Leather Interior

[monkeyhanger]

Some have suggested that it might only add £300 (more like a minimum of £500 and more if it's a newer car)

That was straight from the salesman's mouth at the supplying dealership for my car, £300 more for leather than cloth at trade-in time (I was considering it), but even £500 retained value on a £1740 option is woeful and proof that on the used market, leather isn't highly sought after on a Golf GTI/GTD or it'd add more value. I prefer the cloth, gives the car a bit more personality on the inside, which it lacks in places - VW love their black everywhere.

[Jon-SST]

Just speaking on a personal level I'm only interested in cars with leather either new or second hand so I'm sure there are lots of others like me out there. The dealer may not give you much extra in part exchange but on a private sale you will have quite a lot more interest in a car with leather. Ordered mine through drive the deal so probably paid less than £1500 for it.

What I cant understand though is why anyone would put leather and loads of options on a leased car as they make you pay the full price and give you nothing back at the end ? Surely lots of options will increase the residual value at the end of the lease and therefore should lower your payments ?

[GiT1984]

Some have suggested that it might only add £300 (more like a minimum of £500 and more if it's a newer car)

That was straight from the salesman's mouth at the supplying dealership for my car, £300 more for leather than cloth at trade-in time (I was considering it), but even £500 retained value on a £1740 option is woeful and proof that on the used market, leather isn't highly sought after on a Golf GTI/GTD or it'd add more value. I prefer the cloth, gives the car a bit more personality on the inside, which it lacks in places - VW love their black everywhere.

Fair enough - but other salesmen have said to me that it's worth way more than that .... particularly when kept in immaculate condition - so was someone trying to sell you a stock car (sans leather) at the time?  My local dealer said he would struggle to sell a car without Leather, DSG and Nav - either new or secondhand. Therefore they order all new stock cars in that spec and are very careful over 2nd hand car pricing on the base spec cars they Part Ex. 

 

[p3asa]

Just speaking on a personal level I'm only interested in cars with leather either new or second hand so I'm sure there are lots of others like me out there. The dealer may not give you much extra in part exchange but on a private sale you will have quite a lot more interest in a car with leather. Ordered mine through drive the deal so probably paid less than £1500 for it.

What I cant understand though is why anyone would put leather and loads of options on a leased car as they make you pay the full price and give you nothing back at the end ? Surely lots of options will increase the residual value at the end of the lease and therefore should lower your payments ?

Leather and possibly Sat Nav may increase the residual value but not by much at all.
When I was choosing my options, messing about with the VW configurator with differing options didn't change the GFV payment at all.

As for saying their are lots of folk like you and there will be a lot more interest in a car with leather, you could equally apply that to cloth. Personally if I had the choice of leather or fabric I'd plump for fabric every time.

That was one of the things that put me off buying the run out MK6 GTD, as it only came in leather.

But each to their own 

[Phil 117]

Just speaking on a personal level I'm only interested in cars with leather either new or second hand so I'm sure there are lots of others like me out there. The dealer may not give you much extra in part exchange but on a private sale you will have quite a lot more interest in a car with leather. Ordered mine through drive the deal so probably paid less than £1500 for it.

What I cant understand though is why anyone would put leather and loads of options on a leased car as they make you pay the full price and give you nothing back at the end ? Surely lots of options will increase the residual value at the end of the lease and therefore should lower your payments ?

My friend who works at VW said this is due to change later in the year for all the VAG brands.

It is to my understanding that Volkswagen Finance are brining out a new finance system which takes into account options. They then have an independent body, such as CAP, who look at value trends and decide if a car with a Sat Nav will have a residual for one which doesn't, which of course it does.

It won't be the case for all options, and may also be worse for some paint colour choices, but if you opt for instance leather, a nav, pan roof maybe, it will soon put the GFV's up on Volkswagen's own system.

Apparently this will be a huge change for Audi too, as any car with a "Technology Pack" is worth circa £1000 more than one without.

No idea when it's coming into place, but I've been told it's happening.

[monkeyhanger]

so was someone trying to sell you a stock car (sans leather) at the time? 

Mine was the first one ordered at my dealership, no spec constraints at all, built from scratch, to my spec a whole 20 weeks after ordering on Good Friday 2013. Maybe it's a regional thing with the leather and they way it holds value. I do think losing the cloth on a GTI/GTD takes a lot of it's interior identity away, perhaps they should do a GTI variant of the leather seats to stop them looking generic, like embossing on the seats or headrests.

VW already take options into account when you get a personalised finance quote, the one on the websites assumes none though.  Apart from PP, nothing seems to hold more than 20% of RRP on the options list (Leather, DCC and Satnav - the others not so much).

[Jon-SST]

Thats a good point. I didnt realise the GTI/D leather seats were generic. Should have looked a bit harder :-) . The audi sline embossed seats always look good in leather. You would have thought VW could do something similar for that much extra money.

When I was looking at contract hire leasing through various companies they simply spread the full cost of the extras over the term of the lease and gave you no discount from the lease rate. So the lease finance companies must love it when someone specs a car right up as they get the extras for free when they come to sell the car at the end of the lease.
To be honest I didnt look very hard at the VW finance deals , they seemed very expensive as they dont give much discount from the list price in the first place. 

[GiT1984]

so was someone trying to sell you a stock car (sans leather) at the time? 

Mine was the first one ordered at my dealership, no spec constraints at all, built from scratch, to my spec a whole 20 weeks after ordering on Good Friday 2013. Maybe it's a regional thing with the leather and they way it holds value. I do think losing the cloth on a GTI/GTD takes a lot of it's interior identity away, perhaps they should do a GTI variant of the leather seats to stop them looking generic, like embossing on the seats or headrests.

VW already take options into account when you get a personalised finance quote, the one on the websites assumes none though.  Apart from PP, nothing seems to hold more than 20% of RRP on the options list (Leather, DCC and Satnav - the others not so much).

Gotcha. Well you might have something with the regional thing - I wondered about that myself. Being only 25 miles from the centre of London distorts the price of everything from property, to cars etc ...

OK - interesting numbers!