Ok, my car history and basic assessment of each:
1) Vauxhall Nova saloon:
A total shed. 1 litre of leaf green old man car (with matching green interior). The drivers door could be unlocked by putting your hand through the rust hole and yanking the mechanism. The drivers side window would drop into the door if you went over a bump too fast. The first stereo expired in a cloud of smoke, the second would randomly set itself to full volume as you were driving - the only way to get it to sort itself out was to jiggle the volume knob until the decided it was ok again. The drivers side windscreen wiper stopped working, the passenger side wing mirror fell off on the motorway. If it was wet you had to take the distributor cap off and dry the inside of it before the car would start. It finally met its end when someone pulled out in front of me on a main road and took out basically the entire passenger side (the door was ripped off its hinges but wedged firmly in the opening, rear seat was punched inwards and upwards, rear wheel at a jaunty angle).
Bloody loved that car. It was utter crap in every way you looked at it - but it was my first car - and represented freedom - me and my friends could now pile into the car and off we'd go - the world was our oyster. For the memories alone it was great
2) Vauxhall Nova hatchback:
Following the demise of Nova 1 I bought Nova 2 - a cunning plan as I'd salvaged what I could from number 1 and now had a pile of bits in my parents garage. Over the years with number 2 I managed to make use of quite a few of them. The 1400 engine in number 2 was a nice step forward but it refused to idle when cold so I'd have to sit with my foot on the throttle until it warmed up a bit - never did get to the bottom of that.
3) Peugeot 306 Dturbo:
I'd been at work for a few years and could now afford something half sensible - so chopped in Nova 2 against a 306. Fantastic car - when I bought it there were 20K miles on the clock, when I sold it there were 190K on the clock. In between times it had been crashed into twice (neither time was I moving
) and the result of that was the front end really wasn't straight anymore, tyres would scrub out the inside edge in about 5K miles. On the whole though it was a great car, loved driving it - superb handling, enough power/torque to be fun, lift off oversteer on demand for grins (and brown trousers the first time). Utterly bulletproof reliability - other than servicing the only time it needed anything doing was a battery (ignoring the accident rebuilds obviously!).
4)Renault Clio:
My wifes car at the time we got together. Dreadful in every possible way. I had to have the seat as far back as it would go so the pedals were a comfortable distance away - which meant that the gearstick was now uncomfortably far forward. My head also smacked against the roof (the edge of the sunroof opening) when you went over a bump. It permanently felt like it was driving on ice. Hateful car.
5) Skoda Fabia Vrs:
I got this to replace the 306 - similar idea really, diesel (for the mileage I was doing) and fun. A great car to blat along the lanes on my route to work, punchy, handled well and stopped well. The only thing that let it down over it's lifetime was reliability - turbo failure, turbo pipe failure, head gasket failure. In the end it had to go (at just under 150K miles) as it was heading into big repair territory again.
6) Honda FRV:
The family bus. A bit of an oddball - 6 seater (2 rows of 3). Great when the boy was young as he'd sit in the front with us. Dog in the boot, stuff in the middle. Still got it now (on 150K) - put a shed in it to go to the tip on Monday. It's been a real workhorse, great on the motorway, dreadful on the lanes - you simply cannot hustle in this car - poor brakes, understeer like you wouldn't believe. Zero fun. Can't complain though - it's very much done the job we bought it for. Was warned that "it's starting to get a bit scabby" underneath, the clutch is failing and the exhaust isn't going to last long - so it's days are numbered.
7) MINI Cooper D :
My wife's current car - in theory it's in the mould of the Fabia/306. The reality is I hate it. The engine has the narrowest power band of anything I've ever driven, there are 6 gears and you're only ever in the right one for about 5 seconds, the handling is odd bordering on evil. It's got just over 60K on it now and it's had to have a new dual mass flywheel and clutch as well as new shock absorbers all round. So unpleasant to drive and unreliable/expensive to maintain - as an introduction to the work of BMW it's eliminated them from any future purchase.
8) ???????
The time is approaching to replace the FRV - I'm thinking estate, petrol - current favourites are Golf/Leon/Octavia (essentially the same thing in different clothing). Anything else I should consider? Not an SUV.