was actually really quite reliable, so we allowed our enthusiasm to grow.

After about four years of having it, I'd say it's been fairly reliable. It does get through tyres a bit more quickly than you'd like of a runabout, but we did want a fun and not-so-normal car after all, something slightly more powerful. The distributor also needed doing around the time of the last service, can't remember if they picked it up then or not, but it was around then (so, when it was about 8 years old and had done around 50 thousand miles.

It is wonderfully comfortable as well. We wanted a fun car, but my partner has a slightly dodgy hip and I've never been one for rollercoasters, so although we wanted something sprightly and fun, we didn't want to be paying for it with discomfort. We haven't been disappointed here. Even on longer trips, camping and so on, it's very smooth all the way. Speaking of which, it handles large loads for holidays etc extremely well. With the seats down I once had a large exercise bike in it (taken to pieces, but the base was still very unwieldy). Because of the nice high position and lovely big windows it's very simple to move around and park in tight spaces.

Driving wise it's got lots of smart tricks up its sleeve. I particularly like the way the four by four switches itself on when the going gets tough, for example steep hills or very slippery or sludgy conditions. That's a real saviour on the rare occasion that we need it. We're hardly wild drivers but it can certainly overtake whenever it wants to, including up hill.

The real down side is the rear seats. I mean they're almost pointless. We've had the grandkids in them before (12 and 15) and the eldest was clearly very cramped up in there. That was a bit of a disappointment. But then, we seldom drive with more than two so it's perfectly fine for us - and up front there's plenty of space, and everything is in very easy reach too.