I notice that some of the BR contributors live in other European countries. I was wondering if I could pick your brains please ?
While I believe it is fairly much accepted that there is no longer any real financial advantage in buying a new car in Europe as opposed to the UK, I wanted to ask if the same is true of the used market ?
To explain, my needs are slightly unusual for a number of reasons.
Although I live in the UK, I regularly need to travel by car in continental Europe. My most common trips are to Italy and Germany. Therefore the advantage of RHD over LHD is sort of irrelevant as I do almost as many miles "over there" as I do here.
As for depreciation. I am not too worried about that either as I tend to run my cars to very high mileages and resultantly they are never worth a lot anyway when they have completed their "tour of duty".
My preference is to buy cars which are approx three years old and with up to around 50k mls on with a good service history. I take the view that this is the point at which they represent the best deal. I then would look to get them up to 200k or more over 3-4 years by keeping them properly maintained.
So far this has worked for me and my car of preference is the Mondeo diesel estate. I know there are those who say that there are reliability issues with these but I have not had that experience and I am more than happy to buy another one. ( Maybe it's the way you drive them Chaps ?! ....he says and ducks ! ) At any rate I didn't post this to get into that old chestnut, please just bear with me and take it that for all sorts of comfort / loadspace / economy reasons that this is the car I will probably buy again.
I was browsing on the usual UK sites to see what current prices are being charged for these cars and given my reasonably open-ended brief ie. three years old-ish, 50k-ish,
mid to upper spec-ish it was throwing back suitable cars at anywhere between £6.5k and £8.5k.
So, finally, to my questions ( for those of you still awake ! ) Is there any significant price advantage in sourcing my next car in LHD local spec in a northern european country ? If I did what "hidden" costs would be incurred ( EG taxes etc ). Does anyone have any experience of the sort of %age effect on UK insurance costs for LHD ?
Thanks in advance ! - Shoespy.
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LHD Mondeo diesel estates are no cheaper in Germany than in the UK, as far as I can see. France is even more expensive.
You can browse www.mobile.de in english.
tinyurl.com/2wj2xm reveals only 12 cars under ?13k / 80k km in Germany.
In his column HJ recently recommended the Vectra estate 120 BHP bought at auction - was it approx 6K at 2 years old? - that seems incredible value.
tinyurl.com/2kcy82
If you had your heart set on LHD then a Germany - sourced car is a pretty straightforward route, you just get a set of export plates and drive it back to the UK. That´s been covered before, I think a forum search will reveal.
Obviously comeback if something goes wrong is a bit trickier unless your foreign travel regularly takes you past the seller.
You will need form V55/5 from the DVLA to register a second hand car in the UK.
As far as insurance etc is concerned, I have no idea.
Hope this helps.
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Used car prices in France are significantly higher than UK. It's a different culture - higher price, (a bit) slower depreciation.
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You can buy a used car in the UK, drive it to Poland, pay importation tax, convert it to LHD, sell it and make a profit. People make a living doing this.
If you find a car here that's as cheap as one in the UK, it will have been in a heavy smash.
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"While I believe it is fairly much accepted that there is no longer any real financial advantage in buying a new car in Europe as opposed to the UK"
This is not true. Many brands are still cheaper if purchased elsewhere in the EU - some significantly so. Honda, Subaru, Skoda etc come to mind. A lot of new Range Rovers you see are EU imports...
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Used car prices in France are significantly higher than UK. It's a different culture - higher price (a bit) slower depreciation.
It seems that the UK has very low used car pricing compared to most countries - even in the US, where new cars seem cheap, used ones look relatively expensive.
I wonder what that is - are our purchasing decisions based so much on the year suffix on the car's registration plate?
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>> It seems that the UK has very low used car pricing compared to most countries - even in the US where new cars seem cheap used ones look relatively expensive. I wonder what that is - are our purchasing decisions based so much on the year suffix on the car's registration plate?
Someone on this board suggested US used cars seem relatively expensive (which is true) because there's no MOT
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Someone on this board suggested US used cars seem relatively expensive (which is true) >> because there's no MOT
There is an emissions test (smog test?) though, isn't there - I would have thought that would catch many older cars?
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Thanks barchettaman ! Very interesting, but it looks like I should just stick to a UK sourced car doesn't it ? I suppose I was hoping that someone was going to put me in touch with " Kostenlos Mittagessen AG - Motorhandler" ! ;-)
But it seems as usual - There's no such thing !
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Second hand car prices in germany are extremely high you have to go to one of the big public sales days held in most big cities,Dresden has a massive place where people take their cars leave the keys at an office with a rough price and any history printed in the the window and you make an offer in Berlin I have seen upwards of 2 thousand cars on one day to look at everthing from six month old beemers to fifties opels..
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Dresden has a massive place where people take their cars
I remember that being tried in Liverpool in one of the multi-storey car parks many years ago, but it never caught on.
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The UK car market is a special case - UK probably has the highest concentration of company-owned and leased cars on the planet and prices are grossly distorted by the huge discounts manufacturers give to fleet buyers.
Bad news for private new car buyers.
Excellent news if you don't mind buying something two or three years old.
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What I gathered from my friends in other European countries (Norway/Sweden/Germany/Cyprus etc.) - used car are usually cheapest in UK :)
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