THE CURRENT CHEAPEST CAR IN SA IS R174,900 - BUT WHAT CAN THAT GET YOU IF YOU DON'T MIND AGE AND MILEAGE?

Here in SA, cars are stupidly expensive when you compare pricing to overseas markets. If you see a new car launch overseas with an estimated sales price and you convert it into Rands and then see the local pricing, there’s usually a marked difference. A trickle-down effect from this is that our 2nd-hand car market also has some higher prices than you’d see overseas. It’s a strong market though with some really good bargains to be had if you know what you’re looking for, and where to look. Used car websites like Autotrader and Cars.co.za have never been busier, if the former was still a printed weekly publication it would be as thick as an old-school telephone directory. These online platforms, along with places like Facebook Marketplace are a great way to find decent cars to suit most budgets, you just need to know how to navigate the scammers and chancers. We wanted to see what the second-hand market offers up if you want a new car, and to make it interesting we set our budget to be the same as the most affordable brand-new car in SA at the moment. As of January 2024, that would be the little Suzuki S-Presso. This budget-beater starts at R174,900 for the entry spec and goes up to R214,900 for the range-topper, so we set our budget at the former. The S-Presso has a normally aspirated 1.0 litre 4-cylinder in play that’s rated at 49 kW with 89 Nm of torque. It’s a great option if you want a new car, but with the power on tap, it likely wouldn’t satisfy those looking for a bit of performance. We’ll show you three cars we’d rather spend R175k on keeping performance in mind. The only downside to buying an older model car with all the power and features you want is that in most cases finance will be an issue, so the money you pay will need to be cash or from a bank loan or from taking money from your house bond. For this, we’ll assume that you have access to the full R175k to mess around with. We'll choose one car from Autotrader, one from Cars.co.za and one from Facebook Marketplace.

On Autotrader, there are a few, like a neat 2012 Volvo S60 T5 R-Design for R169,950 and a 2009 Audi S5 S5 Coupe Quattro for R169,900. There’s even a 1999 Porsche Boxster 986 for R169,700, but that has a few red flags. However, we’d take this minter of a 2007 Volkswagen Polo 1.8 GTI with just 102,000 km on the odo. Why this one? It may be older now, but the condition is great and most importantly for us, it’s a highly tunable car with a plethora of performance parts available for loads of vendors, and because Volkswagen is like Lego, many parts from other cars are interchangeable so you can customise the car to be unique. In stock form, the Polo GTI has 110 kW of power and 220 Nm of torque along with a 5-speed manual transmission. It already has a few tweaks that we can see in the engine bay, which is a bonus if done right.