I've never bought a new car, it's just way too expensive in the Netherlands, especially with the added sales tax imposed on new or imported cars.
But try to read up on the model you're interested in, because maintenance will be your new greatest cost, depending on the car, brand, model, engine, fuel type. There should be enough online resources (UK specific) that summarise these for you. Unfortunately I only know Dutch resources.
Maybe I should try OpenSUSE first when I'll switch my gaming desktop back to Linux. My first Linux experience was with SuSE 6.2 and that was very positive. Good to hear people are still happy about it.