How To Really Buy A £1500 Estate For Your Own Africa Roadtrip

Every petrolhead and their dog loves a banging Top Gear challenge and one involving £1,500 estate cars is therefore right up my alley.

But if the guys' choices of wagons in last week's episode has taken your fancy but you're of a more serious disposition, which car should you punt your cash on and which should you look out for? Here's CT's Buyer's Guide to your very own DIY Top Gear Special.

James May - Volvo 850R

While the stiffened and lowered "R" may not be totally suitable for driving through Tanzania, it's a better bet on the UK's roads (if a little spine-tingling if your local council is anything like mine).

The R is the top of the 850 range, built only in 1996 and 1997, so it has all the toys, bells and whistles - and probably a LSD on the estate too. A quick way to tell the difference between the full fat 250hp 850R and the earlier T5-R is to glance at the suede and leather seats, with the R having a suede centre and leather panels while the T5-R has the other combo.

Of course with 250hp heading to the front wheels, front suspension is something that should be checked thoroughly before buying. And the brakes too - it's not uncommon to find an upgrade to the later V70 R front brakes. Oh, and crash damage.

The engine itself is relatively bulletproof, but poor maintenance can kill anything. The con rods can bend if the engine is allowed to overboost (due to a faulty boost control solenoid) and you'll hear a very clangy engine. If the crankcase isn't ventilated properly, oil seals can rupture - check by removing the dipstick and looking for puffs of smoke - which can turn out to be a very expensive piece of work indeed.

Richard Hammond - Subaru Impreza

The Impreza is easily the least estate-y of the estate cars chosen - the boot capacity (356 litres) is less than half the size of the Volvo's (800 litres) and two thirds the size of the BMW's (560 litres) with the seats up, and by far the smallest with the seats down.

So long as you're not carrying that much stuff though, the Impreza is the best suited vehicle to the rough stuff - that rally heritage isn't just for press hyperbole - but bear in mind that as a road car it won't have the ground clearance you need for serious work.

The big keys for buying Imprezas are modifications and abuse. Owners will tend to modify the brakes for track use - they're a little soggy for the repeated hard stops you need - and a tracked car is often one that's had a hard life on the road too. After all, there's no sense leaving those mods unused, right?

Keep an ear out for knocking engines unless you fancy a rebuild and watch for anything smoky. The gearbox is generally a good unit, but Imprezas can chew through clutches quite quickly - about as quickly as cambelts (which must be done every 45k) - so take care not to get a juddery one.

Unlike the Volvo and BMW though, the chances of getting a decent, working Impreza turbo estate of this shape within the £1,500 budget is slim at best. Heaven alone only knows what made Hammond's so cheap, but then as Clarkson pointed out, the turbo flat four woofle is the unmistakeable sound of an incoming moron...

Jeremy Clarkson - BMW 528i Touring

The best car in the world. Okay, I'll admit it, I own a 5-series Touring myself.

After the 280hp Impreza and the 250hp Volvo, the 190hp BMW seems a little sluggish, particularly as it's the heaviest car of the group. As the only RWD car of the bunch it's probably not the best car for the slippy stuff either - though the sensible wheels and nice big tyre sidewalls will make the ride much less unpleasant than the 850R's.

This shape 5 series has a few major faults to look out for - probably the largest is the "Nikasil" issue affecting certain pre-1998 6-cylinder cars that may require the entire engine to be rebored. Later cars have "Alusil" cylinder linings which fixed the issue. Diesel cars can suffer from "swirl flap" issues, so check they've been removed. Self-levelling rear suspension on the Touring can be a little tricky - keep an ear out for it working when you start it up and consider putting some weird loads in the boot to test it out. It's not pricey to fix, just a ball ache when it goes wrong.

There are idiosyncracies though. The cars can exhibit "the E39 wobble", where a judder comes through the wheel under braking. This can be fixed with new anti-roll bar droplinks, for a short while. They can suffer from electrical gremlins too - specifically rear lights and washer fluid pretending they're out - but these go away. Watch out for the SRS airbag light too. This can be as simple as clearing a fault code, but it may be either a sensor under the passenger seat or a seatbelt pretensioner - and this would be an MOT fail.

Within the budget set by the show, there are all sorts of E39 Tourings available to suit any taste - manual or auto, diesel or petrol - so long as you don't baulk at Moon mileage and you don't have to settle for, as a random example, a badly lowered 528i. With the biggest total load space here, the BMW is easily the most practical choice - any number of bedroom activites can be performed with the rear seats down.

The Penalty Car - Ford Scorpio

A Buyer's Guide for this is simple. Don't. It's a penalty car for a reason...

Once classed as one of the worst cars in the UK and future contender for a Car Throttle ugliest article, this was an overly complicated and stretched Ford Sierra. With significant reliability issues that were expensive to fix, the auto-only Scorpio is one of those cars where it's easier to list what you don't need to look out for.

If you absolutely have to buy one of these, please consider sectioning yourself first but then take it for a full mechanical inspection or your bargain buy may cost you ten times as much to fix.

Which car will TG pick as their best next week? Have your say in the comments!