to the main topic, the volume of car sales was unsustainable. People were buying new cars based on finance 'bribes' of low PCP deals. It had to come to an end sooner or later.
That's exactly right. Moving into PCP means borrowing about 50% of the price of a car permanently. It's a one off boost to car sales and once everybody who is going to do it (over 80% of new car buyers, apparently) has done it, they are stuck on the 3/4 year cycle. Sagging used values will only make it harder to change early by reducing equity.
They have in effect been bribed with their own money via a loan, which they have to pay interest on.
Sounds like a Ponzi scheme or market bubble to me...I'm gonna stick with cash (well, bankers' draft/building society cheque) for the moment. It'll be interesting to see the level of discounting around the reg change time at the start of March though - back in 2016 I noticed many blindly good deals, but very few/nowhere near as good in 2017, except for some VAG unsold new/pre-reg diesel powered cars that presumably couldn't be shifted due to the 'Dieselgate' scandal. Very quiet on good deals in my neck of the woods since, not even in December/early Jan.
Maybe sanity is returning to the market after years of too larger discounts in one year and higher prices in another, though as many have said, the effects of the Brexit vote (and/or perhaps other factors) leading to the Pound depreciating quite a bit against the Dollar, Yen and Euro taking longer to feed through the supply chain than many people thought.
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