I'm regularly emailed with the latest contract hire and contract purchase deals for new cars. One of today's deals is particularly good -
Audi A6 TDI S-line for an £1,842 deposit and £307 per month for the next 23 months, based on 10,000 miles per annum.
These figures include VAT, so if you can claim part/all of it back then they're even better value.
The total payments for the car are £8,903 over the two years. The Audi's list price is £32,300.
So, what are they worth when they're two years old? Well, a 14,000 mile example of the Audi is on the Autotrader website at £17,690, a drop of £14,610. The £17,690 price is to buy it from a dealer so you can bet that he paid no more than £16,000 for the car - the real drop in value is close to 50% of list - over just 2 years!
If I was in the market for a new A6 I'd be going for the finance option - saves a lot of money and you can just hand the thing back no need to listen to any insulting offers for it - that fact alone is priceless! Of course, you could argue that the even cleverer thing to do is buy the used one. My own car was bought from a BMW dealer at 2 years old and at a discount of over 40% on the cost of a new one. It had 4,500 miles on the clock!
It's not just Audi - BMW and Mercedes are at the same game. So if you're in the market for a new luxury German car at present - seriously consider financing it - you could save a fortune!
