I've owned a Ford Escort 1.8L Diesel (non-turbo) for three years now. It's an L reg '93 model. I can safely say it's the most troublesome and unrewarding car I've ever driven.

This thing is sloooow! Going up an uphill stretch of motorway with 2 or 3 passengers in the car I've actually been overtaken by artic lorries! It really is that slow, absolutely no guts whatsoever.

As for actually driving it, it doesn't gain any redeeming features there either. There's no power-steering and lock to lock takes about four full turns of a very heavy steering wheel. The engine is noisy and has to be thrashed harshly to make any kind of progress. Seats are uncomfortable on long journeys and too low to the floor in my opinion.

Reliability has a big question mark over it. In three years I've replaced three wheel-bearings, three sets of Glowplugs and more recently had to have a new cylinder-head and camshaft after the cambelt snapped at a mere 18,000 miles. All the brake disks, pads, wheel-cylinders and brake pipes have also needed to be replaced recently.

The only one minor saving grace is that being a diesel it's fairly economical when compared to petrol engines but it's still not terribly frugal by diesel standards, no doubt because the accellerator is permanently on the floor to make any progress!

On the whole, a very poor car!