Coupes for common folks: here are 10 stylish used car classics for less than £10k

Should you need evidence of how awash the Nineties were with impossibly good-looking coupes wearing everyday badges, look no further. This was Volvo long before its £100k electric SUV glow-up. Thus, the arrival in its showrooms of an Ian Callum-penned, TWR-engineered two-door – motivated by five-cylinder power, no less – bordered on the shocking back in 1997.

“We threw away the box but kept the toy inside,” joked legendary Volvo design chief Peter Horbury at its reveal, a nod and wink to the thoroughly rectangular range of cars the C70 was suddenly strutting amongst. This one has the 190bhp turbocharged 2.4-litre engine and manual gearbox you really want and has covered modest mileage for its five grand price tag. Buy it before we do.

Fun fact: Fiat’s central design team battled with Pininfarina to pen a sensational coupe to elevate the Italian brand’s strut through the Nineties. Centro Stile Fiat, with pre-BMW Chris Bangle in charge of its pencil case, won the bidding with this bold collection of theatrical slashes and curiously bubbled headlamps.

Top performance billing went to a warbling five-cylinder turbo, but it’s a simpler, cheaper to run 2.0-litre 16v we have here boasting low miles and slick service history. It’s a minor modern classic, not least because of what Bangle went on to do next. Wondering if you’d prefer Pininfarina’s losing design? It survived, and morphed beautifully into our next car...

Another absolute stunner. Peugeot called on long-time collaborator Pininfarina to recarve the sensible 406 saloon into a striking coupe; contemporary comparisons to the Ferrari 456 were always inevitable when Pinin career man Lorenzo Ramaciotti had sketched both.

Unlike the Ferrari, Peugeot offered a choice of petrol and diesel powertrains, the pinnacle of which is the 3.0-litre V6 with a manual ‘box. Which is precisely the car we’ve found here for a piffling three grand. We’ve even put together an informal buying guide…

Indeed, the French had something of a knack for removing the back doors of their repmobiles. The late Noughties saw the launch of the Renault Laguna Coupe – looking not unlike the Aston DB9 of the time, even if those two didn’t share a designer – again with petrol and diesel power and a halo V6.

The latter is much harder to come by than in the 406, the Laguna launching to a diesel-obsessed public, but this dCi 150 can still mildly entertain while sipping about half the fuel that pesky Peugeot will. And crikey, are they cheap.

Remember when Nissan went wilfully retro? The whimsy of a Figaro aside, we’d always considered Japanese carmakers like this as tech-forward. Yet the Zee of 2003 was all too happy to hark back to its ancestors and bring a dose of updated, muscle car cool to a very attainable price point.

The name intimates the engine: a 3.5-litre V6 with a whisker under 300bhp for 0-60mph in a mite over five seconds. But this was about ‘feel’ and ‘fun’ above all else, as its role in the timely allegory The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift ought to attest.

The Prelude is back! And while internet naysayers go windmilling toward its humble Civic hybrid powertrain and refined gait, a swift trawl through the badge’s history reveals it to be right on the money: a meticulously engineered, everyday focused coupe that looks subtly smart as it shuffles about its business. And a minor tech showcase, too; while the new one explores what’s possible with electrification, this Nineties example was a pioneer of four-wheel steering.

The daddy of the mainstream coupe world? There’s plenty to galvanise the claim. The Calibra took a contemporary Cavalier platform and positively sprinted with it, becoming the world’s most aerodynamic production car at launch before morphing into a demonic DTM racecar that snared the 1996 International Touring Car Championship in outrageous, 500bhp style. This 2.0-litre 16v makes do with a humbler 134bhp but still looks a million dollars. It’s fair to say TG.com is ‘a fan’… 

Built by Karmann, the Corrado replaced the original Scirocco as VW’s ‘Golf, but sexier’. It did so with a very Nineties attitude to technological advancement, too, its narrow-angle VR6 smartly squeezing a smooth, six-cylinder engine into the space usually occupied by a four (and thus into the short snout of a compact coupe) while its rear wing actively raised and lowered dependent on speed. 

Oh, and its galvanised body helped it repel rust – perhaps its greatest decadence of all for those who scour the classifieds now.

Believe it or not, but this is a very close cousin to the Ford Probe. Where that Americanised, pop-up lit curio continues to anguish human eyes 30 years on from retirement, the more dainty, delicate Mazda looks an utter treat and costs bafflingly little to buy used.

Like all the most magical mainstream coupes, a V6 engine plays a starring role at the top of its range, this one a 2.5-litre with a thimble less than 200bhp for a thoroughly respectable seven-second dash to 62mph. Mazda trademarked the MX-6 name again in 2018; let’s cross our fingers for a convention-busting remake to distract us from its pivot towards Chinese-hearted EVs. The new Prelude needs a rival, after all.

Sure, we’ve jumped the shark a little here. The C215-generation Mercedes CL commanded around eighty grand new – and your servicing costs now will likely reflect its highfalutin swagger. But as JC found out all those years ago on TG Telly, these things represent staggering value several decades on. Wearing 102,000 miles and painted proper Teutonic silver, this CL 500 is highly tempting at a fiver under £7,000.

Stark value when there’s a 302bhp, 5.0-litre V8 behind those quad headlights and a whole swathe of then-industry-leading spec hooked up to its enormous wiring loom. Worried about the bill when it all goes wrong? Drop all four windows to block the mental chit-chat and bathe in the classic pillarless coupe experience.