Thread: Time to buy a car?

Friend of mine recently got £7k off the list on a new 3 Series Coupe.

I'm just looking at my options at the moment as my lease expires early next year. The arse has completely fallen out of the second hand market. If I had bought my car or financed it I would probably be £4k more out of pocket by the time I hand it in but the lease company is the one that has to take the hit.

The dealers are struggling big time. £5k "dealer contributions" are being advertised in the papers, you can be sure to get more knocked off on the day.

Just wondering what everyone else is doing with regards to their cars, especially if they had planned to change this year or the next and how the current economy is affecting your decisions.

Personally I'm waiting for a bit longer. The top end brands are really suffering and many who would have previously refused to even give anything off the list price are now offering big sweetners. Going to see if I can buy at the bottom but hoping that's not too far away as pretty bored with the current motor now really.

Originally Posted by markcastle

Personally I'm waiting for a bit longer. The top end brands are really suffering and many who would have previously refused to even give anything off the list price are now offering big sweetners. Going to see if I can buy at the bottom but hoping that's not too far away as pretty bored with the current motor now really.

I'll be looking to replace mine around April. Like you say I think there are going to be some super deals next year which could work out well when it comes to sell in 2-3 years time.

Just this last week I've been looking at family cars -getting around 1k-2k knocked off a fully loaded spec, obviously the price of these is nothing like the sort of thing Mark will be looking at - Anyway - I'm going to wait a bit longer too, to see what happens with it.

Originally Posted by markcastle

Personally I'm waiting for a bit longer.

Exactly what im doing atm, if Dodge/ Volvo are doing buy 1 get 1 free for a car now, then it will be interesting to see what things are like when the economy properly goes to the .... next year!

Karl pointed me towards a Buy an AMv8 Vantage get a £25k Merc for free a month or so ago !!

Got a text today from a dealer, £3.5k off of any new Lotus bought before end of Dec - which is quite a lot on a small margin car (they aren't cheap to make due to the volume and handbuilt nature) and I'm sure you could a bit more as well.

I bought a 52 plate Lotus Elise last week - certainly did well on price with all the goings-on. Admitedly being second hand, probably not as well as I could've got buying new.

Very nice, got any pics? What model?

Get yourself joined up on SELOC.

I love the Lotus cars, I just don't think I could own one! But for looks ... The Exige looks stunning with that rear wing.

Dunno what I want to get. Maybe if Honda released the new S2000 I would be all over it.

Originally Posted by Karl

Very nice, got any pics? What model?

Elise S2 - pics on my Facebook profile.

There are some good deals out there at the moment.
My new car arrived a few weeks ago and even though I was tied into it with a pretty large deposit I put down 6 months ago, big savings were still made on list price which pleased me.

We're going to have to buy a new 'family' car before March next year due to a new addition to the family, so looking forward to haggling discounts then too. hehe

You enjoying her Matt?

Makes you the third person I know to have got one recently at a decent discount.

I'd personally be looking in Feb / March time.

I noticed that a few local dealerships changed their prices on Tuesday morning, putting them UP by about £500
Clever ploy that, as they can take speculative orders, reserving the cars, asking the customers to come back on Monday when the VAT goes down and make the deposit then!

As per usual, the frist two weeks of December are dire for dealerships, haggle hard