You need to be a good negotiator - many professionals spend years perfecting that skill so it all comes down to how good you are naturally - just remember that salesment often get trained as negotiators to keep the price up !

Sometimes buying a new car is cheaper than buying a nearly new, Quite often makers will do 0% finance (if you have a good credit record) and on top sometimes sweeten the deal with discounts from the deler on the list price.

Car costs £20K, 0% to say 3% finance on discounted price of say £17/18K works out cheaper than paying 9 or 10% on say a year old car @ £15K.

Do the homework, get the deals in writing and try and compare apples with apples.

Edited by Falkirk Bairn on 18/02/2016 at 12:44

Alternative but similar version I use as follows:

1) Find the same car on Motorpoint's (or other similar car supermarket) website.

2) Tell the dealer what the car supermarket is selling the same car for. It's likely to be about £1500 to £2000 less for a 15k car.

3) If after several cups of scorching coffee the dealer has come with a few hundred pounds, buy the car.

4) If they can't get that close, go to the car supermarket but don't expect any discount on their screen price. It's their simple no nonsense fast selling in large volumes which keeps their prices down. All nearly new cars are ex hire cars regardless of where you buy from, and very few main dealers sell used cars older than this these days.