1997 Peugeot 306 5 dr hatch review from UK and Ireland

Drivers side door wiring - ~£250 to get re-wired by my garage (non-dealer). The main problem as has been mentioned that the wires (20 or so) are all black and need to be tested to work out what is what. I still have a couple of glitches, but it would require a rewire to fix it and the same labour cost.

I service it every 6-7k at £160-200 (doesn't require this much but I love it)

Drivers side wing mirror got dinged. A replacement, colour coded, heated, adjustable mirror would have been ~£140 fitted, so I got out the super glue to repair the internals and replaced the mirror from Halfords (£6)

The clock/temperature LCD stopped working. I looked into replacing it, ~£50, but was advised to check the bulbs in it, which I wasn't aware of. So a couple of quid later and it was working again.

Decent tyres, not super sporty but not cheap make a real difference, the budget tyres that were on it when I got it were quite nervous in the wet, and less than inspiring when 'making progress', now I've got BF Goodrich Profiler ~£55 each on steel rims.

Replaced the rubbish hub caps that came with it with Peugeot Cuba type; they were about £11 each from an eBay seller.

Typical Peugeot door pop when opening. I bought new door check straps to help the click noise, but when replacing I found that the new one had the same noise as the last, but once I replaced the check strap arrester roll pins; this cured this annoying noise and only cost £3 each.

I got some rubbing on the rear drivers side wheel arch between the tyre and some plastic trim, this was apparently from the tyre profile and thank.

I bought this after having owned a Proton before. I was not surprisingly blown away by the handling. Having since driven much more, this car still holds its own as long as it has some reasonable tyres on. The car does have some body roll. It can carry some good corner speed as long as you keep steady throttle through it; don't lift off suddenly, or you can move straight to car/scenery interaction.

The lift off oversteer is one to avoid. My wife parked ours in some light foliage on a fast A road after experiencing this in the wet. If you have enough skill, opposite lock and giving it full throttle can recover it.

I have used the car for all my family holidays since I got it, including a 3200 mile return trip to Portugal. It has been very reliable without a breakdown in the 46k miles I've owned it, although I service it at the recommended intervals of 6k.

The radio has a good sound, although the CD changer was lost along the way before I bought it.

The glove compartment and upper compartment can just about fit a pair of gloves in; stupidly tiny. The door bins are reasonable.

The boot space (hatch) is good for a car of this size. With the seats down, I got 2 domestic wheelie bins in side by side.

I get (on average) 410 miles before the low fuel light comes on, though this can be 440 on long motorway runs ~70mph. It can drop to 390 with daily short/fast journeys. This equates to about 38-42mpg.