Just wondering how much a good snow-worthy vehicle might cost suitable for a male and female driver!

Do vehicles in Canada cost as much as they do in England, you know £12,000 pounds upwards for a new'ish 4x4 (Mitsubishi Pinnin for example).

Has anyone any recommendations for a good vehicle, suitable for mum, dad and 2 kids to get around. If so, can you advise of any good dealership websites to look on, just to do some window shopping in order to put the pennies by!

Also, just out of interest how much is Petrol/Diesel per Litre in Canada, I appreciate things change and if my luck in France is anything to go by costs will be sure to increase once I arrive!!! Sorry!

Thanks.
Daz

Cars are cheaper than the UK,

http://www.canadatrader.com

petrol is currently 85cents here but goes up and down like a yo-yo. At 85cents a tank is $42, the worst I've paid was $70.

I strongly recommend squashing the family into a Ford Mustang convertible but others may prefer something different. I don't know Manitoba but here there's no real need for a 4x4, front wheel drive might be sensible.

Tradition in canada is to buy a large 4x4 if you live in a city with good snow clearing facilities.

however if you choose to live in the country, then you buy a large 'old' rear wheel drive car

Dodge Caravan is the most popular selling vehicle in Canada.
Trucks (pick ups) are very popular including the monstrous 2-mpg wide bodied 6 seater fool-mobiles.
Jeeps etc are everyday.

Vehicle ownership is a gore-fest of big oversized rubber, alloy/mag wheels, maximum fuel consumption and maximum carrying capacity irrespective of actual use of such. Consideration for the environment, other road users and pedestrians is low.

Rich.

Try buysell.com

Look in the car section, there's thousands, most with pictures.

Smart cars are popular here, there's a long waiting list.

There is one in town here, the Green Party candidate drives it, I believe. That is one very small target for the big-boy pick ups

Rich.

Thanks for replies.

A good starting point, and the petrol costs makes us happy as we pay approx $1.70 per litre here on a good day!!

Thanks.

Don't forget that you'll probably end up traveling twice as far to do anything in Canada , and the automatic cars are also significantly less fuel efficient! so expect your average weekly fuel bill to be either on par or higher than in the UK

FWIW, we spend about $900/month on petrol without doing anything very special. That's three cars, one used to commute five miles each way, two used for running around on domestic errands, all within the GTA.

I read this often here but the stats don't show it to be true - "Canadian Driver" says17-18,000 kilometers per year, and Statistics Canada say 16,000 kilometers per year in 2004 - http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/051006/d051006c.htm

Even taking the upper figure of 18,000 kilometers, that converts to 11,000-ish miles, which compares with the average UK mileage per year of 12,000.

I appreciate freight has a lot further to travel here, but I don't think householders are driving any further in Canada that they do in the UK.

Car leases typically stipulate the allowable mileage as being 20,000 miles per year. We may be atypical but I've never returned one under the mileage and one minivan had almost twice the stipulated miles on it. I don't see how it can be otherwise, the barn's 25 miles that way, 50 miles a trip, four times a week, the (home) hockey rink is 25 miles the other way, four times a week, away games are massively far. A typical holiday will put 5,000 miles on the vehicle. A weekend's camping is good for 4 or 500 miles. The Mustang is almost three years old and has 60,000+ miles (96,500 metric) on it despite being a third car.

I suspect the average is no help because the numbers are vastly skewed, families rack up very large numbers while older people have a car each and spend half the year in Florida running up no miles.

From what I can work out the UK figure is largely inflated by the sales rep (I think)... who is often driving significantly more than the average citizen, their equivalents here seem to fly and rent much more and as such I think the north American figure reflects much closer to the average citizen than the UK figure does.
I certainly don’t remember driving 250miles a week on a regular basis, and by UK standards I drove a lot..
Yep I thought that France was a nice shopping centre for good cheese and wine, and that Scotland made a great place to have a weekend if the lake district or Wales was full

Mr B drove 90 miles roundtrip to his first job, walked 2mins to his second. Average is average. You say the stats are scewed by reps, equally usage like dbd33's isn't the norm but counts towards figures here... I wouldn't have dreamt of taking an equivalent driving trip to Europe and putting 5,000miles on the car but clearly people do.

The average Canadian, especially in an urban centre isn't using his vehicle to drive greater distances than the average Brit. There's just a perception that bigger country=more driving.

That's interesting. I drove to Scotland, Italy and, seperately, to Greece, as well as all over France and Switzerland. Once we drove up to Newcastle, watched a band and drove straight back to London (so we didn't have to speak to people in the north). From here I've driven to California a couple of times, Newfoundland, Florida, Colorado several times and Nova Scotia several times. I wouldn't say my use of the car for long trips is much different, it's the constant local use that racks up the miles.