Having had more of a read it would sound like I will not regularly make a long enough trip to effectively burn off the particles (I am still confused about active regeneration / passive and which cars use which or if cars use both). I've now moved over to looking at some of the smaller petrol engines - the Focus 1.0 Ecoboost 125 sounds a nice option. Mrs K has a Clio 0.9 TCE (90bhp) and the power it produces is seriously impressive for such a tiny engine.
i can vouch for the ecoboost engines they are amazing. the fuel consumption is awesome and you have a decent amount of power to boot. dad has the 1.6TDCi ecoboost on the focus estate.
Cheers bud. The Mrs test drove a Fiesta ecoboost and it was really nice - the clio was just as good though and came with a lot more kit as standard.
I would take the suggestions posted here, consider them, then discount everything until you take an extended test drive. Whilst you seem to like the Fiesta and Clio, I've driven both recently as courtesy cars and hatted them equally. The Fiesta had the most horrible interior and seemed unrefined, it was also a bit cramped. I felt the Clio was so underpowered it became dangerous at junctions and the dash was a bit gahh. I just didn't feel comfortable in the Fiesta, and whilst the Clio was nice looking I didn't like the driving experience. Just goes to show, it's best to drive the car then decide. I would be tempted to go with the larger family hatch though (as in your original port) more practical, more refined, etc. The Kia Ceed seems like a nice option. PS, the ones I drove were courtesy cars, so entry level engines and interiors.
Sorry - I think I've confused things a bit. I still want to go with something Focus sized (i30, ce'ed, golf, leon etc) but now with a petrol engine rather than diesel. Having had a look around the Hyundai petrols and Kia petrols don't seem to be quite as up-to-date as the Ford or Seat ones more favouring larger, less efficient engines as opposed to smaller, more efficient but actually equally as powerful versions. The only reason I was mentioning the Clio / Fiesta was that was what my Mrs test drove and she found the ecoboost engines to be very nice. I would definitely be leaning towards a Hyundai or Kia if they did a 1.0 / 1.2 >100ps version.
One thing to consider as a long term ownership prospect the larger, naturally aspirated, engines in the Kia/Hyundai have less to wrong on them. And in real world driving the economy won't be a far apart at the official figures suggest as the official test favours turbo charged engines (the official test mostly tests the engine under light load when the turbo isn't on boost, and hence it returns economy figures befitting the tiny engine. But driven normally the turbo will be on boost for a lot of the time, using more fuel) but the tax is still higher for the large engine though in-line with the official figures.
I've just got a 2010 VW Golf bluemotion 1.6 really nice and the tax is £20 a year. Really nice car The seat altea I had was £265 a year!
Tried and tested N/A engines vs complicated lower capacity high boosted engines packed full of extra emissions and boost sensors, hmmmm its tough choice, bigger non turbo engines probably better for reliability and probably economy if you do any higher speed driving >50 say where the little boosted engines tend to have to work hard to shift bigger cars respectably. The little boosted engines will feel great with a big wallop of torque, they are more complicated though, more to fail. Not purposely trying to put you off but I have just replaced a turbo on my little boosted engine, thought I'd mention it, > £1K to fix to be fair, I do spank the arse off it and it does compete in Club motorsport so perhaps not too fair to whine about it, in normal scenarios it would probably last a lot longer than 50k but debugging what was wrong when it went was complicated due to all the sensors that could of caused issue.
