Where are used car prices with the MK8 launch and other worldly troubles?

[Watts]

I was told that there were two good days to buy anything, yesterday as you had had the enjoyment of it for a day longer, and tomorrow as it would be cheaper/newer.

So true!

[Jim_mk7.5]

As the Scirocco was new to market at the time it was interesting and in demand, so there was no need to do me any special favours. I suspect the same will hold true with the MK8, but this is all very different now with  disrupted supply chains and dealers facing significant problems.

The OP is referring to Mk7 prices not how much you might get a Mk8 for.

[ar899]

If only they will still making Rocs...….

[SRGTD]

If only they will still making Rocs...….

They are........T-Roc’s.

[david25]

Copied from PH forums

I think getting finance will be harder than we have ever seen before.

Speaking to my account manager at Lombard he asked if I wanted a 6 month payment holiday on my 5 series as I was asking for a settlement figure. Said would it be better to keep the £10000 in the bank at the moment.
All interest frozen.

I said what about if I give you £3 or 4k and do the agreement as straight repayment over 60 months instead.
£100 a month, won't notice that and only ever owe what I can afford to pay off.


He said that currently they are not starting new agreements, rates of 3-4% apr that I have been getting will be long gone, and going forward it looks like all new agreements will be done seeing the last set of accounts and they are talking about needing confirmation from your bank that you can meet affordability.
He said they are already in talks with the credit check agencies about making it much tighter.

He said balloon payments will be much lower, deposits will need to be far higher, interest rates higher and with the price of new cars now they are expecting a big shift in the market going forward as most will not be eligible for finance or simply won't want to be paying £800 a month for a car they had been paying £400 for last time.

Now obviously, they are in the middle of all this and he said it could be panic mode at the moment, but they have been bombarded with people wanting/needing to do something currently which has shown them just how vulnerable they and the customer are.



This of course may mean we see price drops from the manufacturers as they need to shift metal.

I would if we will see smaller ranges, less discounting but more realistic retail pricing?

The current model of artificial RRP pricing with 20% discount helps no one.
It pushes many cars into the higher tax brackets, it pushes BIK tax far higher than it needs to be, and it makes the depreciation look far, far higher than it really is as it is calculated based on what the real price should be.

Who knows where we will be after this? But finance will not be as easy as it has been for many.

[Exonian]

Depends on whether people get it into their thick heads about reducing transmission of the virus (I’m especially including world leaders here who are still using it for political games) and stop travel to get the world back on an even keel sooner rather than later.

The world is on pause.
Underwriters will knee jerk to try and minimise losses.
Governments will have to beg, borrow and steal trillions of dollars in the short term never mind longer term.

That’s the here and now.

Specifically looking at car finance, if we can get back some sort of normality in the shorter term before businesses fold left, right and centre putting even more pressure on financial institutions (thus finding themselves with near worthless properties, vehicles, machinery etc to dispose of) then I can see things like VAT decreasing in the short term like after the 2008 crash to help regenerate the economy along with continuing lowish interest rates.

If the institutions end up with a load of VT’s and repossessions on their hands they’ll want as much money back on those before they start encouraging people to buy yet more new cars on the never never if they actually apply a bit of common sense (less new cars being registered means higher demand and therefore higher values for used which could save millions in losses for finance companies lumbered with VT’s and repos).


Maybe a scrappage scheme again to encourage the manufacturing, possibly favouring smaller electric vehicles and discouraging polluting SUV’s (depending on political will).

If it drags on longer then we will all have to accept a post-war style “make do” mentality anyway.
Do we really need £1500+ iPads just to sit and look at Facebook and car forums? But the economy has to recover and that means there needs to be jobs and therefore consumer demand to create even more jobs. The wealth will have to gradually recover.

It’s all happened so fast the world was caught with its trousers down so its best guess at the most.

[Jason b]

interesting content as my responsible adults 59 plate TDI is getting long it the tooth and problematic and really hoped to replace it in the very near future with a 150 bhp TSI  perhaps a R line .

plus another reason to add ,is she is using my GTI and I'm stuck in a Citroen c1 currently    im sure when business resumes they will want to encourage fence sitters like me ?

[monkeyhanger]

Car companies need to sell cars, and they will do so buy any means. If they need to offer cheap finance to do sell then they'll do it. Finance tied to car lowers the risk as long as there's a market for a nearly new, repossessed car and it is genuinely worth more than you owe at every stage of the PCP.

You can do that with requiring a 15% deposit down. Or perhaps we'll see a mentality change to that of most of Europe. They generally keep their cars longer than the UK does, and used prices don't fall off a cliff.

I do think this "bargain mentality" of jacking up the RRP of anything and then making a big discount available so you think you got a deal has to stop.

VW's price inflation for the last 2 years on the Golf has been crazy. £40k TCRs? The main cause has been attributed to an obligatory £3k exhaust upgrade that no-one would freely spec. The new price shoots up, and the GFV creeps down. Worst case scenario for VT dumped cars is that the dealerships get a little less greedy o their used car margins.

The likelihood of another Corona type outbreak in the next 20 years is extremely low. Last time we had something like this happen was the Spanish flu incident of 1917.

The only way you can make financial planning for this kind of perhaps once in a lifetime event is to make everyone compulsive savers who buy nothing on credit and have a minimum of 6 months wages in the bank so that they can sort themselves out when they miss out on pay - not going to happen. Modern economies run on credit - we've all seen how VW hate you being a cash buyer for their cars - everyone wants a cut of the interest incurred by the buyer.

No doubt about it, we'll all be facing a tax hike to pay for all of this when the spread has burnt out, but it won't be a short hard callback- we'll still need to have spare money to spend to keep the economy as a whole  going - inc the retail sector.

[My other womans a vw.]

When all this is over,the country will be in a financial mess,I think we can all see that.
If you walked into a dealership with cash,I think you could negotiate a good deal,despite them preferring you to buy on credit-I think they will be glad just to shift cars and get something back in the coffers-well,that’s the way i’m thinking.

[Guzzle]

Who knows what will happen.

As long as factories remain shut then no cars are actually being built, and as long as people are on furlough then they are also still being paid some or all of their wage.

Then there's the hundreds of billions of pounds the government printed to bail out businesses and individuals, which eventually leads to inflation.

In the credit crunch lots were out of work earning nowt, banks stopped lending and while there were some amazing deals initially they soon dried up, the government launched a scrappage scheme and prices went north again.

I don't know what's going to happen this time any more than anyone else, but I wouldn't bet my house that car prices will fall on a major scale or for a sustained period.