Holden Barina 2014 Problems

Based purely on your symptoms, a broken clutch is the most likely cause. When a clutch loses the ability to fully disengage the engine from the transmission (through either wear or damage) the gears can become very difficult to select. Sometimes they will engage with a crunch, at other times you may not be able to select them at all.

This is a different problem to a worn clutch which has lost its clamping ability and is slipping, but the ultimate fix is the same: A new clutch assembly.

There’s no hard and fast rule on this stuff, and the lifespan of a car will depend heavily on how it’s been serviced. Any car that has been ignored and abused will have a shorter run than the same make and model that has been meticulously maintained and serviced. And this difference can literally be hundreds of thousands of kilometres.

However, it’s also worth keeping in mind that this model Barina was a Daewoo by any other name (and not a particularly good one, at that) and was designed and engineered as such. Even a well maintained example is probably going to be getting pretty long in the tooth by the time 200,000km have been clocked up. Common faults include dramas with the engine and transmission and many owners simply find that the cost of repairs is more than the value of the vehicle itself. At which point they get scrapped and recycled.

That price is towards the top end of things for this particular make and model, but within reason given the low kilometres on the odometer. Make sure it has a full service record as, even though it hasn’t been used much, it will still have needed proper servicing if it’s to remain reliable.

None of the above. It's the Volkswagen Polo, which recently had a significant price cut, that gets The Tick from me.