Yeah there were some fantastic bargains back late 08 early 09. VAT had just been slashed from 17.5% to 15%, the BoE were chopping at base rate on a monthly basis, banks were faced with the stark prospect of being nationalised or going broke. Lenders were scared of lending for fear they wouldn't get their money back. So if you had cash, for a very short time you were in a strong position.
January 2009 my Mk5 GT TDi was starting to show its age a bit. One evening I spotted a sudden glut of nearly new Golf's appear on the VW used site. One in particular took my fancy, it was GT Sport TDi 170 58 plate (so about 4 months old) in Blue Graphite with leather, upgraded alloys, multi-function steering wheel and climate control. It was up at £16.5k, which was about £5k below list price. To get a 4 month old car at almost 25% off list was rare back then, and it could easily still be worth 50%+ of list at 3 years old. As a cash buyer I was tempted, but my employer was threatening redundancies and I didn't want to put my head above the parapet by turning up in a new motor when my colleagues were losing their jobs. So I wavered and put it out of my mind. A few days later I had another look and it was still on the site. In a moment of impulse I rang the dealer to enquire, but it was too late it had just been sold. They had other cars, they were cheap too, but not in the 'right' spec. I'd just missed out. Scrappage came along not much after, then VAT went back up and prices kept rising from then on.
On the plus side, I soldiered on with my GT TDi for almost another 2 years, and despite its by then obvious deterioration in reliability (and a quite noticeable droning noise on the overrun in 5th gear) its value only dropped by about £1.5k over that period. I'd have got even more for it had it not been for the gearbox issue.
