Looking for first car advice

I'm looking to get a first car soon and would like some advice. For context I'm a student who has a limited but reasonable budget (~£2000) living in a fairly nice student town getting insurance quotes between £1100 and £1600 with black box for most cars (ranging from Pugeot 206s to Audi A3s among others I've plugged into comparison sites)

Here's the issue though, due to complications with the college I go to I have to travel quite a ways (70+ miles) daily to get there and back (though I only go in 3 days a week). Because of the amount of miles I'll be doing in my first car I don't want to get a total piece of crap. Anything past about 2010 can be ruled out too, usually too expensive or just lousy.

What would you all recommend? I've been looking at A3s and BMW 1 series, but wouldnt mind downgrading a bit from there (rule out anything that is ugly though, such as old model corsas)

This should be in the cars and motoring for starters... @8472

If you're looking at older VAG cars and older beamers, stop - you're asking for trouble. You'll end up spending more money than your budget.

Fiat 500's are very cheap for insurance, but it can be hard to find older ones that aren’t still going for £2000. That’s a long way to travel in such a small car though.

I personally havent looked into them during the price, my car budget is about £1000, maybe less, I can likely dredge up a bit more money if I absolutely need it, but there is no way I'll get past £2500-2700

I never actually considered the A2, I might look into but I'm always looking to get the best MPG I can, which is why A3s and such came up as they're always quoted 60+ MPG when it comes to diesels

Three days a week for 40 weeks a year. Surely the train or bus would be better.

Judge cars by their real world mpg. Not by ther official figures, due to the flawed nature of the official tests.
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/audi/a3-2008

The aluminium body, aerodynamic shape and no DPF help give the A2 1.4 TDi better real world fuel economy than any A3 you can buy for reasonable money.

Any Ford car will be sufficient

I've seen the 1.6 TDi A3s going for just under a grand, which are the ones with nice MPG quotes

The cheapest A3 1.6 TDi that I've seen in Autotrader and ebay is £1800. And that appears to be the one with Honest John real world mpg of 52 mpg.

Check Autotrader, thats where I find them

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?sort=price-asc&radius=1500&postcode=sw1a2jl&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly%20New&onesearchad=New&make=AUDI&model=A3&fuel-type=Diesel&maximum-badge-engine-size=1.6

That's what I got when I put Audi, A3, diesel, <= 1.6 litres, sorted by lowest price first.
Cheapest comes up at £1800. Am I missing something?