10 Fast Estate Cars For Under £15,000

The fast estate car is a funny thing. As car enthusiasts, we get a bit frothy over them because they seem like the ultimate blend of day-to-day practicality and gut-punch speed, all in a package that doesn’t offend our sensibilities like a fast SUV does.

The thing is, the actual use case for cars like this is pretty slim, which is why there are so relatively few on the market, and all of them are rather expensive. The latest to join the fray is the long-anticipated G91 BMW M5 Touring, and while it’ll almost certainly be a brutally effective thing, it’s also a complicated plug-in hybrid that weighs about the same as Finland. What’s more, it costs a fairly painful £112,500.

What if you slash that budget by a healthy 75 per cent, to a nice round £15,000? Join us for a snoop around the classifieds at some of the used rapid estate cars you can pick up for less than a Dacia Spring and a pint of mid-tier lager.

Alfa Romeo 156 GTA Sportwagon

Alfa’s one and only crack at a proper performance estate (we’re still upset there’s never been a Giulia Sportwagon), the 156 GTA SW… wasn’t that brilliant. Yes, it was powered by the sonorous Busso V6 in its final 3.2-litre, 247bhp form, but all that went through the front wheels, and it was a bit of a mess to drive.

As is so often the case with Alfas, you have to ask yourself if you really care. Just look at it, and listen to it. Plus, the easy mod of a Q2 limited-slip diff can totally transform the handling. Just don’t ask us about reliability. Or the fact that the Sportwagon somehow had a smaller boot than the saloon…

Audi S6 Avant (C6)

Audi is almost certainly the first name you think of when you picture a fast estate (unless you’re some kind of deliberate hipster contrarian), and it’s not hard to see why. Ingolstadt offers a lot of choices at this budget, including various S4s and even leggy examples of the brilliant B7 RS4 Avant.

Our (perhaps ill-advised) pick, though, is the bigger S6 Avant in C6 form – mainly because it was a businesslike family estate with a 5.2-litre, twin-turbo V10 crammed under the bonnet (one that’s not that closely related to the similarly-sized Lamborghini V10, ackshually).

That means 429bhp, and 62mph in 5.3 seconds, as well as bags of space. Oh, and full disclosure – you can find the full-fat, 572bhp RS6 for under 15 grand, but that’s going to be an even bigger risk than this already questionable purchase.

Ford Focus ST Estate

Far more sensible, both in its performance and liability to spectacularly explode, is the estate version of the third-gen Ford Focus ST. You’re looking at 247bhp, 0-62mph in 6.5 seconds, and 154mph.

What’s more, it’s a modern Ford, so it’s going to drive well, and probably not massively let you down as long as it’s looked after. There are plenty around at this budget with temptingly low miles, and while it’s on the smaller end of the estate size scale, it’s still a handily practical hauler with a feisty hot hatch personality.

Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG Estate (S211)

That Ford’s a bit… too sensible though, right? In days gone by, one outfit you could always call on to bring some tyre-smoking fun to the party was AMG. Again, there’s a decent bit of choice in this sphere from Mercedes’ in-house tuner – and not all of it always advisable at this sort of budget.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the charms of the S211 E55. It looked for all intents and purposes like a German trouser salesperson’s diesel company car, but shoehorned behind those very ’00s twin headlights was a 5.4-litre supercharged V8, sending 476bhp to the back wheels. That would get you to 62mph in a claimed 4.8 seconds, assuming you could stop the tyres from immediately turning their tread into nothing more than a memory of a thought or a notion.

Nissan Stagea

It’s a Skyline wagon! Sort of. The first-gen Nissan Stagea did indeed share a platform and a range of straight-six engines with the R33 Skyline including, in the rare Autech-tuned 260RS, the hallowed RB26DETT.

You’re definitely not getting one of those for under £15k, but because it’s a Japanese performance car of the ’90s, there’s a baffling range of different variants, many of which still came with boosty turbo straight-sixes. Stageas were Japan-only, so you’ll need to find one that’s been imported or do it yourself. Oh, and there was a second generation based on a version of the 350Z’s platform, and available with a VQ35. We’ll leave you to decide whether that’s a good thing…

SEAT Leon Cupra ST

Something far more modern now. Before Cupra became its own brand and potentially consumed its parent brand whole like some kind of particularly nasty insect David Attenborough tells you about, it was SEAT’s performance division, and it churned out various fast versions of the previous-generation Leon Sportstourer.

Using the tried-and-tested formula of VW’s EA888 2.0-litre turbo four-pot and its scalable MQB platform, the Leon Cupra ST variously came with 276, 286 and 296bhp outputs, and the choice of manual or DSG ’boxes. Even the lowest-powered ones would hit 62mph in 6.1 seconds, and while it’s one of the smaller estates on this list, just ask yourself – do you really carry that much stuff? You could always leave one of the kids behind.

Subaru Legacy Touring STi

We could have gone for more widely available Impreza WRX estate here, but it’s so small that we’re not sure why Subaru bothered. Instead, we look to its larger sibling, the Legacy. Like the Stagea, it offered a sprawling and highly confusing array of performance versions, many of which shared turbocharged boxer fours with the spicy Impreza.

Our pick is the clumsily named Legacy Touring Wagon 2.0 GT Spec.B Tuned by STi, which churned out a Japanese government-approved 276bhp from its 2.0-litre turbo flat-four. It was all-wheel drive, of course, and quite rare – just 600 STi-tuned Legacys were built, and even fewer were estates. That said, we can find three for sale in the UK at the time of writing, two of which are well under our £15k budget – but they are both automatics. If you can’t find one, you’ll probably be able to track down some form of quick Legacy wagon that suits.

Vauxhall Insignia VXR Sports Tourer

You’ve probably already forgotten about the Vauxhall Insignia, and there’s an ever greater chance that the fast VXR version has slipped your mind. The VXR Sports Tourer, meanwhile, was so rare that we currently can’t find a single one for sale, but we’re reliably informed that we didn’t just hallucinate it.

A 2.8-litre twin-turbo V6 provided all four wheels with 321bhp, good for 62mph in 5.6 seconds. Later SuperSport versions would even hit an impressive 170mph. It was also a properly capacious load-lugger, although it’ll likely put some people’s level of brand snobbiness to the ultimate test – if they can even find one for sale in the first place.

Volkswagen Passat R36 Estate

Another forgotten performance estate from a mainstream manufacturer beginning with V, the Passat R36 packed in the biggest-ever version of VW’s narrow-angle VR6 motor. There was no forced induction at play here – just 3.6 snarly German litres delivering 296bhp to all four wheels.

5.8 seconds was all it took to hit 62mph, and it came from the time when VW was using actual, sensible adults to design its interiors rather than what we can only assume is a rogue AI. With a good exhaust system, these cars made properly rude noises, too. You probably don’t want to know about fuel economy, though.

Volvo V70 R (P2)

You can’t really do a list of estate cars without mentioning Volvo – although its efforts to meld its big, roomy estates with high-performance powertrains have been few and far between. The front-driven 850 R is a cult classic, but the later P2 V70 R kept its warbly five-pot spirit and perhaps more sensibly employed a four-wheel drive system to channel the 296bhp made by its 2.5-litre motor.

These are proper performance estates – basically a turbocharged five-cylinder box with an enormous 815 litres of boot space, even with the back seats in place. Most were automatics, but if you’re lucky you might find one with the strange spaceball manual.