How did you find the personal loan stacked against the PCP Michele?
Where’s Monkeyhanger?
Did someone say Beetlejuice?
I think most people on this forum are money savvy to an extent - even if they need to take out a PCP, they'll have got a deal pretty close to DTD prices and avoided the car salesperson's attempts to get you to buy lifeshine or GAP or wheel insurance. So although maybe 90% of the general public take and maintain a PCP I'd expect the number to be a lot lower here.
If you have the readies, buying cash rather than earning a pittance on your savings almost always trumps even an exceptional lease deal. Additing a few options usually adds a lot to a lease as you're usually paying 100% of the cost of those options over 2 or 3 years.
A good lease deal usually beats PCP, unless you're adding a lot of options, then the cost of those options really beefs up the lease payments.
I "pay cash*" now, it saves a lot vs PCP - where about a third of your payments are interest. The relatively high residuals of the performance VWs means that you're always paying a lot of interest because you'll always owe a lot of capital throughout the PCP term, and 6% APR or thereabouts isn't competitive for someone with a half decent credit rating.
*I say pay cash, but if there's a deposit contribution I'll do PCP and withdraw from the finance agreement within 14 days to retain that deposit contribution.
Even if you're not a cash buyer, you can use this approach and then take out a loan at 2.5 - 3% APR.
To best emulate PCP terms where you're only ever financing the depreciation + interest, you're best off taking out a 5 year loan and changing the car at 3 years, where you'll end up owing less than the GFV that the PCP would've had.
I always try to avoid options on a car that's already well equipped, it's usually dead money with the exception of metallic paint or swapping out the standard wheels if they're hideous e.g. Cadiz vs prets on the MK7 R.
That worked out very well for me with my 2015 Golf R which was standard apart from Lapiz paint and Prets. Pret equipped Rs were going g for an easy grand more than red or white lease specials with Cadiz, so I got all my money back on my Prets spend. Going crazy on the options can easily turn a £400pm car into a £600pm car.
Buying at a strong discount and selling to a performance car specialist saw me lose just £10700 over 46 months - a net £233pm in the time I had it - that's cheap motoring!
Buying cash or via personal loan does give you a lot more freedom to offload your car - plenty of places to sell your car to for significantly more than a P/X will get you (Pulmans offered me £15500 for the R, Lookers £14750, the place I sold it to gave me £17300).
Plenty of food for thought there!