10 Used First Cars That Aren’t Totally Boring

Congratulations, you’ve just passed your driving test. Welcome to the road, and the metaphorical keys to freedom.

Now you just need the literal keys to your first car. You’re a car enthusiast, and you want to show the world that… but unfortunately, insurance decrees you can’t yet buy an E46 BMW 330Ci. Probably a good thing, anyway, as you’d spin it on the first wet roundabout you come across.

You want something a little different from the usual Peugeot 107, Toyota Aygo and Citroen C1 crowd, though, but you’re a little stuck on what exactly.

Well, we’re here to help. We’ve got 10 ideas for reasonably affordable, accessible yet (somewhat, in most cases) insurable first cars that aren’t totally boring.

NB Mazda MX-5

Pick out any motoring journalist who has come into the industry in the last 5 years or so, and we’re willing to bet they had an NB Mazda MX-5 as their first or second car – our very own Mike Bartholomew included.

We don’t need to tell you that an MX-5 is fun, really, but we will anyway. An NA would be an even cooler choice, but finding good examples is only getting harder and more expensive.

In contrast, the slightly more refined blob-eyed NB hasn’t quite hit the status of sought-after classic yet, meaning you can get them for relatively cheap, with around £3000 getting you a nice example that shouldn’t have rotted through.

Insurance pretty much rules out any chance of a 1.8, and admittedly, it won’t be all that cheap with mainstream insurers for a 1.6 either. However, it’s worth looking into classic car insurance as early NBs may now be old enough to be eligible with some specialist providers.

Suzuki Ignis Sport

You can pretty much rule out any of the proper hot hatches as a first car. Sorry, that Ford Fiesta ST/VW Polo GTI/Renaultsport Clio will have to wait until your insurance gets to a semi-reasonable level.

Want something left field, though? Take a look at a Suzuki Ignis Sport. With a 1.5-litre free-revving four-pot, this Ignis had a shade over 100bhp when new. In a sub-tonne car with a short-ratio five-speed manual gearbox, it’s a hilarious recipe.

Prices of the more desirable, later Suzuki Swift Sport have given the Ignis a ceiling, meaning that as much as £3000 should be able to cover the majority of the market. Expect to pay half that at least for your first year of insurance, but that’s realistically not going to be much more than the usual suspects in the current climate.

Any imported Kei car

“What on earth is that?” you hear your sixth form friends say, as you pull up to third period in the Toyota Pixis Joy. It’s a question you may also get from an insurer, but once you tell them it’s a 660cc hatchback with almost no power, you might find they’re pretty happy to cover you. If the database will ever clock what it is.

We’ve got a full breakdown of what a Kei car is if you want some further reading, but in short, these are a slice of the Japanese car market that has a cap on engine capacity, dimensions and power.

They’re cool and unusual on UK roads, if a bit slow, and shouldn’t cost a bomb to run either.

Toyota iQ

Speaking of small Japanese cars, he’s an oddity that officially came to the UK. The Toyota iQ was the manufacturer’s answer to reducing the footprint of a car on congested roads, and it’s one that never really caught on.

They’re quirky, rare and importantly for insurance, slow and mechanically quite dull. With early cars using a dinky 1.0-litre engine, tax is low, and our pretend 17-year-old, for the sake of getting an idea of insurance costs, would be paying £1300 for a year with a black box. Budget about that for the car, too.

Fiat Panda 100hp

In a similar vein to the Ignis from earlier, the Fiat Panda 100hp is a baby hot hatch that’s both cool and not utterly ridiculous for a 17-year-old to get their hands on.

The 100hp has a cult following in the UK, and it’s probably the most ‘If you know, you know’ car on this list. Finding a tidy one might be the biggest issue, with rust and general Italian carness being the death of many, but good ones are out there for not an obscene amount of money.

If you can accept a black box, insurance is one of the lowest on this list too – amusingly in the ballpark of an iQ from our research.

Honda CR-Z

A hybrid Honda isn’t something you’d perhaps expect to see on this list, but the CR-Z is no normal hybrid.

The quirky spiritual successor to the CRX, this coupe-ish hatchback had the oddity of a six-speed manual gearbox hooked up to its 1.5-litre hybridised engine. Although in period seen as a bit underwhelming, time has been kind to the recipe, and it presents a genuinely interesting prospect as an enthusiast’s first car.

Insurance is going to be on the more expensive side of this list, given the relative complexity of its powertrain, but some of that should be offset with decent returns on fuel economy and a bit of street cred relative to your mates’ third-gen hand-me-down Renault Twingo.

Nissan Cube

We are hesitant to unironically call a Nissan Cube cool, but there’s no denying it’s quite an interesting thing. Practical, too – its boxy shape lends itself well to cramming things in the boot, offering decent space for your rear passengers and good visibility to minimise how many times you’ll scrape it in a fast food drive-through.

Going for the more common third-gen Cube will most likely mean having to put up with a rather hateful CVT gearbox, but as they’re effectively Micras underneath, getting replacement bits isn’t all that tricky.

Insurance is curiously on the expensive side, despite that, though. There are more appealing options on this list, but certainly not as weird.

Audi A2

“I’ve just bought myself an Audi”, you proclaim. Your friends are jealous. Members of the opposite sex are impressed. You know that Instagram shot of your hand on the steering wheel is going to go hard.

Then you pull up to the function in this space bean. The Audi A2 looks weird, and it is weird. It’s not going to be exciting to drive, finding replacement parts won’t be all that easy and no, it’s not close to being the cheapest to insure on this list.

It is, however, very much not boring. It should also be one of the cheaper cars to buy outright on this list, with roadworthy examples available for as little as a grand, and offer some mega efficiency figures. As we’ve proven, they’re pretty dependable things.

Kia Picanto GT-Line S (Hear us out…)

We know, the Kia Picanto is not a car you’d look to for excitement. Almost all versions of it are the kind of cars you’d find on proper consumer websites giving you sensible car buying advice for sensible cars.

We are not one of those, though, which means there’s only one version of the Kia Picanto we should implore you to consider. For a brief spell from 2017 to 2020, the range-topping Picanto was the GT-Line S.

That came with some nice trinkets like red accents, alloy wheels and a sport bodykit. It also came with a 1.0-litre turbocharged three-cylinder with 99bhp on offer. Trust us, in something as small and light as a Picanto and with a proper manual gearbox, it was an absolutely hilarious recipe without ever getting you into real trouble.

Whatever you can find for less than £1000 on Facebook Marketplace

If we’re being serious for a moment, though, we’d suggest scrapping everything we’ve said up to this point and just accepting that your first car should be two things. A) Cheap to buy and insure, and B) Not something you’re scared to ding now and then.

With that in mind, we’d give ourselves max £1000 to spend (ideally less) and look for anything with an MOT on FB Marketplace. You’re still young, we promise the properly cool cars will come.

And honestly, at the age of 17, with the freedom of the road ahead of you, anything is cooler than taking the bus or having to be in your mum’s passenger seat.