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Saturday 6 January 2018

New car sales

From the BBC

UK car sales see first drop for six years
New car sales fell for the first time in six years last year, with demand for diesel cars plunging by almost a fifth.

In total, there were about 2.5 million cars registered, according to industry body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

The figure was down 5.7% from 2016, while diesel sales fell 17.1% as higher taxes and pollution fears hit demand.


We were due to test drive a new car this weekend but in the end we didn’t bother. There were a number of reasons, but the biggest was an attempt at the hard sell from a sales guy at the other end of the phone.

Yes we know our car is depreciating all the time and we know the purchase price of a new one could be lower if we take out a finance deal and we know our current car will just go to auction if we trade it in. However - we don’t need to be told these things as if we are mere supplicants asking a favour and we don’t need a breezy assumption that the deal is already done.

We could tell he was young, had been on a number of training courses, had targets to meet and so on and so on. Yet for all his smooth patter he just wasn’t very good at selling cars to people like us. He couldn't adjust the mood of a potential transaction in his favour, didn't even seem to understand that there was a mood and it wasn't working for him. He was a type we’ve come across before. 

Maybe more and more people just buy a new car off the internet - I can see why they would. So we decided not to bother. The old car is just fine for now and if new car sales are sagging that’s too bad but not particularly surprising.

9 comments:

wiggiatlarge said...

There is a stereotype car salesman, Swiss Tony is alive and well......

The Jannie said...

If the old one is doing what you need and has yet to throw a major fault, then it's saving you money. The newer your car is, the more toys and advanced technology it has and so the more can
major component failure make it a writeoff. Cars are being written off these days for want of a clutch; or, more accurately, the modern flywheel it is bolted to. Not so long ago, the flywheel was a nicely turned lump of cast iron; now, it's a finely machined collection of parts which not only turn at engine speed but move and wear against one another. It's therefore expensive to make and horribly expensive in a manufacturer's spares department box. A clutch replacement use to cost about £3-400. Now, £1500 is more like the starting price.

Woodsy42 said...

I have never bought a new car, nor intend to do so. Let someone else take the depreciation of driving it out of the showroom and find all the problems then I can buy it secondhand at half the price and get years of use from it. The other consideration is that cars get damaged by idiots on the road and in car parks, I don't worry about a second hand one.

Demetrius said...

How much mileage? What sort of mileage? Heavy use means change often, low gentler use and you could go 20 years, ensuring you save enough for the new one, if in fact you ever need it.

Andrew Zalotocky said...

Talking to you as though "the deal is already done" is a persuasion technique that the salesman would have learnt on one of his courses. The idea is to nudge you into accepting a deal by acting as if the deal has already been made and you've already moved on to discussing what additional features you might want to purchase. It sounds like you were dealing with someone who learnt sales techniques by rote without understanding that a successful salesman must vary his approach to suit each customer.

But these days every dealership will have a web site where you can view the available stock and decide which vehicles are of interest. There's no need to have any direct contact with them until you are in a position to say "I want a test drive of cars X, Y and Z and don't waste my time with anything else". With new cars - i.e. newly manufactured, not just "new" in the sense of a replacement for your existing vehicle - you can order them from the manufacturer's web site, so there's even less reason to put up with any nonsense from salesdrones.

A K Haart said...

Wiggia - yes there is a stereotype car salesman and we've encountered a few of them in recent years.

DCB - it is doing what you need so you are right - it's saving us money. Even if we get a huge bill such as your clutch example it may be worth paying up to keep the car on the road rather than buy new.

Woodsy - we used to buy used cars and may go back to that. As you say - let someone else take the depreciation.

Demetrius - about 10,000 miles per year so we could certainly run a decent car for many years and in the past we have.

Andrew - I agree, we may as well do most of it through the website, although after trawling through the prices of used cars with low mileage we may forget the idea of buying new altogether.

Tim Almond said...

"Yes we know our car is depreciating all the time"

An old car is depreciating much slower than a new one. My car is worth about £200. Maximum depreciation this year is therefore, £200. And it's been sitting at around that point for years.

As for maintenance, just think about total ownership. I spent £500 on that car this year in maintenance, which sounds crazy, but that means it's cost me a total of £500 for thousands of miles of driving. A new car might not have that maintenance cost, but it's going to cost £3000.

Yes, a new car will be more comfortable and shinier, but what else can I do with £300/month? A lot.

Scrobs. said...

A good chum of mine buys his cars on Ebay, with a top price of £1,000.

They go for a couple of years or even more, then he does the same again.

But he does live in London, so dents, dinks and break-ins are the norm!

A K Haart said...

Stigler - our car is depreciating quite slowly now, so depreciation probably wasn't the right angle for our sales guy to choose. We are not down to £300 though - not mechanically confident enough I suppose.

Scrobs - our daughter-in-law's sister bought a car off eBay which turned out to be a good buy. Only a few hundred quid too.