Which car to buy. Help?

If you're toying with a golf I've had dozens.

Mk1 great. Rot like hell nowadays and oh so very antiquated.

Mk2 best of the best. Over engineered in every aspect. 8v better than 16 for reliability. But both very good. Low mileage roll out in oak green 3 door are commanding silly money.

Mk3 gentlemans GTi. Lazy. Dosey. Boring. Shared same lump as a Bora 2.0 SE and rotted like hell in most areas.

Mk4. Slightly back in track but heavy nosed and soggy front didnt inspire. Also suffer from front wing rust due to vibration pads running galvanising off front wings

Mk5. Great contender. Early days for rust issues but front wing pad issue still present.

Mk6 too new and so on

Some contenders along the way. 4 motion 2.8 Plus vr6 etc but they're not GTi's

My two pence. I've owned 17 golfs!

[Dave20046]

Gutted you can buy an 05 golf for £3k! - Hoping the Tdi's have kept their value a little better.

Golf's have not been unreliable for me but all had little quirks, main;y electrical although the mk5 has had reported clutch life of as little as 30k miles. Had mine replaced at 70k, and you can have a solid conversion at the time of repair to stop it happening again. They're also brilliant in the snow (or everyone else in yorkshire are lazy in regards to getting to work in the snow; I've driven from Sheffield to Halifax and back several times when people who live in sheffield have been unable to make it to...sheffield)
After market parts are also very cheap. I'm still shocked I got all new bosch disks and pads for £70 - and easy to fit yourself.

Mini's are also good cars, although with a full quota of testicles I've never had one. Fiesta's handle well and are fairly reliable , although a mate curbed his (fairly badly admittedly it was about 10mph+) and had to pay out over a grand for a new driveshaft and gearbox internals. Worrying, but then again the garage could just have ripped him off.