Still here and still looking for the perfect big estate car. We have a lump of cash in the upper teens that gives us a good choice of 1-3 year old cars, but another possibility has occurred to me.
We ideally want a car we can keep for six years, maybe longer. That makes a 2009 car less appealing, since we'd probably want a newer one in another three years. Meanwhile, there are some sweet-looking finance deals on new cars at the moment, some of them featuring a 'deposit contribution' of as much as £4,000.
Some intermediate-level man-maths tells me that our cash lump would get us most of a new car, with future income more than adequate to cover the remainder. That gives us one car that will comfortably last us the full period, and we get to choose colour and options ourselves.
The Mondeos-with-everything purists here may not like it, but my impression is that the car makers (Audi, Mercedes, Skoda that I know of, probably others I don't) are throwing money at finance deals in the hope of shifting new cars, especially big ones, and that some of these deals make the prices of two-year-old cars look a bit silly.
What I'd like to understand is what these 'deposit contributions' mean to the deal as a whole. Is this, say, Mercedes-Benz UK money that still leaves the dealer scope to discount the base price of the car? If so, these deals look sweeter still.
Experiences, advice, scepticism all welcome.
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'Deposit contribution': how sweet a deal? new
'Deposit contribution': how sweet a deal? new
