Things I've had wrong with my 1.2 3-door (2003 plate) that you can probably look out for.
1. Airbag light coming on. Check the connections under the front edge of both front seats, make sure they are well seated togeather. This gets rid of 99% of airbag light problems. Failing that if your sitting in the car and the light illuminates, bang your hand off the passenger seat base a couple of times (don't ask me why, it just works lol).
2. Rattling at the front end of the car, more often than not its the drop links. Apparently an easy DIY job, but not too expensive at a garage. or Live with it, mine rattled for about 3 years before they got to a point where they were picked up in MOT.
3. Weird electrical faults can sometimes to attributed to an old battery. Unless you know your battery has been replaced recently then thats your first port of call.
4. Timing belt. Your car is now 6 years old, have you checked the service history, do you have a bill for the belt from last year? If not, get it changed for piece of mind. Probably £200-ish repair, but thats a lot cheaper than 16 new valves, a timing belt, maybe a piston or two etc etc.
5. Aftermarket stereo? Check its been installed properly.
6. Check your exhaust, its probably getting ratty now, only about £120 for an OEM one, so something to schedule in when the exhaust does eventually fail an MOT.
7. Check your front pads, you say your car has 40k on the clock, so if its on original pads they might need replacing soon.
8. Clutch, probably not such a concern on a 40k car, I just had mine replaced because it was slipping and not engaging properly. £366 repair from a small independant garage.
9. Tracking, how do the front tyres look? Stilo lunches tyres for fun. Tracking needs to be spot on and then the tyres last pretty well. Check inside edge of both front tyres, they should not be worn any more than rest of tyre. £40 to get tracking checked.
10. RTFM! The manual is pretty good, so assuming you got one I recommend you read it cover to cover. You'll see a lot of folk on here talking about hidden features, that ain't really hidden they are just mentioned in 1 short sentence in the manual and easily missed. i.e. lock car with windows open, press lock button on key and hold it, windows will after a few seconds close themselves. Little things like that.
There you go, my top 10!
Other than that, you've made a wise decision, the 3-Door Stilo is aguably the mosty pretty of the Stilo range, its not quite as practical as the 5-door or MW, but then who cares when you've got a car thats better looking than the blobby-tastic A3, but a similar shape.
Things to know about your 3-door. 58 litre Fuel tank. When you fill the car up (brim it), then press the right column stalk button once to get to trip milage, then press again with a long press to reset trip counter. Do this every tank and you should get a fairly accurate MPG figure. Change below 3000rpm (around 2000rpm is best) for max economy. But even spanking your 1.4 everywhere you should get better MPG than say a 1.6 owner (I certainly do in my 1.2).
Boot capacity is 305litres, quite big for a 3-door.
Ironically you should find your Stilo pretty hard wearing, I've been using mine like a van recently, and after a vacuum and wash the car is like new again.
Finally.... WELCOME!
Now go wash your car, polish it into oblivion, drive somewhere nice and take some pics for us.... why you making us wait?
