I wonder why the model I'm after (exact same car) is on autotrader for months for considerably less than list price then... it won't sell. In fact, the very same 24 cars that were there in September are still live on autotrader. Might be a sought after brand, but that particular car is not that interesting to people. Drinks fuel like crazy, costs more than a similar Mercedes and is a saloon, not an SUV.

And yes, they are probably the best brand you can buy at the moment, hence I'm looking for an upgrade. Very happy with my 69 Mazda 6, it gives premium brands a run for their money!

Edited by chris87 on 28/12/2020 at 13:55

With Mazda s one of the most sought after car Chris, i believe you have chosen on of the most difficult makes to get a discount on.

Low volumes and most cars imported from Japan where the exchange rate has gone off the edge of a cliff recently all go against you. Nissan and Honda maybe but Mazda are the top marque now IMHO

I agree that with the fall in the value of the £, as well as other factors (e.g. price/availability of parts, etc), prices of imported cars (i.e. not made in the EU/UK) have been rising and thus the list price of Japanese makes like Mazda have been rising significantly and deals just haven't been there.

Despite the non-diesel Mazdas being well-regarded on the looks and handling front, they aren't selling that well in the UK, pre-pandemic times, compared to the best days of the mid 2000s.

Deals on the latest new cars at brokers tend to be about half the money off, percentage-wise as it was around 2006 when I bought my Mazda3 - 8-12% today compared to 18-25% back then. I paid just over £10k for mine in early 2006 (essentially new [10-15 miles on the clock] from a car supermarket), now you'd have to fork out around £20k for the nearest specced equivalent - after discounts.

What you may be able to find - and soon - are cars (from any make, not just Mazda) that dealers are absolutely desperate to sell to keep them afloat, bearing in mind they buy them off the manufacturers and then flog them to us lot, so that money has to come from somewhere, and the longer a car takes to sell (showroom demos etc), the more it costs the dealer, as bills, wages and loans have to be paid on an ongoing basis.

Given a LOT of people will be soon out of work, they'll be far less people in the market for buying a new car, so you may find some stonking deals - even where the dealer has to, on the surface, take a loss (they may be able to recover that through sales target bonuses, though unlikely at the present time) to at least get some of their money back that they spent buying it from the manufacturer.

I personally wouldn't just set an arbitrary deadline for buying 'a car', especially from a specific manufacturer, as it will box you in on price/cost to change - yes, second hand prices are on the rise, but they won't cover the increase in the cost of buying a new one, even with cars under 3 years old.

The end-of year (including sales by month/quarter/year) and then reg change in March will hopefully lead to lower prices of nearly new cars/ex-demos/showroom cars dealers need to shift to keep going. Some may have stood in their glass palaces for 6 months or more now, so I'd expect they want to rid themselves of them asap.

Many dealers (like high street shops) must be close to going under by now, even with government financial help, as that money WILL have to be paid back (with interest/higher taxes) in the not so distant future.

I remember in early 2017 when I was looking for a replacement car (in the end I didn't change mine), I found a VW Scirocco 2.0 TSI 180 GT with only 900 miles on the clock (an ex-demo sold on) that was 9 months old at Motorpoint for £17k. That was (then) a reduction of about £8.5k off the list price, or 33%!

I suspect they'll be an increasing number of similar cars finding their way to punters, whether via dealer sales or similar offloads to car supermarkets. I've also noticed that Motorpoint now have 7k stock compared to well under half that much six months ago.

Sites like that may well be a better source of nearly new cars (essentially as good as factory new - just check the brakes [binding], tyres [flatspotting] and battery are in good condition) compared to many brokers, assuming COVID-related production issues (staff shortages, plant downtime, etc) still need to be sorted out.

Only one Mazda3 gen-4 on Motorpoint today, but on 2.5k miles and a decent upper spec SA-X model for £18.5k - a 24% discount for essentially a new car. Last time I looked on the HJ new cars for sale page, Mazda3s only attracted an 8% discount tops.

Lots of choice of other makes as well, and more likely soon for the reasons given above.

Good luck Chris.

Edited by Engineer Andy on 28/12/2020 at 14:26

This whole discussion seems rather academic to me. If you consider the best deal you can find to be more than you are willing to pay, end of story - you don't buy the car. You may wait a while to see what changes. The 'cost price to the dealer' is just a number which won't feature very much in any sale transaction you decide to make.

The only purpose I can think of would be a surprisingly good deal which might offer bragging rights in the pub ?

I am indeed someone who knows exactly what he wants, no other car would be acceptable, I'll just keep mine. I tried the usual websites, but the offers are rubbish. I know they're bluffing because that's what they did last year... sorry sir, £24k is the best we can do. Had I believed them, I wouldn't paid £4.5k + interest + service more. They're lying as soon as they open their mouths, hence I need the actual cost price (the real one, not the fake price for customers).

As regards the MX-5 pretty much every single used car has gone up in the last 9 months and commercial vehicles are through the roof.

You're right, they won't sell unless it makes sense for them, so I'll definitely make a few phone calls over the next couple of days. The thing is, I don't have a deadline; or I do, but it doesn't mean I'll buy for more if I don't get the deal I want. I will keep my nearly brand new 6 which is more or less the same car, bar a few extras I can live without.

I did want to have a more realistic chance of getting a deal by knowing exactly what margins they're working with, rather than offering too little. I'm more interested in whether the 6, for example, has the same margin across all models. I know what margin my current car has (Sport Nav+), if the GT Sport Nav+ has the same margin, the price I'm offering is not even crazy. Last year we didn't know about covid, brexit was not around the corner, sales didn't go down by nearly 50% and people were not worried about the largest financial crisis in this country ever. If that discount is possible in good times, I expect dealers to match this year too.

If not, their problem, not mine...

Thanks all!

I want the Mazda 6 GT Sport Nav with special red paint and petrol engine. No tech pack, no white leather. I'm not willing to pay more than £24000 for it, after Mazda's £4000 deposit contribution. Basically I want it for £28000, not the list price of £32905.

UK car discount has it as £28494 and they're not a charity either, hence I'm convinced £24000 is a fair price for it, given we're headed into a major economical crisis. But if the margins are larger than that, I don't even want to pay £24k.

So Mazda is offering £4,000 deposit contribution on a £33,000 car?

So that would be a £27000 + VAT car. So even at 10% dealer margin would be 2700. But the chances are that with £4000 off, some of that is coming out of the dealer's share anyway.

I don't think trying to reverse engineer the dealer's 'profit' is going to help you any more than the various ways of shopping around, especially if you have no insight into which dealers have the allocation, are chasing their target, have the lowest overheads and therefore lowest margin requirement, have cars that are approaching 180 days old that they will have to pay for, and so on.

I wouldn't count on the struggling economy producing lots of bargains either. It might happen, but manufacturers have got much better at adjusting production volumes and pushing risk back into their supply chains, so don't expect to see airfields full of desirable cars at knock down prices. The good stuff sells, it's the less desirable stock that hangs around anyway.

Mazda's new prices in particular seem to have shot up recently, at least on MX-5's. I'm fairly sure my 3 year old one has increased in value over the last year despite the current desperate situation. An example of Mazda managing supply?

Prices will come back down if people believe they're too high (including if due to the pandemic they can't afford them). This would be less of an issue if everyone bought direct from manufacturers without seeing the car (demo) where supply could be exactly matched to demand, but cars have a significant lag, plus they also have a lot of costs that have to be borne for the most part whatever the production level.

If dealers aren't selling many cars, they'll either get rid of staff, go under or start offloading them cheaper until sales return; and if they were sensible, they wouldn't buy their showroom cars from the manufacturer at the same high prices because they would say they can't sell them at a loss and survive over the long term.

In my view, this may well mean car manufacturers will have to dial back on the plushness and gizmos of their models, perhaps making more lower spec ones that more people can afford. That will still come at a cost where they already sell mostly upmarket cars or, as Mazda have recently done, revamped their range to go upmarket.

Budget brands such as Dacia should do well because they are already cost-effective for a budget-conscious buyer. Toyota and other 'reliable but dull' oriental makes should also do well via second hand sales and may want to expand what they sell, rather than mostly cars under 3 years old, as most new car dealerships do. It may also have the added benefit of improving the skills of dealership mechanics who would have to maintain older cars for longer.

Good point RT, which suggests that reduced demand is likely to be matched by reduced production rather than large overstocks.

The manufacturers will have realised that permanently to reduce capacity exclusively needed for production of ICE-only cars is low risk, as much of it will never be needed again.

Edited by chris87 on 01/01/2021 at 21:23