Hello to you all.

Although I'm getting on in years I'm very new to forums, so please excuse any unintended faux pas that I may make.

Until recently I drove a heavy 4x4, primarily because I used to tow our caravan back and forwards to the Isle of Wight on extended stay-overs.

As luck would have it on our last visit, we found somewhere on the island to store the caravan on a permanent basis, which meant that we no longer needed the big car.

Strange as it might sound, it was while were there last time that my son phoned me to say that his Vauxhall run-about had given up the ghost and needed replacement.

As most second hand island cars are low mileage, my wife and I started looking round for a replacement for him, and it was then that I came across a 2006 Ford Fiesta 1.6 TCDI Climate with only 48,000 miles on the clock, the only problem being that this car would not have been large enough for him and his family.

I got to thinking that the Ford might be the ideal solution for me, so we bought it and brought it back home with us.

Unbelievably this car yielded an overall fuel consumption of 87.2 mpg on the return journey of 270 odd miles, and believe me we were very happy about that as it was 67 mpg better than we had got from the 4x4.

I have owned several Fords before, which included several petrol (both manual and auto) Mondeos, and also one of the earlier TDCI Mondeo estates all of which proved to be excellent vehicles, but not capable of towing a caravan weighing in at 1800 kg.

Having been back home now for a few days my reaction on buying this Fiesta has been a good one, that is until a neighbour mentioned to me that this Fiesta uses the Euro engine, and therefore has a DPF fitted to it which could prove to be problematic.

I am no expert on cars, so he might be right (or it might just be sour grapes on his part as he detests Fords), in any event my reason for joining this forum is because I may well need the advice of people who know more than me just how to avoid costly problems with this vehicle.

That's it in a nutshell folks............sorry if I've bored you.

Welcome to the family.

To confirm., most modern diesels post 2004 are euro 4,but it doesn't have to be the end of the world.

If you drive one long route a week or make an effort to clear the dpf every other week (if your a short miler driver) then you can make it worth while.

Alternatively, you could always look T removal which is cheap and when the dpf is gutted it can allow you to pass an mot as members here have seen.

The act though is illegal so you can't cut it out and put a straight through pipe on but, who is to say you didn't by the car with the app Chambers gutted, and it remapped, how where you to know ;-)