Hi driver69
I'm only a Scummy Little Cooper S kind of a guy and not a full fat JCW owner, and I can't find the GFV figures at present.
Debt itself doesn't bother me as long as it's cheap debt. I think with the current shifts in car technology, it's a dangerous time to have paid outright for something, as things can get old very quickly. Plus I just didn't feel like having £20,000+ missing from my mortgage account where, including the tax relief I get in there, the opportunity cost was quite severe.
What I have been told by more than one dealer is that, certainly at particular points of the year, hitting ever-increasing sales targets and therefore keeping the badge on the building and being able to charge main dealer service rates is much more important than the negligible profit in a new car. I imagine that dealers probably are in more of a frame of mind to make a deal for a higher value car work as well. The more I see of these "dealer-only-fitted" exhaust things and what-have-you, the more I think these are ways for BMW to put some profit back in the hands of the dealers who they know are giving motors away and eating their margin up in an aggressive marketplace against cheaper competition.
This is my eleventh car in 22 years, and the three before my last two relatively cheap £10k-ish used Minis were 6 month old BMW AUC high spec six potters which were all cash bought and as far as I was concerned, damned expensive motors and much more than I ever intended spending on a car. I did my homework and hung about each time for one that one 2-3k below market value, kept it for a year or so and traded down at the right time, getting very nearly what I paid for it back and collecting a cheque for some money on the way down.
In retrospect, I consider myself very lucky to have got away with it, and didn't see me having another good roll of the dice in my first foray into relatively expensive motoring again for the first time in nine years. Given that, I was more than happy for someone else to take the risk.
The thing is, luckily there are more than enough people out there prepared to pay way over the odds by not getting any discount whatsoever for dealers to trade-off that profit in the favour of those of us who will hammer the price down. I was at Williams of Manchester one murky, damp, dark late Saturday afternoon in January (who incidentally got nowhere near anything like a good price) and they had an ex-demo Cooper D 5-dr up for sale for something like £14,500.
A couple in their late fifties/early sixties walked in. The exchange went like this, as verbatim as I can remember:
Gent: The blue one there. We've just seen it and we'd like it.
Dealer: Oh right. Well -
Gent: Not so fast though. How much money off can you give me?
Dealer: £100?
Gent: [Offers hand to shake] Done!
A bit later when my guy had gone off to "see his Manager" about the price, I ear-wigged more of their conversation...
Dealer: So it's just an impulse buy then is it?
Gent: Oh yes - you have to buy on the day you see it. If I came back a second time and you caught me looking at it, you'd know I wanted it and then I wouldn't be able to do a deal with you!
He got £100 off and was happy with it. And I thought, well it only takes two or three of those a month for a salesman to have a bit of room with his boss to offer a screamer of a deal to a "me"
When you're doing a trade-in, it's something of a game of smoke and mirrors, but of the many dealers I went to this time round, I was never offered more than £2,800 for my old Cooper S and that was what I was told the trade-in value was. Not only did this guy whack that up to £4,700, but his finance deal blitzed anything else. I know that at the time, with all my options (and I think they amounted to £3,000 list price), against a web-site finance quote with a deposit of £3,000, my deal worked out at a discount of 16.9%.
List price is for mugs, but there are enough of them out there. I know that at the time, I felt very much torn as I had a deal in place on a Fiesta ST-3 which was going to cost me £9,850 over the three years WITHOUT a trade-in, so to pass on for a car which is a notably better drive than the F56 I felt I was paying through the nose. However, as an entire package since it doesn't give a lot in driving dynamics away but is luxuriously appointed compared to all opposition and on 17 NRFs with VDC almost an S-Class in comfort next to an ST, I'm still reasonably happy that I paid more and you get what you pay for.
I'm in the lucky position of measuring my garage up badly, so I can only buy small cars now so it stops me being dumb and buying a 3- or 5- series or a Jag or something as I can't lock them away safely at night. Possibly the most cost effective mistake I've ever made. My only issue now is that small cars are getting wider... Hopefully by the time a Mini is too wide for me to get the door open in the garage, it will have the 7-series key fob where I can reverse it in whilst sat on the toilet.
Sorry if that's the last thing you read before eating, folks!