PowerSwitch

I haven't driven in years but I'm going to buy a car or van to help empty and do up my house, so I can let it and wander the earth during the coming collapse.

Anyway I don't want to spend lots of money on a car about £1000, I want something I can do boot sales with so maybe a large estate car that can tow a trailer or a small van .
I used to have a Bedford midi van with the hi roof that was a great vehicle .

Most of the Bedford midis are a bit old now but maybe something similar small transit maybe

Ive looked at Mercedes estates thought about maybe a diesel and maybe run it on some sort of biofuel, but I don't know much about the subject

I like landrovers but have never had one not sure how expensive they are to run .

anyway any suggestions for large estate or small van

so carrying capacity cheap to run

and what do you think is the best peak oil vehicle until we get back to the horse and cart

All I can say is, try to minimise the amount of built-in electronics: everything else is easier to repair. Get something that there's a lot of in the UK, so spare parts won't be too hard to find, also so you won't stand out too much. That's probably more important than mpg, unless you're planning on doing some serious miles.

good points

Diesels (especially older diesels) are more flexible in what they will run on, biodiesel or even cooking oil.

In a true post-oil environment, a large, old car like the larger volvos could be converted to run on wood gas. Worked in WWII so will again. Range and power limited , smelly and dangerous, but it will work.

old land rovers are good on biodiesel and easy to maintain.

other cars good on biodiesel: mercedes, skoda, vw or peugeot built before 2003.

biodiesel depends on there being waste veg oil available to process. will we still have fish and chips in the collapse?

as I've mentioned before I run a biodiesel co-op so can advise a bit more if you want to pm me.

IMO for a grand theres only one choice:

http://www.moderncars.co.uk/toyotahilux.html

Our old land rover defender has no electronics in it, so should be easy to maintain. There's also loads of them around where we are, again a plus-point. However it only does 25mpg, partly due to the mud tyres I have on it for driving in the woods...

We have electric bikes and normal bikes too, and a Toyota Aygo which is band B for road tax.

Peugeot 306 diesel estate / Citroen ZX Diesel estate.

Bullet proof engines,
cheap to buy,
50+mpg,
will run happily on veg oil if you fit a little £100 oil heater

Maybe a luxury BMW or Audi?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/drivin ... 132481.ece

Just think, if there weren't so many added unnecessary gewgaws and the whole car was smaller and lighter and it carried around a lot smaller fuel tank, we'd see over 100 mpg and under 100 gm per kilometre CO2 as standard.