Currently I have a Ford Focus Ghia 1.8L petrol - 2001 (Y REG).

This is a fuel swallower!

I fill up for around £70-75 and get about 330-340 miles out of that, so pretty bad.

I did a google search for the best cars (not just Ford) and saw Fiesta was mentioned, and so too was a Vauxhall Astra 1.7 TDCI.

Diesels seem a good bet. I just want to stop spending so !Removed! much on petrol!

Car should be no more than £2K.

Any diesel should do better than that, like a Diesel Fiesta or Focus

+ some minor modifications, strategies and slight changes in driving styte may bring even better results

The best Fords for economy/ lowest fuel cost per mile are the TDDIs, (Mondeo TDDI and Focus TDDI) because they can run on vegatable oil.

If you are lucky or run a chip shop etc, you can get your (used) veg oil for nothing

My Mondeo can do 50mpg on a run, and has a 58 litre/ 12.7 gallon tank, i can buy 10 Litres for £10 (£1 per litre)

So a tank costs £58 and takes me 635 miles, the car also has a 740kg payload (about the same as a small van) and accelerates faster than many "performance" cars, so that might explain why i still have it after all this time

astra 1.7 cdti mk4 is a personal favourite of mine had it for about 6-7 years 130k no major problems with it egr got clogged up that was a pain as its water cooled and hard to get at otherwise pretty sound car theres load of apparent fuel pump failures people talk about but thats on the dti and usually caused by dry/cracked solder joints on the pumps edu.