Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Diesel?

Those kinda cars are often used as a town runarounds or just the weekend grocery run so milage could very well be honest. It can be quite hard miles though, always cold starts, engine never properly heats up, etc.

The Saab 95 we have had a long life of short trips before we bought it. A good thing I thought, but quite the opposite. Think it's worse over here though with cold winter starts, but still something worth considering.

I believe those 1.9tdis are meant to be bomp proof. A quick google would confirm.
But that would mean I'd prefer to buy one at 120,000 miles and £1,500. Not £4k!

1.9 PD tdi I favour over the CR stuff once they get older.
Its a DPF car and TBH VW's early DPF system wasn't the best. It gave the driver pretty much no idea what status it was in, often decides to go into regen just as your pulling into your parking space not when its out on the motorway. But they kind of all did that back then.
Its a dry system so uses diesel injection post combustion to throw unburnt diesel into the cat and the DPF, which then burns causing it to burn down the soot into ash.
Should do it about every 300 to 1200 miles depending on driving type.
Take someone with a VW tool to check how many regens its done over last few k and make your own judgement. Even if its doing above normal DPF cycles so long as the oil has been changed frequent enough it won't be an issue. Its an issue when the oil isn't changed regular.
But the mk5/mk6 estate with a 1.9 pd tdi manual is a solid car, very useful size, comfy and feel well built. Early mk5 would rust around rear archs and sills, ALL 00's VAG cars rust on front archs