Advice on buying a basic first car

Thanks, that's all really helpful stuff. Did you know when you bought it that you'd need to put in money for the repairs quite soon? Thanks for the tip about the footwell i'll add that to my checklist

Thanks!

Have you had a bad experience with Corsa's ?

I hadn't thought about looking for something at auction, what does BMA stand for? Thanks

I got my dad to look over it seen as he is quite experienced with most of this stuff but apart from a bit of rust here and there It looked fine. So i knew that i might have to put in a little money but i didnt really expect it to fail its MOT (because of the broken spring)

Not so much myself but my best friend bought one for about £1000 with 80k miles and has had nothing but issues with it; as with all cars it depends on who owned them but I guess I just have a bad image of Corsas now.

BMA is British Car Auction, they usually have a lot of areas where they hold auctions. I managed to get mine from there and it's turned out great (there is a 30 day rule where if something major on the car breaks you can effectively "return it" - or something along those lines)

EDIT: just realised that I wrote BMA rather than BCA... I really don't think the British Medical Association sell cars