"Alan" wrote in message
...

To help narrow it down a bit, my car is a small one. a peugeot 206 sw /
estate.

That's your first mistake. Get a full-sized pickup. :-)

Oh How i wish... trouble is we have to pay way way way too much for our
fuel over here.

Any advice?

Gigantic bugcatchers or screwdrivers with gigantic
top hats are the best.


I guessed they might be but does anybody use a smaller antenna as a
compromise?


A center-loaded antenna will usually do best.
If you don't use a screwdriver or bug catcher, try a Hustler with the big
coil.
For lower bands the feed point impedance at resonance will be quite a bit
less than 50 ohms, so some impedance-matching scheme is in order.
The worst thing you can do is a whip and a tuner.
Cheers
H.
NQ5H