Ten cars for less than £5k we've found this week

Five grand doesn’t get you a whole lot in today’s world, even if you’re talking about Great British Pounds – however much it feels like that should just be renamed ‘British Pounds’. But we’ve already digressed.

The BMW Mini now is what the Austin Mini was for the generations before us – simple to find, cheap to buy, easy to run until something goes wrong. Which it will. There’s a reason ‘parts cars’ exist, after all.  

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: Some say we hired a man to take this photo, and that he only accepted shares in Enron as payment. All we know is that would have been a poor decision

Have we seen SL 500s go for five times as much? Yes. Will everything work properly? Probably not. Will it end up costing you as much as a mint one over the course of five years? Very likely. But you’ll have bought one of the best-ever SLs (and that’s saying something) for five grand. So maybe don’t fret, pet.

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer. Also, we need to bring shots like this back, seriously

Look, if you don’t like obvious answers, maybe just head on to the next one. But obvious ideas are often the right ideas, after all – it’s obvious you shouldn’t step out of a third-storey window, for instance, or push your hand into a ham slicer, or vote for a compulsive liar... oh.

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer

Golf GTIs, as good as they so often can be, aren’t exactly the rare-groove cool that demonstrates you’re capable of considered choices outside the norm, arrived at after many expensive coffees and much expansive thinking.

Is it particularly fast? No. Will it plough through bumper-deep snow drifts? Absolutely. Is that exactly what you’re considering after the hottest days in British history? Um... maybe if you’re a forward thinker too?  

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer. Well, it was actually a tuner, but you get what we mean

Say what you will about the Range Rover, it’s hard to imagine a better all-rounder for today’s modern Englishperson. Well, OK, no it isn’t. But this one’s big and fancy and such.

Regardless of whether you live in West Berkshire, Essex or Hemel Hempstead – or even those other parts of England we read about every now and then in the FT – chances are the Range Rover Vogue will take you where you need to be in style. Or at least break down within walking distance of a hatted restaurant.

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer

But what about if that whole ‘off-road’ thing goes beyond the pebbled driveway of your country estate? Clearly, you’ll want something far simpler, with far fewer things to break. Also, something that’s not the size and weight of your average icebreaker might come in handy.

And so we come to the Cherokee XJ: as simple and robust as the people who built it, able to take as much punishment as a Saw film and small enough to actually fit in green-lane wheel ruts. It’s the small things. Literally.

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer

OK, so it might just be us that get a Rush song in our heads every time, but you’re the one who stands to feel the rush of wind through their hair, the rush of emotions from those looks or the sound of that twin-cam engine. Or, y’know, just having somewhere pretty to sit in rush hour. Yes indeed, we’re doing Rush jokes. And yes, it does annoy us that he pronounces it ‘Bar-tchetta’.

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: TG Photographer. Think his name was Gavin? Yeah, definitely Gavin.

Yes, people, a real, bona fide Porsche, still for less than £5,000. And not in the distant, foggy past, either.

OK, so the one we found in Birmingham looks about as rough as the nightclubs there, but the point is that it’s a legitimate Porsche sports car, in mostly functional condition, in budget and in 2022. With a bit of TLC, you could have a lovely little Porsche sports car.

Come to mention it, a bit of TLC is also all the reason you need to leave that nightclub in Birmingham. Go chase waterfalls. Sounds fun.

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer

OK, so the one we found is hardly what you’d call museum-quality. But that’s not the worst thing in the world, either, considering that the original Leon R wasn’t exactly on the fast track to the top of any ‘most beautiful car’ lists. Nothing terribly wrong with it, just... you see what we mean.

What it is on the fast track of is... um, being fast on track. After all, this is Seat, a company famous for taking VW Group parts, keeping the most powerful bits and throwing away the heaviest. So you get Audi TT 20v oily bits and front-wheel-drive. And the one we found leaves a couple of grand spare to strip it, fit a rollcage and some bucket seats...

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer

Yes, it’s a French swear word. But as the French declared war on consonants long ago, we’re fine with it. Seriously, grenouille needs to have an ell sound in there somewhere, mon frere. And stop laughing at our accent.

We may have drifted off track.

Which is also something of a danger in the MR-deux; it’s wonderfully responsive and nimble... and adroit at catching out mid-engined novices, something they tend not to realise until they’re mid-tank-slapper. So the first time you do push the MR-2, do it on a track so your ‘Oh, MR-2’ moment doesn’t land anyone else in the sh...

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer

Yes, it’s the random Top Gear bonus round, where we point out for the umpteenth time that motorcycles are cheap and fun.

Our contestant tonight is the Kawasaki GPZ900R, which is a) pretty much how a lot of bikes are named, sorry, and b) possibly better known as the bike from Top Gun. Both, actually.

So it’s a proper 150mph superbike (the fastest in the world at the time) from the 1980s, capable of a quarter mile sprint in less than 11 seconds and a big star in perhaps the best propaganda film of all time. Hey, it made us want to be fighter pilots, after all. For the volleyball, mostly.

And if the concept of riding a motorbike feels too much like a highway to the danger zone, we have some advice: as long as you’re not a goose, everything generally turns out OK.  

Here’s one we prepared earlier...

Image: manufacturer