My car is now 3 years old and when I bought it (Seat Altea XL 2.0tdi Stylance) the book price was about £17.5k but I paid £14900 for it (brand new).
At the time the choice was between this or a 1 year old Honda CRV diesel for the exact same money.
Just had a look at some sites and my car would probably retail for about £8500 or so now, but the CRVs from the 06 plate era, with 10k more miles than mine are retailing for about £10.5k !
So over the 3 years, mine has depreciated a minimum of £6.5k but more if you take the list price or even the trade in price I would actually get. The CRV has depreciated just over £4k.
So the moral is, even if getting a near £3k discount on list price, some new cars still plummet further in value compared to used.!! I suppose its best to buy a 1 year old car as any discounts the supplier is giving on new cars will automatically be fed down the line on the values of the 1 year old car?
I guess I always knew this, its just that when you are able to sit down 3 years down the line and compare like for like then it becomes so much more obvious!
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