Originally Posted by PeterRST

If you go Veedub, avoid early 2.0 TDis as they have a terrible habit of cracking cylinder heads... Nearly all of the early ones have failed. 2007 on should be good but probably not within your budget.

I'd get a Mondeo, as new as possible with as many miles as possible as long as it wasn't used as a taxi. From my experience, the typical 3 or 4 year old sales rep car with astronomical mileage still drives a lot better than a 8 or 10 year old supposedly pampered OAP city runabout...