Motoring
It ain't easy
Alan Judd
Am I wrong in believing that the dogs of my childhood and youth came free, or nearly free? Lots of people seemed to have puppies and kittens around; you heard that neighbours had a litter and they gave or swapped you little Patch, who looked so sweet and became such a horror, in return — in our case — for eggs, hay or goats' milk for the little boy with eczema.
Now, not only do puppies seem to cost what a nearly new car would've cost then, but they — to be precise, Peggy, our adorable little yellow labrador who's just done it on the new carpet — bring other costs in their wake. You expect food, vets' bills and (these days — another new one on me) insurance, but I did not expect this little bundle of fun to compel the sale of my wife's Mercedes. This was the car that was to last half a lifetime, a smart, blue, 1996 C180 with air-conditioning, manual gearbox, full history and only 11,000 recorded miles when we got it (20,000 now). Cream cloth upholstery and lack of room for a dog's bed means that we now have to have an estate or a four-wheel- `Okay, children . . . bedtime.' drive. Selling the Mercedes in today's car market will mean a significant loss, the sort of loss that, when I worked it out at cost per mile while cleaning the carpet, filled me with thoughts that would have the Ani- mal Welfare Police feeding me to the moorhens.
It's a buyers' market out there, some- thing that would normally bring on a spasm of good cheer were I not also a seller, but it's still good news overall. As we all know, we have long been overcharged for new cars in the UK (and still are — a new 2.0- litre Ford Focus costs about £5,000 less in the US than the lower specification 1.6 model here) but publicity and the increas- ing volume of cheaper personal imports is bringing prices down. Frankly, anyone now who buys a new car from a British dealer without a major discount is daft. You can get the same car with the same warranties for several thousand less by popping across to a sympathetic dealership on the Conti- nent or in Ireland (see Top Gear maga- zine's guide to how and where to do it), or, as advised in this column, by using one of the many import companies that advertise. In fact, Market Vehicles Ltd (tel: 02392 571957) will now lease you a new imported vehicle at a considerable saving over UK- supplied vehicles.
When the Competition Commission held a public hearing recently into UK car prices, the manufacturers boycotted it, hid- ing behind the rather feeble arguments of their representative Society of Motor Man- ufacturers and Traders. Generally, people who feel they have a good case are keen to make it. So buy from abroad.
The corollary of all this good news, though, is that the lowering of new car prices means a lowering of used car prices, so what you'll gain from your UK dealer- ship discount, you'll probably lose on your trade-in. And if you want to buy from abroad you're unlikely to be able to trade in your present car, so you'll have to sell privately and that, as we shall find with our Mercedes, ain't always easy. The later and more expensive your car, the harder this is likely to be, partly because people spending more than — say — £10,000 prefer to buy from a dealer, who offers warranties and has various legal obligations.
The National Lottery apart, there's prob- ably no faster way of losing money than buying expensive cars. We go on doing it for various reasons — of which the best is that you need to do 50,000 business miles a year, reliably and swiftly — but basically we're all daft. We should buy old cars, run them for a year or two, then throw them away. The deputy prime minister and chief clown, John Prescott, who on shaky envi- ronmental grounds reportedly wants to do away with all cars over ten years old (how the manufacturers must love him), would urge the opposite if he had any idea of the financial realities with which most people struggle. Most of our driving needs could be met quite adequately, comfortably and safe' ly by such cars as the ten-year-old Rover 827 that someone I know is considering. It has clean, dark-green bodywork, air-condi- tioning, leather seats, automatic gearbox, cruise control, a full service history and a mileage of 69,000. It is on a dealer's fore- court for £1,395, doubtless negotiable. If the car were to disintegrate into dust after only a year, which is very unlikely, you would still have lost less than the annual depreciation on more expensive cars.
Meanwhile, the capital saved could be spent on breeding labradors, since — to judge by their prices — puppy dealing must knock car dealing into the proverbial cocked hat, any day.
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