The market is quite flooded with nearly new (1-yr old) cars of all models!
Though it is a good thing for rest of us who don't buy new cars but I do wonder psychology drive the owners to sell new car after just one year suffering huge depreciation!
Brand new cars are unlikely to turn as lemons. Even if the owners find it is unsuitable for their lifestyle they could have waited more. But some cars are in the used market just after 3 months or less!
Selling cars after 3 years (warranty expiry) is understandable but what on earth people pay thousands of pounds to buy a new car and then wants to sell before a year??
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Have they ever been used? A lot of these will be pre-reg's by the dealer to hit targets. Also, hire companies get rid of cars fairly quickly.
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Only a small proportion will have been privately owned. Most will be ex-rental, pre-regs, and come off accident loan (e.g. from 'Drive Assist' and similar companies).
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Is it still true that hire companies can buy so cheaply in volume that they can make a profit when they re-sell after a year's rental use?
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Yes - I paid £15.5K for mine - invoice to Drive Assist was £11K + VAT = Approx £13K when new
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If I buy a 1-yr old car which has been used by a hired co., will the remaining warranty still be valid? I think most 3-yr warranty excluded commercial use!
There are some cars which are rarely used as fleet cars (some with very low mileage less than 5000 miles.) - so some private buyers are also selling quicly.
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I have hired cars in Germany twice in the last few weeks and on both occasions I noticed that there was a small sticker on the speedo saying "This car must not exceed 22,000 km" which I suppose is some effort to get them sold on before the mileage gets silly.
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Avis also do the sticker thing - it also varies from car to car and make to make. They must have worked out the optimum for each car.
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I presume you mean mass market low-end fodder? Most decent cars are either on a waiting list or the owners hang onto them until the 3 yr warranty is up.
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I presume you mean mass market low-end fodder?
Yes, ex-rental BMW 3- series and C-class from Enterprise, 1- series from Hertz and A-class from Easy..
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Sounds like mass market low end fodder to me. No doubt all with 4 cylinder diesel and small petrol engines...........
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Can't say I have noticed this myself............. are there particular brands - or do they all have 13800 miles on them - which seems to be the limit the hire company will let go ?
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The company my neighbour works for has a deal with Renault where they get new cars then have to return them with just under 10K miles - so he has a new car every few mths. Usually a Scienic or a Laguna estate - don't know what spec, but the Laguna estate he has at the moment looks very smart in metallic blue with biggish looking alloys.
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Sounds like mass market low end fodder to me. No doubt all with 4 cylinder diesel and small petrol engines...........
No mate, goes all the way up the scale. Some of the top-end stuff is pumped out to motor co. regional managers who keep it 3 months. Business is business - to you a V8 petrol £60k-listed car might be a thing of great desire, to the motor co. its just another 'unit' to shift.
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All of the manufacturers are up to tricks to improve the sales figures. There are tons of ways of doing this, as Ford and Vauxhall are the experts at 'dumping' cars on the rental companies at such favourable rates that they can get 9 months rental for little or no ownership costs of the cars themselves. In the case of BMW/Audi etc the rental companies are not so much the route to go, instead they have numerous pre-registered demo/courtesy vehicles which then go onto the approved-used forecourt as sold vehicles. If the sales figures discounted cars first owned by car dealers, the figures would look somewhat different I bet.
I think in answer to the start of the thread, the reality is that only a tiny percentage of nearly new cars were previously owned by Joe public, because most of the public are awre of what a financial disaster buying new and changing after under a year is !
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Further to my last post regarding dumping, I read some years ago in the biography of Lee Iacocca (the president of the Ford motor co in the 70's and early 80's and father of the Fiesta), that he was the one who inventyed the concept of 'market share bumping' when he was in charge of the ailing Chrysler company. This involved doing 'too good to refuse' deals with the Americal car rental companies in the late 60's early 70's, to pull Chrysler out of the **** they were in.
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Quite a few years ago, my employer had a deal with Vauxhall to keep company cars for 6 months. So sounded good. But this was in the era of the Cavalier. So just when you'd got all the faults sorted out... you got another new one - with new faults :-(
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Quite a few years ago my employer had a deal with Vauxhall to keep company cars for 6 months. So sounded good. But this was in the era of the Cavalier. So just when you'd got all the faults sorted out... you got another new one - with new faults :-(
I've never forgiven Vauxhall for letting me loose in a car whose cambelt broke in lane 3 of the M62. Took the Police ages to get to me - mercifully there was enough grass in the centre to be able to park the car on its starter, and then wait in the middle of the motorway as traffic flashed past.
That was one of 4 times that Cavalier broke down.
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I have heard (from those who work there...) that BMW themselves register upwards of 10,000 cars a year. Almost all of these will be for employee use on the various car schemes they operate. This is done to feed the market with used cars to hoover up demand from people who won't pay for a new one. Sorry, I meant to provide as a benefit to the employee;-)
These cars are changed every 6k - 9k miles. Just check on the BMW website to see how many Approved Used cars under 10k miles have Yx prefixes - registered at the import centre in Thorne. All of these cars will have the employee named as the first registered keeper though...no way of telling when you buy it, unless you check the address as well since V5s are not sent to the employee...
Peter
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no way of telling when you buy it unless you check the address as well since V5s are not sent to the employee...
That's exactly the situation in which I bought my Mercedes. Pretty high spec C Class estate sold at 5mths old and 6000 miles for over £10K less than 'list'.
In this case the car was registered to a private individual at his home address in the North West.
The giveaway was the sat-nav had the addresses of several of the North West MB dealers, plus MB HQ at Milton Keynes, stored!
To all intents and purposes the car looked brand-new. My wife reckons nobody had ever sat in the back.
Mercedes sells these cars through MB-Direct, and there's plenty of branches (7?) now to keep moving the cars.
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My 56 Plate A3 was clearly an ex demo car. It had done a little over 6k, probably had been driven quite hard, with 5-6 stonechips on bonnet but on the whole the price was a good one. Saved thousands off new. I'd rather it be 95% mint and get a bargain. Even if driven fairly hard, 6k shouldn't have hurt it at all.
Now on 10000 miles and touch wood no trouble whatsoever.
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Edited for you at no extra charge PU
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You did well Sony - when I was looking for my first A3 the only ex demo I could find was only £200 less than a new one, an ex Audi HQ car which had done 15,000 miles and was in a colour I didn't like.
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That's why I bought a brand new Audi, as the savings on nearly new or ex-demonstrators was so pitifully.
(quoted post removed -PU)
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But surely we do have an edit button....it's called 'Preview'.
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But surely we do have an edit button....it's called 'Preview'.
I'm pretty sure that's for previewing posts rather than editing them. Just a wild stab in the dark.
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I'm pretty sure that's for previewing posts rather than editing them. Just a wild stab in the dark.
Correct. However you do get another go at correcting any typos when you press the "close" button before finally pressing the "post this message" button.
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That's exactly the situation in which I bought my Mercedes. Pretty high spec C Class estate sold at 5mths old and 6000 miles for over £10K less than 'list'.
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I bought a 1 month 300 mile old E320CDI Estate for £10,000 less than list in my desired spec.
All the manufacturers are churning out too many cars, 'prestige' brands included, hence the pre-reg deals, deals to hire companies, etc. It is more efficient for them to have the factory working constantly and adjust the end price of the product to suit demand (in various subtle ways), than stop and start the factory to match demand.
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I bought a 1 month 300 mile old E320CDI Estate for £10 000 less than list in my desired spec.
That's an unusually good deal on a fairly popular model - is it *very* highly spec'd, or perhaps one of the last of the straight 6 engines?
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As others have mentioned, it isn't just low end stuff that gets washed through the rental channel.
Europcar gave me a Merc R class recently - I only paid for a VW fortunately. I've noticed quite a few R class in both the Europcar and Hertz parking lots this year. I'm sure that these will be on a forecourt soon as an 'ex management' vehicles or some such description.
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replying to an earlier post re one year olds, my Mondeo had two year warranty left, this the dealer confirmed when I bought it.
This was ex Avis at 14K but a petrol 2L estate. This appears immaculate and seem fine to me at £10K. I suppose it would be less at a supermarket, but the near main dealer is usually the easy , if more expensive, option.
These are never going to be private cars - unless rejected as dogs
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>> I bought a 1 month 300 mile old E320CDI Estate for £10 000 less than >> list in my desired spec. That's an unusually good deal on a fairly popular model - is it *very* highly spec'd or perhaps one of the last of the straight 6 engines?
Yes it was one of the last straight 6s but with a Euro 4 particulate filter (and so slightly slower). This was back in Jan 06, but was a metallic black Avantgarde with leather, Comand, parktronic, 7-seats, phone pre-wire, sports suspension and upgrade alloy wheels.
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