If you do not care about looking fancy, the lower end of the 2nd hand market is where you save big money, Bought a 8 year old corsa a while back for £1,200 drove that for 3 years sold it for £800, bought a Golf 2004 reg 110k on the clock for £600 3 years later I am on 170k and still have not spent a penny on it apart from a basic £80 service every year.

An elderly neighbor has recently stopped driving and has a corsa (2010) which they have offered me for next to nothing, the funny thing is in 9 years he has done 28k miles! full service history. so will pick that up now for about £1k sell my golf for £500 to some teenager and the corsa should last me 5 years easily.