Here are 10 sub-£5k used car bargains we found this week

Hot Vauxhalls are sometimes divisive. Considering the British marque doesn’t really do ‘hot’ these days, perhaps we should start to appreciate cars like the Insignia VXR a little more. Here’s a tidy example with Recaro seats, metallic blue paint and 321bhp for under £4.5k. Very nice.

And equally appreciable is this Mitsubishi FTO. It may be the lowest spec possible (a boggo 1.8-litre four-pot ‘GS’), but it has just 35,000 on the clock and an asking price of less than four grand. Take that amount to a new car dealer, and you’ll leave with nothing but a pint of disappointment.

So, which of the gazillion Mercs is it going to be this week? This CLK55 AMG Cabriolet seems a good shout, with its 367bhp V8 launching it to 62mph in 5.4s en route to a limited top speed of 155, probably without even breaking a sweat. Yours now for just £3,900.

One of the great hatches of the Noughties. It looks purposeful and sure as hell drives like it too. With a good set of tyres and a properly tuned differential, very few cars offer as much grip and balance as a Mk1 Megane RS for this price. Here’s one for less than half of this week’s budget. Oof.

Do you like yellow? You should like yellow. Because here’s a yellow Mk3 Focus ST-2. There’s lots of aftermarket fettling going on, from the new bonnet and alloys to the slimline side skirts and rear bumper. No word on whether the go matches the show (the RS comes with 247bhp from its turbo four as standard), but hell, there's a lot of yellow for your £5k.

Or here’s a similarly powered Mazda RX-8 finished in a shade of slightly murky white. Who cares about cleanliness when you’ll have a screaming rotary powertrain to play with? A Torsen limited-slip differential and bigger brakes are also mentioned, so you should have a good laugh on those Sunday morning hoons.

The Golf R32 stakes a claim for having one of the best-sounding six-cylinders of all time. It’s loud, raspy and juvenile in every sense of the word. We love it. And you will too, particularly because you can have one for five grand (here’s the proof). That likely won’t be the case for much longer though, since Mk5 prices are steadily on the up...

If you thought it was an R34 for under £5,000, we’d love for you to magic over some of that optimism to us. It is instead a ‘350 GT’ - the Skyline that isn’t a ‘proper’ Skyline. Still, this one has the trusty 3.5-litre V6 and lots of Need for Speed methodology applied.

The third six-cylinder car in a row, but by far the most understated. This super clean first-generation TT Quattro even has cream leather seats inside, of which the rear two will likely be inaccessible to anyone over the age of four. Still, gorgeous little thing.

Anyone for an R53 Cooper S track car? The rear seats have been replaced with some scaffolding, and the new fronts are joined by a Sparco steering wheel. No word on mechanical changes, but given it’s up for just two grand, you’ll have plenty left over to make any necessary modifications. What a brilliant (and cheap) way to get into racing.