Don't know what to say. I've owned cars for 50 years now, but never a brand new one. You have done that, but by doing a high mileage you must have maximised the already large depreciation. If you change it for another car you will take that hit, so I would say keep it if you need a vehicle at all. Minis seem to hold value quite well, so unless you plan to sell privately and buy something older and cheaper, sit tight.

Difficult to be sure, as you need to do the sums for each option, with help from your dealer. My instinct like yours would be to hang on to the end of the 2-year contract, when the mileage won't be so far over the average and you should find (if it's a PCP as it sounds like) you have positive equity comparing market value with the balloon payment.

Minis hold their value well: SWMBO is on her fifth, and each of the first four were worth 80% of their cost after 3 years. Admittedly these were low-mileage cars, but you should still come out of it OK.

Be careful if you hand the car back that you haven't gone over the agreed mileage in the contract (again assuming it;s a PCP): if you have, better to trade it in shortly before the end of the contract.

If you're in negative equity on the finance, and half way through the payments (by value, not time - and including the deposit) you might be able to do a volutary termination. You'd need to google it for the rules.

VT does not give you any bad marks on your credit history.

Edited by Marlot on 07/01/2014 at 06:15

Thanks for your thoughts everyone.

Mileage we will now be well under the argreed limit thus the I suspect the value will be substaintially higher (originally agreed a 70K limit over 2 years. I now believe that at the end of the two years the car will have done around half that.)

Thus on that simple math the end residual value should be (roughly) doubled.

I'll take a look into Voluntary termination (hand't heard of that , thank you Marlot) and begin crunching some numbers. I still suspect it'll simply work out better to hand on to the car for a year since, Avant, you where right, it is a PCP purchase not HP.

thanks again!