New car sales and the PCP finance deals that support them get all the attention, but smart folk buy nearly new, where cars still smell and feel like new but cost much less.
With showrooms now open again, we’ve found five great nearly new car deals, starting with this BMW 3 Series: a 69-reg saloon with 8000 miles and the Plus pack (heated front seats with upgraded upholstery).
It cost £34,260 new, but you could easily have negotiated £2500 off that figure, taking it down to £31,760 – or almost exactly £10,000 more than our one-year-old example.
Savings like this are why buyers can’t afford to ignore nearly new cars. Not only do they save a fortune on the list price, but also the monthly PCP payments for them are lower.
It’s not as if our example is being advertised by an independent dealer, either. Instead, it’s an approved-used BMW with all the bells and whistles that the marque’s scheme offers.
Admittedly, SE trim has since been replaced by enhanced SE Pro, which offers only an automatic gearbox. However, this just pushes the new price to £37,865 before any discounts, making our one-year-old SE manual look more tempting still.
In any case, SE trim gets you lots of great features as standard, including V-spoke alloy wheels, adaptive LED headlights, sat-nav and parking sensors front and rear. So just £21,750 for Autocar’s five-star executive class leader.
There’s much talk of diesel cars falling out of favour, but while this is definitely true of new ones, used examples still appeal to cost-conscious high-mileage drivers, thanks to their superior economy.
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Whilst it's true for many marks where a nearly new car works out much better financially ( that's how I normally buy ), there are certain deals where brand new works out cheaper.
Example, the list on say a 1.5 Sportline Karoq is currently £29670 yet you can buy the car brand new from a UK Skoda dealership for £24600 via a broker. If you're a cash buyer you can by brand new, settle the PCP finance straight away and keep the £159 for two services offer. If you continue with the PCP you'll find it's a lower rate than you obtain with a used car.
Now to the used car. How many 1.5 Sportlines with less than 10,000 miles can you see advertised for less than say £24k? I haven't seen a single one.
As ever there's no hard rule on what's cheaper nearly new or new, other than always shop around before signing on the dotted line.
You can keep the new car smell thanks. It's a chemical soup of VOCs and such like, and I'd rather not breathe that in.
The downside to nearly new is that someone else has specced it, of course. These examples look ok but look at Jaguars etc... you'll have to spend some of the saving on swapping out the black wheels.