I bought my Nissan Micra for less than £500 as a first car. It's reliable, uses hardly any petrol and is easy to maintain.

I use it to drive to work and to go to the stables in. For one person it is the perfect size, with plenty of boot space to put my saddle, wellies and other horsey stuff!

My Micra passed it's MOT in January with no problems what so ever, however I have since replaced the exhaust due to rust and the tyres. If it passes it's MOT this January then I plan to keep my car for yet another year. Why replace something when it's perfectly fine????

I would 100% recommend the bubble-jelly mould shaped Nissan Micra to anyone who was looking for a cheap to run and totally reliable little car. I have driven mine more than 600 miles over 2 days without any problems and wouldn't hesitate to do it again!

The purple Micra is gone. I did not own it myself though I did drive it a lot. It was my wife's transport to get to work for four years, then my daughter's and finally my elder son's. He has inherited his Mum's Almera and the Micra went to the auction. This review is by way of a valedictory for a great wee motor.

The Micra was a very basic item. It could seat four - though not in comfort for those in the back - and it had a wheel at each corner plus an engine. With only the driver it held its own on the motorway though it was a temptation for any boy racer or BWM owner to try to bully on the M8. Fold down the back seat and there was quite a lot of carrying space.

Over the ten years it was in the family the car needed very little work. It was easy to flood the carburettor but then the problem was easy to fix after a friendly AA man showed us how. The exhaust gave up at eight years and the battery at nine. At nine it also needed major surgery underneath in the form of a strut that seems to be a weakness for the rot, though we thought it worth fixing. It cost a bit but not as much as buying another car would have and this was a car we knew, a good friend who did not let us down, right to the end. Apart from that it needed service parts and not much else.

The purple Micra transported my wife the seventy mile round trip to work, then our daughter used it including a year when she travelled daily from Glasgow to Kilmarnock, then our son used the car to travel to band practices and gigs.

Somewhere around Glasgow someone is still driving our old purple friend. It is not a thing of beauty, being a bit battered and bruised in places and in its twilight years with over 90k miles on the clock, but I just don't think it will let its new owner down. It may not be a limo but it did the trick. It's not a macho guy car but it got from a to b and didn't cost much in the process.

Reliable, cheap, good insurance, Rac cover and at home for £40.

The Nissan Micra 999cc was my first car, and what a car it was! Before I owned it, it was my dads, and he had owned it for 4 years with no faults. He bought a Volvo S40 and left the Micra parked up for 12 months while I took lessons to pass my test.

I passed 12 months later, so the Micra had been sat there for 12 months. To my pleasant surprise, it breezed through an MOT, and very little went wrong on it for the year I had it. Just a few tyre problems, and I replaced 3 tyres in 12 months, which cost me a total of £45. So I only spent £45 on a car in 12 months - not bad. It's a great little car, and recommended for a first car for someone who has just started driving, as the car is also in the cheapest insurance and tax group.

The Nissan Micra is a very good reliable cheap small car. Can't fault it apart from the above problem but which I expect has been fixed in later models.