Car Price Valuation - why is a Mondeo same as a fiesta?

KonkyWonky

bigjl wrote: »

My Mondeo does 50 mpg , not much less than a Fiesta, the roadtax, mine is under £90 for six months, Insurance, my wifes Clio is £325 with 7 yrs no claims, Mondeo with same drivers an NCB is £345.

Parts, well general service items are pretty much the same.

Residual value, this is where the Mondeo wins, I bought mine for well under £2500, 2 yrs ago, it has now done another 50k roughly and is worth, well about £2500 to be honest.

The great thing about buying a 3 yr old car used by fleets is that they are cheap, a Fiesta will be expensive to buy, are rarer at the auctions due to the ownership demographic being different, very few fleets buy loads of Fiestas.

If you did 50k in two years ina Fiesta it would end up worthless and you would need a physio.

Yes most of your points are accurate, but not by enough to bridge the gap in running costs that depreciation has caused.

The self fulfilling prophecy is that every body thinks they cost peanuts to run, so everybody buys one, thus pushing up residuals, and they then make them more expensive to buy, but if you put miles on a small car then it loses its "golden status" in the residual table and will lose more than a Mondeo as very few buyers of ex fleet cars expect low miles, or even consider low miles to be a benefit.

If you look at the entire equation and costs involved then a Mondeo is a much cheaper option than some may think, it just takes a bit of lateral thinking.

Apart from anything else I would never have found a 3 yr old diesel supermini for under £2500.

Also to be considered is the fact that a car that was built to have a £17k price tag is inherently better built than one that was sold new at £10k.

I would genuinely have a Prius before a supermini sized car.

My girlfriends Fiesta does 55+MPG, her roadtax is £20 for a year. Insurance wise I don't know what it is a year as we have a dual car policy and she only switched the Fiesta on midway through the policy. It only cost an extra £25 admin fee to add it and remove an 04 plate 1.6 Focus.

I agree general service parts will be the same. Once it comes to replacing exhausts, tyres, brake pads though the Mondeo will be more expensive.

How does the Mondeo win on residual value :question: :laugh: You said yourself you couldn't have bought a 3 year old diesel supermini for the money you got your Mondeo for. Surely that means the supermini holds its value better as like you say the Mondeo has a higher initial price :question:

I agree it would be a lot easier to get an ex fleet deal on a Mondeo at the auction house (again due to poor residual value). The op is looking at 2003 plates though, not many fleets run cars of that age.

As far as running costs go NOTHING is more cost effective about the Mondeo. Sure you will get a better car for the same money, but that cars value will depreciate faster than the Fiesta you could have had as well as cost you more money while you own it. It's not a toss up over which will be more cost effective as the Fiesta wins that hands down, it's down to whether you want to drive a Fiesta or a Mondeo.

pstuart

adamc260 wrote: »

Well of course it'd be the Mondeo as its a bigger, more comfortable car that has a higher retail price from new so would have a different 'feel' to it in terms of quality etc. If the baby of the range was the best at everything you'd never need to make any other cars

Thankyou for your very sharp insight.