Finance - best options for a 7-8 year old car?

[dickygrace]

PCP is excellent on new cars though....

I had people buying GTRs from me that were throwing down 7k and paying £400 p/m over 3 years then hand it back as they never wanted to pay the baloon....some people would say what a waste of 15k over 3 years to not own a car but think of it like this....

A new one is 70k, a 3 year old is 40k thats 30k loss!!

Sorry to be picky Dem, but £400 PCM over 36 months is £14400, plus a £7k deposit makes £21400 over 3 years. Still a saving but a lot of money to completely write-off. I've only ever had a personal loan to buy a car, and I've had a lot of cars over the years. Finance never seems to work for me when I do the maths. If those figures of £70k new, £40k at 3 years old are correct, them I'm pretty sure they'll give you £8600 off a new one or surely the finance provider would be losing out or the dealer??

 

[MAF260]

My father told me many years ago "never borrow money to buy a depreciating asset". Something I've stuck to. I pay cash, or don't buy it if I can't afford it.

 

[dickygrace]

Apparently over 90% of cars purchased in the uk are on finance. It would be lovely to have the cash to pay upfront for a car, although only a privileged few are in the situation to do so. I tend to take the approach mentioned earlier, which isn't easy but has stood my well:
Ensure that the car is depreciating slower than the money is being paid back so that when the loan's been paid back, you still have an asset. This way, your car fund builds over the years and your deposit grows at the end of each term, rather than, when financing cars, needing to find more money to get back to where you started.

 

[bigbob]

Apparently over 90% of cars purchased in the uk are on finance. It would be lovely to have the cash to pay upfront for a car, although only a privileged few are in the situation to do so. I tend to take the approach mentioned earlier, which isn't easy but has stood my well:
Ensure that the car is depreciating slower than the money is being paid back so that when the loan's been paid back, you still have an asset. This way, your car fund builds over the years and your deposit grows at the end of each term, rather than, when financing cars, needing to find more money to get back to where you started.

Which is why it is so hard to sell cars for £20k+ privately. Finance is available direct to individuals for higher value cars but dealers control the market very well. Anyway the issue I have buying privately is the when I pay relative to when I get the car.

I once sold a car privately for £25k, the guy bought it on description, paid me on the Wednesday by TT and flew up to Edinburgh Airport on the Saturday where I met him, he had a brief test drive and then dropped me back. I must sound honest on the phone! Was a nice car mind.

 

[rossyl]

That's a big issue for me. Buy from a private seller for that amount and you are purchasing an item that you have abosolutely no recourse against the seller should that item item go catastrophically wrong. Sure if there are obvious lies in the description of the item you might have a claim, but you'll more than likely have to go to court, which will cost time and money.

But, on a car being sold by a dealer for £20k a likely private sale is £2k. So it may well be worth the risk?

 

[bigbob]

It's how most people think. Personally I would be more worried about title to the vehicle and outstanding finance despite what hpi might tell you.

 

[Parisien]

BB, so title to vehicle meaning whose name is on V5......HPI only tells you what?


P

 

[bigbob]

Well the V5 tells you that the name on the V5 is not always the legal owner, it is just the registered keeper. So many nice cars are bought through companies that I would be nervous buying an expensive car privately in case I was taken to the cleaners.

 

[Parisien]

So, where does the legal owners name/title appear, or as I have just done signed a reciept for a car I sold saying I was the legal owner and it was mine to sell?


P

 

[bigbob]

I am probably splitting hairs and I am sure that this only happens very rarely but the warning on the V5 is pretty strong.

 

[rossyl]

Isn't this where the HPI check is meant to be of importance - as the HPI should tell you if there is any finance secured over the car.

Are you saying that sometimes HPI can be wrong/miss the finance?

 

[rossyl]

Are you saying that sometimes HPI can be wrong/miss the finance?

Answering my own question I found this:

Oh goodness , I feel a terrible sense of deja vu.

Virtually the exact same thing happened to my wife and I about a month ago. We subsequently discovered that all the VIN numbers on the car were false, the V5 had been forged (produced new form a stolen blank) and that we had lost all our money. The HPI check overs you for nothing over £3000 if you paid in cash and it is the identity of the car that is in question. I hope that you are not as unfortunate as we were. HPi is clear because the car that you think you are buying is kosher. In fact our Hpi also came up as having outstanding finance but that was becasue the genuine car had just gone through an auction and the finance was being sorted. However the guy that posed as the seller had no knowledge of this and appeared to have 'lied'.

Check the serial number of the V5 and see if the original number has been scraped off and a new number put on.

Proper V5s (i think I am correct in saying), up very close, appear to have the typing done on a dot matrix printer. If your V5 appears to have been done on a typewriter I suspect it may be forged but others will correct me if I am wrong.

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=66027#m769154

and this...

Having been involved with uniting hundreds of stolen vehicles with their owners or insurance comapnies I strongly suggest that if you are a private buyer spending close to 10k you get a proper HPI check done and follow their rules. Whilst it costs a little more it includes 10k worth of insurance against buying a clone or ringer (ringers don't really exist anymore).

There are thousands of stolen blank tax discs, mot's and even V5 reg documents on the black market. Visible VIN's, sticky B pillar VIN labels, stamped SIN's and all other vehicle id marks are available if you know where to go.

Vehicles from the VW group are the most desirable and ironically the easiest to clone, but all can be done with half a days work.

It goes like this, buy the stolen (from a burglary) 05 plate Golf Tdi for £300, search Autotrader for an identical vehicle for sale, obtain the details you need for the clone documents, get them made up for £250, place your add and sell the car for 10 grand cash. If the owner has done a proper HPI they will receive their money back, if not the car goes to the insurance company who paid the original loser out.

If you are spending 10k and can afford to lose 10k then don't bother with an HPI check, if you are buying from a proper garage you don't really need one, spending a few hundred quid and it's not required.

Spend 10k on a car from a private sale without a HPI report at your peril.

Autocheck is cheap for the following reason.......

'A clone or ringer is not covered by AutoCheck Report Insurance''.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=224393

 

[bigbob]

Interesting. That is why DVLA are issuing new style V5s at the moment.

 

[Paco]

if it flies f**ks or floats, rent it.... it's cheaper in the long run.

 

[Paulm]

My thought on this are, bank loan all the way. But have a look at the depreciation and the amount paid over the loan period. 3200's are better in my veiw and abit cheaper, that's if your looking for the experience.
I saved money up and bought what I could afford, call me what you like, but my old man said if it's paid for, it's yours and no-one can take it away from you. These are testing times for everyone at the moment, so I would think long and hard what to do with your cash. Must admit dirving a Maserati is............ well you can fill in what you want ! if i could afford it I'd have a Turismo sitting on drive.