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

[My other womans a vw.]

How realistic or unrealistic is it to expect 10-15% price drops when this is all over?
You might laugh,but that’s what i’ll be haggling towards-why not?
Obviously I won’t jump straight in,but so far i’ve got a list of 13 cars to enquire about,all same spec,similar mileage and im still looking-so if one fires me off,it’ll be on to next and so on.

[Guzzle]

In normal times that sort of discount would be totally unrealistic off a used car.

Once all this is over my guess is that it will still be unrealistic. But that is just a guess. Nobody knows for sure.

Used cars also tend to have inflated APR's when taken on finance.

If you check out the broker discounts on brand new via the likes of Drive The Deal, that will give you some idea of how desperate the industry is to strike deals.

[TippEx]

New, a 10-15% discount is fairly commonplace.  I managed around 22% off of mine through Drive the Deal when I bought it.  I'm not a trader but I would expect that you would be lucky to get this off used...  In the near term at least, especially if not taking finance.  It would also depend on if you have a PX or are making a cash purchase.  If there's a PX in the mix, you may get the discount but at the same time will be getting less for the PX so you would need to be looking at the total cost to change here rather than the price.

I would expect that there may be an adjustment period, but you may also find that there are a lot of people in financed new cars looking to reduce costs.  In 2008/2009 as an example, used car sales as a percentage of total went up as opposed to down.  There probably needs to be a trickle effect here, a dealer is unlikely to want to sell you a used car at a loss, however, if the price of stock coming into a dealer becomes cheaper then we might start to see a downward trend.  You also have to wonder if franchised dealers will be getting any kind of support from the manufacturers to get through this.  On the other hand, I may be completely wrong  .

[My other womans a vw.]

Guzzle,do you haggle?,if so what’s the best you’ve managed??
Would cash help or hinder?-it always works for Mike Brewer!

[fredgroves]

How realistic or unrealistic is it to expect 10-15% price drops when this is all over?

The Das Welt screen price has about a 35-40% markup over the tradein/purchase price.

Some of this covers the fact that they are selling out of swanky dealerships which cost a fortune to run, plus I'd imagine there is a cut for VWUK for it to be sold under Das Welt with a VW UK warranty.

I'd say you'd be lucky to see them budge 5%.

Cash won't make any difference, they don't care about cash. Finance is where they make their money.

The trick you might want to see is if VW are offering any deposit contribution on Das Welt used cars on PCP. If they are, you can get that by taking PCP and exiting the deal in the first couple of days, paying the outstanding balance off with cash - assuming you have cash - and you get to keep the PCP contribution VW made.

If you need to finance it, you are better off steering well clear of VWFS offers on Das Welt - those are eye watering interest rates. Get yourself a cheap car loan from another lender - check out Money Saving Expert for the best rates.

[My other womans a vw.]

Cheers chaps,this is all good info/opinions.
TippEx,how do you mean adjustment period?
Fred,are you talking from experience regarding mark up or do you know someone in the trade?
If those figures were correct,5% would be a derisory offer.

[fredgroves]

Fred,are you talking from experience regarding mark up or do you know someone in the trade?
If those figures were correct,5% would be a derisory offer.

I'm using reg plates from actual cars vs WBAC offers ;-)

That's not an outrageous gross margin, its fairly typical from a big main dealer because as I said there are costs - they don't get to trouser all of that plus there is VAT too!

Remember selling a new car is a nice quick financial transaction for them, a used car is a risk that they need to get a decent return on.

As such, I'd doubt you'd get them to budge more than 5%. Feel free to try though ;-)

[TippEx]

When I say adjustment period, I mean that a dealer isn't going to want to immediately sell a car that they have a lot of money in as a loss or a break even unless they really have to especially with the salesperson taking home a large percentage of their pay as commission.  If it starts to become cheaper to get stock in after a period that's when you may see a price change.

[My other womans a vw.]

Cheers again chaps,know what you mean.
Just trying to gauge what people are thinking,at the end of the day none of us know.
There will be those who’ll be prepared to haggle and walk away and they’ll be those who don’t.
What’s the worst they can say?,when it looks like we’re starting to return to normal,i’ll throw a few lines out and see what happens.

[Guzzle]

Once lockdown is resolved, and things slowly return to 'normal', you should start to see Brexit rear its head again.

The UK left the EU less than 3 months ago, but we're supposed to have negotiated a future trade deal with the EU by the end of the year. Governments around the world are a bit busy at the moment though, so you can pile on a bit more uncertainty. 

It could be a while before we know what normal looks like.