One For The Road: A practical small car that's cheap to insure

Brian Gill needs to buy a car for his daughter Monica, which must be cheap to insure and run, as he wants to use it, too. He has around £5,000 to spend.

A Car for the Head

Here is one of the most common questions we are asked. Monica is an 18-year-old with a fresh driving licence, no car and an insurance premium that is likely to be sky-high, so ideally it needs to be group 1 or 2. Brian also wants a practical small car with five doors that is comfortable and fairly roomy. So what would be the obvious choice? First, the Toyota Yaris is the one to go for, especially with the smallest 1.0-litre engines, which fall comfortably into group 1 insurance. Being a Toyota, it has an excellent reputation for reliability and that is vitally important when it comes to day-to-day running costs. The Yaris is not just well-built, it's also spacious for such a small car. A 2008, 30,000 mile, 1.0 T2 can be had for £5,400 from a dealer with a warranty.

A Car for the Heart

The other obvious first-car supermini choice is the Citroën C1. This is probably one of the cheapest cars to run when it comes to insurance, road tax and fuel economy. Indeed, the engine that the C1 has is a 1.0 litre, which has been well proven in the Toyota Yaris, so there should not be too many reliability worries. Not only that, there is also a Toyota version of the C1 called the Aygo, and even a Peugeot 107 that is broadly similar, so there is a choice. They do all look fairly funky and the styling might please Monica. We will just go with the C1 for the moment, which isn't as spacious as the Yaris, and the boot is fairly marginal too, but £5,000 will buy a 2010 1.0 VT model with just 17,000 miles still under warranty from a Citroën dealer.

Looking to buy?

Email James Ruppert at onefortheroad@independent.co.uk, giving your age, address and phone number, details of the type of vehicle in which you are interested, and your budget.