18 used cars for the price of a family summer holiday

The average British family spends £5,000 on its summer holiday. Which is a big ol’ pile of cash if it all descends into an angst-filled week of attempting to apply sun cream to a screaming toddler by a bustling hotel pool. So allow us to guide you gently from the three-star resort and into some Grade A (ish) used metal; because no advice that implores folk to throw a substantial sum of money at a second-hand car has ever been unwise, right?

This feels like a good place to start: a classy red Mercedes-Benz 190E saloon with a modest 77,500 miles, a ton of recent work to its name and just some minor surface rust to apparently worry about. Its automatic gearbox should ensure it positively glides between the copious classic car shows it’ll doubtless inspire you to attend this summer.

Now this is a classic car. The ickle R4 positively resembles a holiday snap, a dainty, unmistakable French device with a cheery face and insatiable attitude. It was produced for three full decades and sold over eight million units in the process. Finding a good ‘un now won’t necessarily be as easy as those stats suggest, but the Four’s joyous return as a fully electric crossover means now feels as good a time as any to wind right back to the Eighties with this vibrant blue example. The fact it needs picking up from France? Package it as an alternative family holiday when your bawling kids ask why they aren’t going to Alicante this year.

BMW’s original retro roadster is finally enjoying its moment in the sun. The Z3 has always struggled for enthusiast cred – much more so than the Z4s which followed in its wake – and yet its second-hand values appear to be galvanising. High time to leap into one while it’s still affordable to do so, then; this one is a fabulously green Fiji Edition possessing a mere 67,000 miles. Alright, it’s the lowlier 1.9-litre four-pot with just 140 horsepower to its name, but we doubt you’ll rue its missing cylinders too much when the roof’s down and the weather’s blazing.

Forgive us another four-cylinder BMW, but this one is a right belter for our modest budget. Alpina’s just had a major glow up into a bona fide Bentley rival, yet among the greatest hits of its legendary first act is this, the turbodiesel D3.

Who knew a regular 3 Series repmobile could have such strong allure? The D3 is so much more than the sum of its additional stripes, blue dials and half leather interior, Alpina’s magic sauce making these fabulous things to live with. The perfect thing to load the family into a for a compensatory camping trip.

Okay, TopGear.com wasn’t especially nice about this particular MG on launch; freshly under Chinese ownership, the TF was resurrected from its seemingly eternal slumber for a final run of around 1,000 cars, all sold new against a vastly improved Mk3 MX-5 – when the TF’s bones had originally been benchmarked against the Mazda’s very first generation. Eek. A gulf which embarrassed the MG back then makes it a veritable bargain now, this tasteful black example low on miles and apparently free of rust. Shake off your shame for a fun summer plaything.

Or perhaps you want your British-made cabriolet to carry a bit more modernity. And, indeed, power. John Cooper Works Minis are a firm TG favourite, despite their oft unruly nature. Or more likely because of it. Throw their wheelspin and lift-off oversteer at a four-seat fabric-roof convertible and you have a car of such joyous contradiction that it’s hard not to have a riot on every single drive. Peaks of 208bhp, 207lb ft and a 0-62mph sprint of 6.9 seconds still look competitive now, not least in a car weighing only 1.3 tons. They’re decent on track, too.

The Toyota Celica is, praise be, on the comeback trail. The world’s biggest carmaker has been in quite the vein of form, whether we’re talking its jazzy Prius and Land Cruiser rebirths or the continually sensational GR Yaris hot hatch. So we have high hopes for its new coupe and feel suitably buoyed to recommend its predecessor for significantly under our five grand budget. At a mite over £3,000, there’s more than enough left over for the full Fast and Furious makeover.

If we’ve learned anything from summer thus far, it’s that good air conditioning is essential. And good air con deserves good air vents, right? For those you want an original Jaguar XF. The Ian Callum-penned saloon represented something of a transformation for Jaguar in 2007, a design resolution which prompted much less controversy than the one we’re currently witnessing. Among its interior highlights were its hidden gear selector and front vents, all of which rotated into view as the car was prodded into life. Presuming those (and the air con system behind them) still work, this 4.2-litre V8 example, at a single pound under budget, looks an absolute steal.

The exact same sum can buy you half the cylinders but considerably more ride height courtesy of this Volvo XC70. A fine family bus if ever we saw one, it’s a much cooler thing to throw your kids and camping gear into than the ubiquitous SUV. It’s a mite leggy, with almost 160,000 miles, but possesses a service book chockful of stamps and its one single owner appears to be finding it a new home due to its lack of ULEZ compliance. Those living outside of London could have themselves a bargain.

If you’re still hellbent on an SUV, however, you could do a lot worse than a Q7. Seven by name, seven by nature: it has three rows of seats to ensure its mighty 3.0-litre V6 diesel can effortlessly hustle every member of your family away on a staycation. With an MoT until next May and another dutifully filled service book, it feels a safe bet for classy family transport.

Or perhaps you want to go really off road. The second coming of the littlest Land Rover has a decent reliability record, certainly against its brand’s sometimes shaky reputation, and a Freelander with a hardy 2.2-litre diesel engine should haul itself along quite nicely, its 190bhp whisking it past 62mph in under nine seconds. This one’s a proper 4WD example with an auto ‘box, plush HSE spec and – we’ve not seen this one in a while – the boast of ‘one lady owner’.

Boxsters used to be commonplace below five grand to make it the cheapest route into Porsche ownership. Prices have since began to swell, with leggy Cayennes taking their dubious old honour, making it a pertinent time to leap into an affordable example like this. You’ll have to endure a Tiptronic auto rather than engage with a snickety manual shift, but its vendor has at least fitted CarPlay and a modern stereo to ensure your summer blasts are properly (and easily) soundtracked.

Fried-egg headlights not your thing? The original Boxster’s arguably never been a looker, but nigh on every generation of Alfa Romeo Spider has aced that particular remit. Arguably none more so than the Brera-based Spider launched in 2006. Here was a car never regarded for sharp, incisive dynamics… but who cared when it looked so good? A bold white example on classic phone dial wheels allows you to fully lean into its questionable dynamic appeal by rolling around with a 2.4-litre diesel engine up front. Pray the stereo’s working, folks: it’ll need cranking up loud…

Our tin hat’s firmly on for this one. Anyone whose brain still has the capacity to recall the Vauxhall Cascada either a) does so in an ironic sense or b) owns one. Renaming the Astra cabriolet with the name of a Noughties Eurodance act was a curious choice, but Cascada are still touring and perhaps we should still be driving around in affordable, vaguely aspirational Vauxhalls to pay the appropriate level of reverence.

It really wasn’t bad, either, not least because it ditched the heavy and complex folding hard top of the Astra TwinTop before it in lieu of a lighter, simpler fabric hood. Its 1.4-litre turbo makes it no less potent than the BMW Z3 further up this list, too.

Last week we explored the wonderful world of European Car of the Year winners but didn’t make room for one of the most charming. The wedge-shaped Rover SD1 scored the COTY trophy in 1977 with its Ferrari Daytona-inspired styling and a beefy 3.5-litre V8 engine beneath its lengthy snout. This example is painted an appropriately Seventies colour to ensure you (and it) stop your local village car show in its tracks.

Prefer to spend your summer hiding in the shade of your garage, avoiding dangerously high UV levels by tinkering away on a forlorn project? Step right this way. Our budget snares not only a whole, entire Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit, but allows at least a grand to spare to begin funding its return to roadworthiness. Its owner describes a car that runs and drives and whose engine and gearbox ‘seem fine’, with some underfloor welding a more urgent concern. To coin a now worn-ragged catchphrase: how hard can it be?

And now for something completely, utterly different. At surely the opposing end of the used car spectrum to a project Rolls-Royce is a dependable Korean hatchback. The Cee'd kicked off Kia’s 21^st century glow up and its second-generation brought us the heated up, 200-odd horsepower Cee'd GT hatch. Available with three and five doors, we’ve opted for the latter for ultimate practicality (and thus summer getaway potential). Its 7.4sec dash from zero to 62mph ensure it’s not only the easiest car to rub along with on our list, but one of the quickest, too. What’s not to like?

A Volkswagen campervan for under five grand? You’d better believe it. This bright red two-birth T25 is advertised for sale with a 1.9-litre water-cooled engine (how very modern!) and no major issues beyond its lack of cooker. Though we advise the finest toothed comb you can find – or the company of a friendly expert – if you plan to pop along for a closer look.

But what a find if it’s all shipshape, and how smug you can feel funnelling the cost of one, single holiday into a device that can serve up the unique discomfort and stress of a family break for year after year. Hurrah!