Drive the deal and dealer finance

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Sat 24 Jul 2010 12:01
Drive the deal and dealer finance - brightonpad

Hi,

We have pretty much made the decision to by a new S-Max as our old Galaxy has given up the ghost and although I have always been wary of financing cars, I am willing to do it for the peice of mind of a new, warrantied car.

After shopping around, it would appear that Drive the deal have the best prices on these and I have done some searching around and understand the principal of how DTD works.

My question is, if you take out finance with the dealer (which has much preferable rates at the moment), do they give the same GFV and APRs that they give if you went straight to them? I would like to think so, and I have been doing my calcs based on that but I just wanted to be sure that there werent any hidden costs or drawbacks in going down the Drive the deal route.

Many thanks in advance,
Pad

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Sat 24 Jul 2010 16:04
Drive the deal and dealer finance - Pat L

I'm not sure about the finance side of things but I bought my last car through dtd and I'll use them again. Excellent service.

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Sat 24 Jul 2010 16:19
Drive the deal and dealer finance - Armitage Shanks {p}

Might a personal loan from a High Street Bank be cheaper than a car dealer's own finance, which may well be from a bank any way, plus their margin on the deal.? Worth asking a few questions IMO

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Sat 24 Jul 2010 16:38
Drive the deal and dealer finance - brightonpad

The finance we want is PCP so bank loans cannot offer a competitive product. In addition, Ford are currently doing 4.9% APR on 24 month finance which is what we want - bank loans are way off at the moment.

Cheers,
Pad

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Sat 24 Jul 2010 20:33
Drive the deal and dealer finance - daveyjp

DTD get the lowest prices by getting a reduced price for the car and tying into manufacturer offers. Once the car is ordered you will get a call from the supplying dealer and they ask you how you are paying for the vehicle.

The only issue I can see is if the supplying dealer is some distance away you may have to use the post to send finance documents. Our supplying Toyota dealer was 200 miles from us.

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Sat 24 Jul 2010 21:29
Drive the deal and dealer finance - Avant

Reports about DTD seem positive. Sometimes you can quote their price to a local dealer who may match it. - depends on the dealer, and the make and model.

Also they don't encourage part-exchange, which is why I've never used them - but for anyone not proposing PX they should be well worth trying.

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Mon 26 Jul 2010 11:47
Drive the deal and dealer finance - Roly93
We have pretty much made the decision to by a new S-Max

Dont do it !

Whiule the S-Max is a great vehicle as are most Fords now, buying a Ford brand new is financial suicide. There are plenty of nearly new S-Maxs on the market, I would try Ford Direct through an dealer, and try to get as near as you can to the price in a Car Supermarket from them which you should be able to.

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Wed 28 Jul 2010 22:34
Drive the deal and dealer finance - brightonpad

^ too late!! :)

Financial suicide? Bit strong, I accept its more expensive to buy a new car than it is a nearly new but we can afford it and we want a new one (it has just been facelifted with some useful additional features) so quite happy to pay the premium. In any case, you just cannot get the same rates of finance on nearly new so the difference is not as great as you might think.

Anyway, back to the point. We did some shopping around and went into a Ford main dealer today and got it within £500 of the DTD price which for us was worth it as we know we can pick up from our local dealer and we dont have to get the kids looked after for a full day whilst we trapse across the country to pick up. So, some dealers are willing to play ball!!

For info, we bought aTitanium 2.0 TDCi 140 in Panther Black with space pack and keyless entry for £21500 which is £3K off list. Happy days, just need to wait for 8 weeks until it gets here...

Cheers for advice

Edited by brightonpad on 28/07/2010 at 22:37

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Wed 28 Jul 2010 23:59
Drive the deal and dealer finance - Avant

Good luck with it when it comes. In principle I agree with Roly93 about buying new cars that have heavy depreciation - but the S-Max should hold its value better than other Fords and it makes better sense to buy one of these new than, say, a Mondeo.

And of course there are other, non-financial, reasons for preferring new cars if one's lucky enough to be able to afford them. I've bought new since 1971 - yes, I've been lucky, but no regrets in principle, though I've made a few wrong choices of car.

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Fri 30 Jul 2010 17:05
Drive the deal and dealer finance - Roly93

As someone else has said, I wish you many years of troublefree motoring with the new S-Max. I buy new when there is a good reason. I bought a new Audi A4 Diesel Avant because the saving on buying nearly new was so small, ie circa £1K.

The car you have bought is obtainable with under 10K miles on it for around £17K from Ford Direct, you could probably even choose your colour and trim, that market is flooded with used nearly new Fords, I just bought one, and the dealer was keen to do a deal.

I never broached the subject of finance to be honest, maybe this is the dividing point.

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Fri 1 Oct 2010 15:05
Drive the deal and dealer finance - herrbohnen

I bought 2 mondeos earlier this year and am cosodering another one now, they were really helpfull , ive asked my local dealer to match the figure and he's 1k more expensive so quess what where im buying from ?

The market is hardly flooded with new fords if you need a specific model its a factory order with a 10 weeks waiting list , I think you'll find the market is flooded with overpriced cramped audi A 4 's

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