Ask The Guide

There is nothing to suggest that you will have any serious problems with it in the near to mid-term future, as long as you look after it and service it regularly. It sounds like a keeper, so if you like it keep it.

The Mazda 3 is a great little car but, with a towing limit of 1300kg, it is not a burly towing brute. Engineers focused on making the car ride nicely and handle well, rather than being able to support large loads off a tow bar, so it would be seriously ill-advised to tow much more than a very small dinghy.

They can last forever or a day, depending on how they're looked after. Generally Corollas will last for hundreds of thousands of kms and many years of reliable motoring so long as you service them when they're due and make sure to keep the car clean.

The short answer is no, small cars like the Hyundai i30 should not be used for towing a caravan, or any heavy trailer. They aren't designed to pull large, heavy loads. Even some dual-cab diesel utes shouldn't be used to tow caravans, as their oft-quoted "three-tonne" towing capacity doesn't actually mean they can tow a three-tonne trailer.

Ford's evergreen T6-generation Ranger ute weighs between 1866kg up to 1968kg, depending on the model purchased and what specification it comes in.

An SUV would seem to be the best choice given your concerns about getting in and out of the car. Most carmakers now offer FWD versions as well as all-wheel drive models, and without knowing what your budget limitation is I would think an SUV like a Mitsubishi ASX, Mazda CX-5, Subaru Forester or Kia Sorento would fit your needs well.

If it’s being sold as a new car and will be registered for the first time you will have to pay duty based on the value, which would be about $1300, and on top of that you would have to pay the registration of about $750.

You’ve got two chances of that ever happening: Buckley’s and Nunn, unless of course they discover a market for such a car somewhere overseas. There are so many options for people wanting a ute that I couldn’t see a small car-based ute ever getting up.

You would have to think it’s telling you there is a problem with the airbag. What it might be is anybody’s guess until it’s checked. Get it checked out and fixed, as it might not deploy in a crash.

If it’s not getting hot it’s probably got a leak somewhere, and that shouldn’t be expensive to fix, but if it is getting hot it could be a leaking head gasket and fixing that could set you back quite a few bucks.