Been discussed before - the era of the 4x4 is definitely coming to an end, it seems.
Locally, they are cheap as chips, the insurers are upping the prices, due to so man accidents caused by inexperienced drivers, fuel (though coming down about 20% tonight! yay!) is expensive, and servicing is a nightmare.
Spoke to some blokes who are in the market for a 'working' 4x4, and they say they'll wait until after Xmas, after everyone has taken their off-roaders for their year-end holiday, as they beleive the prices will tumble even further then.
|
Been discussed before - the era of the 4x4 is definitely coming to an end it seems.
What is a 4x4? OK, a Discovery is one, a Landcruiser is another but what about the X-Trail, CRV and Freelander? Are they really 4x4s as they look no bigger, just higher, than your average family saloon. Are sales of these smaller 4x4s also suffering, is their era coming to an end?
|
|
|
|
Not expecting any sympathy but try having a forecourt load of cars ... last day of month when the new guide arrives really does make the eyes water !!.
Strange, because as I look around forecourts, the dealers haven't reduced their screen prices a penny over the last few months (reduced the p/x figure though!!)
We've got a couple of V8 Toyota Landcruisers at work...hate the things. Certainly not something I'd choose to drive.
|
Strange, because as I look around forecourts, the dealers haven't reduced their screen prices a penny over the last few months (reduced the p/x figure though!!)
My theory:
This is probably a "normal" human response. You see it when people:
1. delay moving house because they feel that their current house is being undervalued by the market,
2. delay selling their shares in a falling market because they cannot stomach a small loss even though they know that the losses will mount the longer they wait.
In times of falling sales or a stagnant market, many non-corporate businesses tend to keep their selling prices the same but try/hope to increase margins on the fewer sales by reducing their cost base [cut staff, pay less for trade-ins, etc.]. This helps to drag the business down further, their losses mount, and finally the business goes under.
You can see another aspect of this process in the credit crunch and maybe the reasons for the toxic debt in the housing market. People fall behind with payments, the banks repossess the homes, the homes are sold at a discount, prices drop, new buyers stop buying hoping for further reductions, newly repossessed homes drastically lose value, no buyers can be found, these assets become "toxic", banks stop lending, spiral of credit crunch goes out of control.
Malaise spreads to other sectors. 2nd most expensive purchase after homes is cars. The last sector to be affected should be food. Well, today's news says ".... the poorest performance for Tesco in the UK since its annual figures in 1992-1993 and are a significant slowdown .... Consumers have also been turning to discount food stores like Aldi and Lidl as they look to scale back their spending .."
So you will see motor traders going out of business rather accept that they need to cut prices and take a loss on their dead stock.
|
".... the poorest performance for Tesco in the UK since its annual figures in 1992-1993 >> and are a significant slowdown ....
Tesco is a slightly misleading example though. About 15% of their turnover comes from their non-food lines, and the company has grown aggressively in the last decade largely as a result of its expansion into electrical, clothing and homeware items. It stands to reason that, as these items suffer in recession, it will impact the wider results of the company.
It would be interesting to see if their food only figures show a similar drop off.
|
|
|
|
These Discovery's may seem to be a bargain in the present climate but in a recent "Which" reliability survey they came bottom. It is not much fun if they spend a good deal of their time back at the garage, and once out of warranty you will be picking up the tab. It is a shame because they are a capable off-roader and seem nicely put together.
|
|
Just been to Tesco this morning. I thought it was interesting that whereas they often show the Sainsburys price on the shelf edge label, today they were showing the Aldi price a lot. They are obviously aware that food sales will wane as the recession bites and shoppers will desert them for Aldi/Lidl.
|
tintin - it's new lines introduced by Tesco to directly target Aldi customers.
If you notice the brands are largely unknown but with very similar branding to the well known brands - just like Aldi have done for years.
|
|
|
|
new buyers stop buying hoping for further reductions, newly repossessed homes drastically lose value, no buyers can be found, these assets become "toxic", banks stop lending, spiral of credit crunch goes out of control.
That's called deflation - which is very bad for economy!
These Discovery's may seem to be a bargain in the present climate but in a recent "Which" reliability survey they came bottom
They are off road :o)
Edited by movilogo on 02/12/2008 at 12:25
|
If I didn't do 18-20k a year, I'd buy a V8 engined X5 tomorrow. Sounds fantastic, goes like stink, lovely to drive, and a friend has just picked up an 80,000 mile one owner minter on an 02 reg for under £8k. He has the original purchase invoice from 2002 - £56,000 which means the last owner lost £8,000 a year in depreciation.
I've been in it, and it's really rather lovely. A bit vulgar perhaps, but what a ridiculous amount of car and what a delectable 347 bhp V8 for the money.
It will even do 20 mpg if you're careful with it.
Cheers
DP
Edited by DP on 02/12/2008 at 13:00
|
DP,
At the prices/mileage you quote you would be spending less on petrol than the previous owner lost in depreciation - you can get a heck of a lot of petrol for the £8000 a year he has paid!
Go for it!! He's paid the price - you pay for the petrol!
Or how about the X5 3.0 diesel? - still goes like stink and does over 30mpg.
Phil
|
Some good points emerging here. I have long thought that depreciation was the cost many choose to ignore.
It is sort of normal to look at fuel costs, more recently VED and of course insurance groups when considering a car purchase but depending on what type of depreciation curve a particular model typically follows and indeed at what point on that graph you buy it, depreciation can be the most important cost factor of all.
Yet, strangely, it is often the least considered element.
Heavy depreciators are usually best bought at about three years old. Most of the heat has gone out of the price but the second owner is often still getting a very very good car with loads of life left in it for a fraction of its original cost.
Having said that, I'm very glad there are plenty of individuals or companies still prepared to fund those early years. I've had some cracking bargains as a result.
|
|
Bare in mind that although fuel is cheaper at the moment it will go up in real terms due to the oil price increasing at some point in the future especially as the finite oil reserves continue to be depleted.
|
|
|
Heavy depreciators are usually best bought at about three years old.
Not with mine. Bought just shy of three years old and has still halved in value in the last 12 months. Still plummeting by several hundred pound a month a year on. Good job I don't want to sell it!
Most of the heat has gone out of the price but the second owner is often still getting a very very good car with loads of life left in it for a fraction of its original cost.
That's true until something major goes wrong. New gearbox at £3k+ or a new engine at £5k+ would be a nightmare. Enough value left in the car to prevent writing it off, but not so much that it seems sensible to pay for those kind of repairs. I'm talk about cars like mine, worth around £7k at 4 years old with 40k miles on the clock.
I don't let it worry me too much, but I probably should!!!
The biggest depreciators are often the most expensive to repair too..
|
|
|
|
|
Strange, because as I look around forecourts, the dealers haven't reduced their screen prices a penny over the last few months
>>In times of falling sales or a stagnant market, many non-corporate businesses tend to keep their selling prices the same but try/hope to increase margins on the fewer sales by reducing their cost base
I can only speak for the Dealership that I run but we have always priced to the cars current market value, hence the dreaded book drop every month .... if the car drops £500 then we have to look at reducing the price by £500.
Sure we loose money on some cars .... up to £2500 on some cars during November, but if thats what the market will pay then thats what we take, the logic is that we then reinvest the capital now freed up into something else at todays buying price, do this enough times till all the old expensive stock has been cleared out and we have a forecourt full of very cheap cars all priced to sell at todays money..... painful at the time however not as painful as the garages up the road who are not doing this and are still trying to sell cars at summer time prices (before everything got turned on its head) .... they wont survive what people are saying is the most difficult time for the motor trade EVER.
2009 will see about 1000 franchised garages close according to the latest headline I've read in the trade press unfortunately I think this is about right for a long time we have had a situation of too many garages chasing too few customers... only the best will survive this coming period of change which is why I cant understand how some dealers still give very poor customer service to potential buyers and some try to charge for test drives (just some recent posts that I have read on here)
As for cutting costs this mainly falls into 1 big area of expense which is wages and salaries, we had to let 5 people go in October (we saw the writing on the wall early) multiply that by a few thousand dealers and thats a lot of people "let go".
The PX prices have dropped but only with the drop in current market value, any garage trying to sell at the summertime price level and buy at the current prices wont stay open long, customers are not stupid and the power of the internet site which is the UK's no 1 site for car advertising has a lovely search facility of "priced low to high" once you have entered your car requirments.
There is 1 massive group (who I cant name) who has seen a share price drop from about 150p to 4p within a 12 month period; this group has a few hundred sites covering all franchises, if these go pop which is a possibility then the fallout will be massive but then thats nature and only the strong survive.
|
>Niceguyeddy
Pendragon were tipped as a buy (in January 2008) by some muppet tipper who thought they were "too cheap".
I have seen share charts like its one before: the most recent being Woolworths.
Say no more.
Edited by madf on 03/12/2008 at 09:52
|
>>If I didn't do 18-20k a year, I'd buy a V8 engined X5 tomorrow. Sounds fantastic,
>goes like stink, lovely to drive, and a friend has just picked up an 80,000 mile one
>owner minter on an 02 reg for under £8k.
Ouch. That's a horrid sum to spend on a car like that. £5k? 10k? for a new gearbox? Write the car off in a second.
|
"some dealers still give very poor customer service to potential buyers"
We were actually looking a buying a Toyota a few years back, but got passed to three people within as many minutes on entering the showroom. Three times we had to explain what we were interested in. (Wife ready to walk out at that point - she hates the buying experience) A conversation then ensued along these lines.
Me " I`m looking for something without aircon" - salesman "why?" - me "Its less to go wrong" salesman (bellicose) "Toyota aircon doesn`t go wrong" ..
Me - in similar (Simulated tone - because I don`t experience anger easily) " Well - if it`s not fitted it can`t go wrong, can it". Salesman - face on - but nothing said.
My wife then walked off. All over nothing too.. what`s wrong with expressing your preferences?
We were potential cash customers too.
Anyway, Later, I called at the service desk and got discussing the technical aspects of the car (Aygo) with the service manager and he seemed knowledgeable and a nice guy to deal with.
But dealership `blackballed` by SWMBO
A few days later I walked into a Fiat dealership and bought the second Punto - cash - at broker price and with no `challenges` put between my cash and handing it over for the car.
Edited by oilrag on 03/12/2008 at 11:01
|
Oilrag .... subtle difference between qualification of a customers needs and the salesman forcing their opinion onto you.... I dont blame your wife for walking off.
Funny you should post this as last week I had to have words with one of the sales guys for doing just what the so called saleman did to you and Mrs Oilrag..... its a pet hate of mine someone telling a customer what he / she should buy instead of asking about needs etc.
Hope the Fiat worked well for you.
|
"Hope the Fiat worked well for you."
Yes it did Eddy, thanks. I think the dealership is a one off. My sister (completely unknown to me) walked into the same dealership - again a cash customer - then walked out.
But she persisted and bought a Toyota from a dealer in Barnsley who proved to be sociable in the human interaction part of the sales process and then excellent in after care.
Edited by oilrag on 03/12/2008 at 11:31
|
|
|
|
Does seem a slightly pointless 'battle' oilrag. Why judge the overall competence or 'likeability' of a dealership because a salesperson actually had an opinion?
As criteria for car choices go, not buying a Toyota because a salesperson believed in the product & didn't go all all squashy & obsequious at the earliset opportunity - then buying a make with much less perceived/real quality/reliability (the Fiat) seems rather like cutting-off-the-nose-to-spite-the-face to me.
Re the main thread topic - I predict more of the same depreciation for a year or so until inflation starts to take hold (because the govt. will be printing money & exchange rate will worsen), when prices will stabilise - maybe falls will even flatten out.
Of course, it's only a nominal gain since inflation will have eaten away the real value of the buying pound (if we don't have the euro by then!).
Edited by woodbines on 03/12/2008 at 11:42
|
I've got to be honest, if somebody's first point to me was that they insisted they didn't want aircon and made a point of it I would just assume they were a time waster looking for an argument and either get rid of them or spend a while deliberately winding them up or wasting their time for my own pleasure.
If you'd said you want a particular model then that is a little bit different.
A good salesman should also point out to a buyer that they will have a hell of a difficulty ever reselling it and that they wouldn't take it back in px plus what does it matter if it goes wrong if you don't want it?
Edited by pd on 03/12/2008 at 11:47
|
"If you'd said you want a particular model then that is a little bit different."
We said up front it was an Aygo, PD. Your argument makes a good case just to order direct from a broker via the web, to be honest. ;)
Edited by oilrag on 03/12/2008 at 13:57
|
Personally that's how I'd buy a new car.
(Incidentally by model I meant "I want an Aygo 1.9 GSXti-TD or whatever they're called).
From a professional point of view I would very strongly recommend specifying aircon if it does not add significantly to the price if you itend to sell the car again and not run it into the ground.
Most people simply will not buy a car without.
Edited by pd on 03/12/2008 at 14:11
|
But why does it matter if it goes wrong if you don't want it? At that point it's just a pretty button on the console.
|
"Why judge the overall competence or 'likeability' of a dealership because a salesperson actually had an opinion?"
Woodbines,
I did actually go back to see if the aftersales dept was better. But to be honest if someone offends your wife in a way that just doesnt happen in any other sphere of our lives.. what do you do?
I`m writing about a salesman, with a cash customer in the showroom, that in a thunder faced offensive way, tried to `put me right` on wanting a basic model without aircon.
Its surely only in the car industry that you get this problem - with letting you hand over a large pile of cash, for something they are wanting to sell.
|
"But why does it matter if it goes wrong if you don't want it?"
Its extra weight and complexity, extra pully and so on and less room to get your hands on the things under the bonnet that matter.
Stop winding me up, you lot ;)
|
Stop winding me up, you lot ;)
Or else! ["You lot" should know, from the above tale, what oilrag does when he doesn't like one person in a showroom]. He doesn't want aircon and he doesn't want anyone telling him he is/was wrong.
Edited by jbif on 03/12/2008 at 14:29
|
"He doesn't want aircon and he doesn't want anyone telling him he is/was wrong."
Exactly - its my money.
|
>It's extra weight
Hmm, doubt an extra couple of kgs will make much difference to your fuel consumption.
And whilst it's still working (it will probably outlast your ownership of the car) you can have the benefit of aircon.
>>less room to get your hands on the things under the bonnet that matter.
Eh? Do people still fettle their own motors.
|
Eh? Do people still fettle their own motors.
Fettle? Nah, oilrag does a lot more than that, have you not seen:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=69...3
[he has now banned us from seeing the photos].
Edited by jbif on 03/12/2008 at 14:40
|
|
Sorry about the photos. I thought the thread was finished with.
|
That's not fettling... that's trowelling on makeup! ;)
|
>And whilst it's still working (it will probably outlast your ownership of the car) you can have the benefit ..
So when anything stops working you just pass the parcel to someone else, or throw it away?
|
Woodbines,
I did actually go back to see if the aftersales dept was better. But to be honest if someone offends your wife in a way that just doesnt happen in any other sphere of our lives.. what do you do?
Sorry Oilrag - I hadn't realised that was the situation. The salesperson does rather sound like a bungling oaf in that case. If the salesperson had been any good (and I mean this in the nicest way) they would have focussed on your wife more - reason being that if spouse does accompany a car-buying expedition (esp. a wife) they'll usually have the 'casting' vote in these matters.
|
The jumped-up cretinous nastiness of some main dealer salesmen, noted by oilrag, is not a new phenomenon. The only new car I have ever bought was a Citroen Dyane, £710 on the road from Eurocars of Marble Arch in about 1970. When I picked it up from the Lancaster Gate showroom a twozzer in a suit gave me some gratuitous cheek about the Dyane, not that I was really listening. Why hadn't the company sussed him and shot him out into the street? Perhaps there's something wrong not with the corporate culture but that of the whole profession.
The Eurocars service workshop at Marble Arch was altogether different. The foreman was a cheerful Frenchman with a big moustache who liked all Citroens, the work was done quickly and the car always went better after it had been there.
|
|
Aircon: a must-have for everyone, most of whom will not use it most of the time for fear of consuming fuel. And how many get serviced/recharged regularly? Hence, aircon becomes a potentially expensive liability in used motors because of under-use and neglect. Good, eh?
|
|
Doesn't this thread have links to the 'credit crunch' threads? People buying cars they cannot really afford in order to keep up appearances and using false credit from apparent house values? I know people who've just paid over a grand for service and 3 tyres on their Discovery. More fool them, and all in the pursuit of a car that is used for precious little more than local runs. Quite frankly I find people's attitudes to cars astounding. I liked the thread about money spent on cars as a proportion of income. In some cases I'm sure there are people prepared to spend (when depreciation and running costs are included) amounts similar to their mortgage costs. If those same people were invited to buy a house and sell it 20 years later at 50% of purchase price they'd laugh at you, but they do pretty much the same with cars over the same period. I reckon I paid about 25% of annual take home pay for my current car, and I had it in my savings. I think that's a little old fashioned now (and no, I'm not that old!) but depreciation has little effect on me and I can simply keep the car as long as I wish. I guess many of you are the same, just airing my thoughts... Drove a new Discovery Diesel at work the other day and very nice it was too, if you like that sort of thing. I prefer slightly faster driving than a Disco allows, but I can see the appeal. Certainly wouldn't pay for a new one even if I did like it and could afford it though.
|
|
Woodster - you clearly must have given careful thought to getting the right car which would last you a long time but also have reasonable performance ('faster than a Disco'). Out of interest can I ask you what car you've got?
|
|
Golf GT TDi. Faster cross country and more nimble. Somewhat academic argument on motorways and A roads, granted. Having said that I've always defended the handling of the Range Rovers and Discoveries, having spent many hours behind the wheel of numerous models, but ultimately whilst they're pretty tidy, outright pace is limited by the scale of the car. It's also academic discussing whether I'd have one, 'coz I can't afford it!
|
I knew you were a person of great good taste! I have a Golf V TDI estate, and honestly I wouldn't have a Disco even if I could afford one, as I don't go off-road.
I think a Disco was one of the least poleasant cars I've ever driven; it was about 10 years ago and it was a turbodiesel, at least that's what its badge said it was. Incredibly sluggish (and noisy) - no perceptible sign of a turbo. Maybe with their famed quality control standards LR had forgotten to fit it.
|
|
A friend had an early V6 turbodiesel Discovery and it went well, a silent 100 no problem. But iy cooked its turbo at 8000 miles, perhaps after abuse, not sure.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
