We often keep our cars to the death in our family as at least we know where we stand. Seeking a used BMW 1 Series I came across a pleasantly specced car that was a gnat's whisker under 10k but SIX years old to the day. I know they have to make a profit but the trade in price of said car is arounf £5750 if you are lucky. That is a lot to lose driving home and it is not even a decent paint colour!

Is there any rule of thumb for depreciation age and buying percentage of new or is it pot luck? Writing down £10k over four years to ten years makes new cars seem bargains.

Like many things in life, the value of a used car depends how desirable, or not, it is at the point in time when it's being sold - it's price when new is related to how desirable, or not, it was at a different point in time - so the depreciation of any particular model will vary considerably compared to other models.

Traders are always seeking to buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest - if someone's prepared to pay £10,000 then that's it's value - there is no formula or calculation, one size doesn't fit all.

I am not sure which is the hardest work, looking for a good deal on a used car or going to Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsburys just to hammer down the price of cornflakes!

Perhaps I shall just have to make do with my wife's cast offs, currently a zero value owned from new Compact. I can't se her letting go of her current car (a nice spec coupe) in the near future however!

The one I was looking at is:

usedcars.bmw.co.uk/1-Series/2.0-116i-Sport/Wilmslo..._

The car in question does seem rather overpriced. But it's from a BMW dealer, and it's a part-ex that they've just had in, so they often do price them up stupidly high before chucking them into BCA after a few weeks.

It having nice low mileage, and (probably) being in fantastic condition also help. They want those sorts of cars on the front occasionally, because it says (to the gullible) that "This is what your car will still be worth in 6 years"