It was time for my sister to buy her first car, and with my advice in mind, to cut a long story short I should just tell you that she ended up buying a Hyundai i30. Today, actually. So I thought I'd share with you the way she arrived at her choice, because I believe that the way she went about buying her first car was exemplary to say the least.

To start off, we discussed her size range - one of the single most important things to consider when buying a car, and most often overlooked. It is a great starting place, and also gives you a consequential price range. My sister is a percussionist, and is often carrying a reasonable amount of gear, if not necessarily a lot of passengers. So a large cargo room area (with seats folded down) was needed, but a wagon was deemed too big. Instead, a large hatchback seemed the go, especially with the high amount of city driving that she plans to do. So immediately, she found that she had a list of cars to investigate.

However, there were a few priorities that influenced this list. She did not want safety to be at all compromised - so her car had to feature the full set of airbags (front, side and curtain) and feature electronic stability control. To obtain these features in a used car is next to impossible, and she found that it involved buying a reasonably old car from a premium brand such as Audi. The trouble then was that such premium cars incur extra costs, namely insurance, premium grade fuel, parts prices, service and repair costs. With the cost of ownership stacking up on cars that were already more than 5 years old, she decided that it simply wasn't worth it. With about $25,000 to spend (she had saved for a good number of years!) she decided that the best course of action was to buy a new car, and fit the safety features as options where they weren't standard. So a list was created, and we prepared to eliminate those who were unworthy.

The cars on this list were extensively researched on the internet, and the findings written down in a notebook for easy reference later. Each page was devoted to a different car, and when compared, all the pros and cons of each car were evident. So my sister stayed true to my golden rule number 9: "Do ya bloody research, ya lazy bugger!" - although that article "Your First Car" is geared (forgive the pun) toward buyers looking at a used car, you can read my buying tips here. Anyway, it was clear that some cars would have to be rejected before the race started, for the various reasons stated below:

Citroen C4 SX - too expensive, especially with automatic transmission
Fiat Ritmo Dynamic - automatic transmission not available (...!), expensive too
Ford Focus CL
Holden Astra CD - curtain airbags not available on "CD" model, no stability control
Honda Civic VTi - not a hatchback, lacks stability control, only front airbags available
Hyundai i30 SX
Mazda3 Neo Sport
Mitsubishi Lancer Sportback CL - no stability control, automatic is $2,500 extra!
Nissan Tiida ST-L - no stability control, not roomy enough
Peugeot 308 XS - too expensive, no automatic on XS model
Renault Megane Dynamique - Expensive, not practical enough
Subaru Impreza R - Expensive, again
Suzuki SX-4 - no stability control, only two airbags, high fuel consumption
Toyota Corolla Seca Ascent - no stability control at all
Volkswagen Golf Edition - wait for it... too expensive also

As it turns out, after all that, there were only three cars that fulfilled her needs at all, even if it was only on paper. And if you remember my "Your First Car" feature story, I had a golden rule - forget about Chrylser, Daewoo, Daihatsu, Dodge, Hummer, Hyundai, Kia, Proton and Ssangyong. Technically, this should have ruled out the i30, but my argument for this rule in the first place were that these brands make unsafe and poor quality cars. The i30 had all the safety features she wanted, providing she optioned the safety pack, and a new Hyundai will have a 5-year warranty. It's seemed churlish to deny it a spot in the final three.

So, having done all her research, she went dealing, and found that she really could just rule the Focus out of contention. Sometimes things aren't as good as they seem to be on paper. The Focus was essentially just as good as the Mazda3, without the sporty attitude and cool looks. The Focus also lacked a few convenience features that the Mazda had, and in the end, the after-bargaining price was pretty much the same.

The i30 however, is the one that came on top of the Mazda - for a few reasons, actually. Believe it or not, the i30 had the better interior. No, really. The interior pictures I have here are merely for illustration, and have been nicked from www.carsales.com, and aren't the actually the cars she looked at. But they are the right models, Neo Sport (Mazda) and SX (Hyundai), although I understand it may be hard to see what I mean from just the pictures. There were a few things about the Mazda that were simply done better in the i30. For example, the instrumentation of the i30, with its blue lighting, is much clearer than the Mazda3 and its eye-hating red illumination. Actually, the speedometer of the Mazda3 Neo Sport is the biggest problem, because 0-100kmh occurs in the 6 to 9 o'clock positions of the dial, and such a small spread of numbers makes your speed difficult to gauge (I'm loving these puns today!). This is no such problem in the i30. In fact, the i30 interior was obviously cleaner and just as classy as the Mazda, which does not appropriately reflect the pictures to the right. Even the rear seat provides more legroom and kneeroom, while boot space for either car is virtually the same.

Where the Mazda should gain ground on the i30, in driving experience, it fails, because the difference was not enough to gain the attention of my sister, who felt that they both drove very well and was content with either, although she preferred the driving position of the i30. This underscores the importance of test-driving these cars - even my sister was going to assume that because the i30 was a Hyundai it would be incompetent on the road. The i30 even has a few extra features over the Mazda, the most useful of which is a burglar alarm.

Don't get me wrong, we're both huge fans of the Mazda3, and still are, but at the time she was car buying, the Mazda was a car at the end of it's model cycle, and significantly older in design than the i30 - it showed. Which proves a point in my "Your First Car" article - cars are getting better all the time. Although the Mazda is obviously cooler than the rather bland Hyundai, this did not bother my sister at all - the Hyundai was by no means boring, she argued, and was better in just about every other area of assessment.

In fact, even I have been converted to an i30 fan - I'm not a huge fan of the way it looks, but for most people, it looks absolutely fine, drives absolutely fine, and is great value. She haggled like her life depended on it, and came away with a great deal. The real way to describe the i30 would be with this sentence: "There is absolutely nothing wrong with the i30, other than it has an awful Hyundai badge on the bonnet and tailgate."

But if that doesn't bother you, like it didn't for my sister, then the i30 is a great car. More importantly, it's a car that you can love. And she certainly loves her red Hyundai i30 - she's going to show it off to her friends.

FEATURE STORY: My Sister Bought an i30... Shock!