6 years ago we purchased a 3-year-old Vauxhall Corsa 1.7 Diesel with 14.5k miles for £3,500. It has now come up for replacement with 103k miles after it failed its MOT. Looking around it appears that an equivalent replacement will now cost around £7,000, meaning that used car prices have risen by 100% over 6 years, except that this is not reflected in part exchange values, therefore the difference can only be dealer margin. How can this be justified? The question is, what to do? Do we buy a new i20, Rio or Cee’d for around £10K or are we still better off buying mainstream, low mileage second hand up to three years old?