I have narrowed down my search...

BeenThroughItAll

walwyn1978 wrote: »

Buying privately, a better car than you'll get buying from a dealership - a dealership car at £2500 will have to have some profit in for the dealership, so it's an older car/higher mileage car than you'd get for the same money privately.

To put this into context, over the weekend I was looking for a cheap runabout as I gave my Jeep to my Dad last week. Since I wanted something quite specific (manual, >2.2L E46 BMW with leather interior) there aren't many about. I visited a couple of dealers who had them advertised and enquired about taking them on trade terms (or spares/repairs so they knew I wasn't going to come back to them under CRA/SOGA). The results were:
Car 1: Retail price £2995 - price to take as-is £1500
Car 2: Retail price £2995 - price to take as-is £1900


Car 2 was much better than Car 1, hence higher price. I'd assume even at those prices, the dealer was going to make a slim margin on the cars, so that gives an idea how much he'd have paid for them.


Ended up buying a much better car privately for £2100, but the risk I'd have taken at the dealers is identical; drive away with no comeback.

zagubov

The i10 gets another vote from me. Would have seriously looked at the Skoda Citigo as well.