Faults:

Needed a temporary second car, and bought the car off an absolutely stunning Ukrainian girl who was about 24... she was so stunning (shallow narcissism 10/10)... that I didn't check a single thing. 10 km down the road I was kicking myself... blown head gasket... ABS light coming on... vibration when pressing the brakes.... not good.

Got home after 3 stops to refill the radiator and proceeded to work out how to fix it as cheaply as possible.

ABS light was due to the front tyres being bald; the rear ones being brand new. New tyres fixed that one... no more ABS light.

Replaced head gasket on the original 1.2 motor and did a good job, but it blew again about 100 km later... obtained a very good second hand 1.4 motor and replaced the 1.2 motor over a weekend. Fantastic... what a transformation. The 1.4 is nice and peppy, and doesn't hate the hills like the 1.2, even if it's only a little bigger, plus it's good on gas... get about 37 MPG around town... 40 on a trip outside the city.

Good comfortable seats, and also good suspension for a small car... very practical body with good storage spaces, and nice, easy to read instruments.

Would like to change the gearbox though to a manual, not because the gearbox is bad or anything, but I think the 1.4 would shine even more with a manual 5 speed... may do it if I find an inexpensive wreck.

Brakes eventually stopped vibrating... may have had spots on them from sitting around... seem to be fine now.

Was going to move it on, but like the car so much I think I will keep it...

General Comments:

Well packaged car with class leading design for its time period... the newer car may be "improved" in some ways, but this has character, whereas the new model Micra doesn't make me want to own it.

Love driving it around the city. Small tank thou... another 5 litres or more in the gas tank and it would be almost the perfect small modern car.

Escapes that class distinction which only a small percentage of small cars manage to do... e.g. Citroen 2CV, VW Beetle, Nissan S Cargo, Renault 5 and Twingo, Toyota Echo... etc etc... Civics etc etc.

Parts are cheap and plentiful... and it's also fairly easy to work on after you buy a Haynes manual.

Faults:

Left front light didn't work at purchase, replaced for $12.

Speedometer needle got sticky when parked under the sun for 5 minutes, it just wouldn't go back to 0km/h. I took the panel out and put some WD40 at the spring, it works fine now.

Two panel's back lights blew and replaced for $3

The gear shifter spring was broken, wouldn't go back to the middle. I fixed it myself.

No other problem has been found so far, since I've had the car for less than 3 weeks.

General Comments:

This is my first car and I'm very happy with it. It uses very little fuel compare with my friend's V6 Magna, his car uses double the fuel than mine =) 33L ran 550km

I don't have much experience with cars, but with its 1.3L engine I don't feel bad at all, the engine is more powerful than I thought a 1.3L would be. It can accelerate pretty fast to 60km/h if you want to.

Cornering is much better than my friend's Magna due the the light weight of this car. Lack of power-steering is not a problem at all because of this super light little car ;)

The boot is pretty big if you flip the back seat over, much bigger than I thought =p

Doors are huge too!!

I'll try to do some distance travel later when my study get less busy and see how this little lady will go.