I am going to be honest here. IMHO they are not that bad a buy secondhand at all. A friend of mine and his brother have respectively owned a Clio 172 and 182 respectively for 5 years. In that time the cars have seen work on them but no worse than a similar car for the age.
If it helps a 172 was not my first choice for a daily driver this time around. I had my eye on an Audi TT 225, BINI Cooper S R53 and a Volvo T5. In the end I am glad I got the Clio. It was in the best condition out of the all of the cars I saw from my range, the cheapest and probably the most fun. The 'reliable' Audi TTs all have their issues (the ones I saw certainly did) with even the Volvo T5s not being quite perfect.
Has it been trouble free? No, but no worse than any 11 year old car. In the 3 months and 3k miles I have owned it I have needed to do the following:
-The 'belts, including the dephaser pulley
-A full service which was done around 500 miles after me buying the car
-Puncture
-Brake discs and pads up front (someone did not clean the sliders out properly last time, thus badly corroding the inside of some otherwise great Brembo Max discs).
-Wiper Blades
Fingers crossed it should require much more than that but it wasn't that bad to drive and I suspect many would not have changed the belts when I did (5 years and 40k).
I would say that whilst some jobs are a specialist job (debatably the cambelt) the rest of the car is not too tricky to work on and relatively inexpensive to maintain. Out of all of the hot hatches I have owned over the years it has potentially been the best value, certainly close to the 205 GTi I owned with an Alfa 2.0 147 TS (OK, maybe a warm hatch) 306 and 106 GTI also being under that list.
However, I would say one thing. Buy the best car you can afford and IMHO don't fuss too much over the 172 and 182 thing. I am biased although mine seems to be producing as much power as a 182 from the recent RR day. However, I prefer the power delivery of a stock 172, something mine has lost with the remap if I am honest.
