Any good discounts to be had on new Fords?

[Linds]

Anyone come across any really good discounts on new cars - or with production having been shut down are Ford and their dealers particularly bothered?

[Linds]

... wow!  That bad!!

[pragmatix]

2 hours ago, Linds said:

... wow!  That bad!!

What's bad?

[Stoney871]

I guess due to no replies.
Seeing as dealerships are still closed I wouldn't expect there would be.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

[Eric Bloodaxe]

I have seen a couple of articles in the financial pages (not specifically relating to Ford) suggesting that, once the dealerships reopen shortly, there may be some decent deals to be had to clear stockpiled vehicles, if you are not too fussy on spec. After that, it was suggested that prices and supply could well be tighter, due to lower rates of production in factories having to "social distance", particularly if looking for a particular spec.

I have seen the odd finance deal on Fords (0% interest, big deposit contributions, deferred payments, etc, from dealers trading online so may be worth searching a few websites/making the odd email enquiry to check what's on offer out there. 

 

[Frembrit]

On 5/22/2020 at 1:12 PM, Linds said:

Anyone come across any really good discounts on new cars - or with production having been shut down are Ford and their dealers particularly bothered?

Are you after anything specific? Current Ford promotions HERE or you can try someone like CARWOW (they do some entertaining YouTube videos)

[TomsFocus]

On 5/22/2020 at 1:12 PM, Linds said:

Anyone come across any really good discounts on new cars - or with production having been shut down are Ford and their dealers particularly bothered?

Guessing you'd be looking at John Grose based in Suffolk?  They'll be reopening showrooms on June 1st but don't seem to have any particularly good offers atm.  Just £2.5k off a white diesel Zetec if you're after another Focus...  

[The Finance Guy]

3 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

Guessing you'd be looking at John Grose based in Suffolk?  They'll be reopening showrooms on June 1st but don't seem to have any particularly good offers atm.  Just £2.5k off a white diesel Zetec if you're after another Focus...  

Yeah but it’s white, it’s a diesel, and it’s a Zetec! You’d have to pay me more than £2.5k to take that on...

[The Finance Guy]

As Stoney mentions, car dealerships are mostly closed. If it helps, the car finance market is cheap at the moment as interest rates are generally low, however underwriting has dramatically tightened up, and lenders are being very cautious as you can imagine. 
 

Also the ar** is about to fall out of car residuals, so lenders who are Highly exposed to the car market are trying to clean out their book for asset coverage and are asking for big deposits to make sure they’ve got some equity in their book. There’s an almost palpable sense of panic coming from a few of the bigger ones who have historically been ok with low deposits and big balloon payments. 

[Eric Bloodaxe]

1 hour ago, The Finance Guy said:

Also the ar** is about to fall out of car residuals, so lenders who are Highly exposed to the car market are trying to clean out their book for asset coverage and are asking for big deposits to make sure they’ve got some equity in their book. 

Yeah, it was looking as if a lot of people were going to get their fingers burned on PCP etc even before the coronavirus crisis. I guess their whole arms will be ablaze after this!😀

[The Finance Guy]

PCP is a trap, no doubt about it in my mind. 
 

Contract Hire equally so. Years before the coronavirus was a thing, a guy I knew who was high up in a big car dealer said they reckoned that Contract Hire would be the root cause of the next recession....

 

[Incontro]

No sympathy for the "look at me in my brand new Audi A3, whilst jetting off to Ibiza on an expensive package holiday" instagram crowd that financed themselves to the max 😂

[The Finance Guy]

A3 is no longer the popular choice @Incontro -it’s a toss-up between the BMW 1 series and the Merc A class now

[Frembrit]

A young chap (21 at the time?) I used to work with got himself a Merc E class coupe on PCP...he's only recently given it back and now has no car (he's moved to within walking distance to his work) so saving on that, but has spent sooo much money with nothing to show for it now. He regrets it and won't ever do that again.

PCP calculations never works out for me, mostly because I don't want a new car and then suffer the loss of depreciation and it always works out way too much. Before I bought my current car my friend suggested getting new Mondeo (MK4.5 was still current at the time) but it worked out to over £500 per month with a £10K deposit and then I was limited on mileage!

I can understand that for smaller cars it might be worth it as the payments are a lot less and more affordable in the long run, so would seem attractive to some.

JEEEESSS...just went on the BMW website and priced up a 1 series SE diesel auto and it's £29,870.00!!!  Their example PCP is a 118i Msport for £335 per month for 4 years with 40,000 miles allowance.

Edited May 29, 2020 by Frembrit

[Eric Bloodaxe]

I had a leased vehicle in my company car days, but so far have stuck with outright purchase when buying my own. I just think about any acquisition method in terms of "what will it cost me to have the use of this vehicle for 3 years" or whatever, and go from there in making comparisons.

As Gordon says, the key to most finance deals is the residual calculation. Mind you, they have got it wrong before. A few years back estimated residuals on the Golf R were wildly over-optimistic resulting in some really low PCP rates. I'm still regretting not going for that one!

[The Finance Guy]

PCP, lease and contract hire generally look very attractive on BMWs, Audi’s etc because they have historically had very good residual values. Fords on the other hand are well known to have quite poor residuals, so many who are presented with a BMW for less per month than a Focus think it a very easy choice!

Hire Purchase on the other hand is a very underrated product. Far better consumer protection, much more flexibility, and can also be done with a balloon payment (a sensible one) at the end to make the monthlies more manageable.  

[TomsFocus]

3 hours ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

 I just think about any acquisition method in terms of "what will it cost me to have the use of this vehicle for 3 years" or whatever, and go from there in making comparisons.

I think some people miss this point...  You don't end up with 'nothing' at the end of a 3 year deal, you end up having had 3 years use of a car with the latest tech in safety & security, modern infotainment & connectivity, comfort, refinement & reliability, along with lower equivalent running costs and of course manufacturer warranty as well.

Obviously what that's 'worth' to each person will be different, but it just can't be compared to spending £2k on a 10 year old car.  It can only be compared to buying a brand new car, then selling it 3 years later.

Cars aren't like property.  They just get worse and worse as they age, less reliable, more frequent repair bills, lacking tech & spec that can't be added, looking worse and worse as the years pass and constantly losing value until the maintenance & repair costs outweigh the sales potential and they get scrapped.  I don't understand why anyone would want to own a 'standard' daily car tbh…  The only exception is a 'special' car that'll continue to be an appreciating asset as with property.  

[The Finance Guy]

25 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

I think some people miss this point...  You don't end up with 'nothing' at the end of a 3 year deal, you end up having had 3 years use of a car with the latest tech in safety & security, modern infotainment & connectivity, comfort, refinement & reliability, along with lower equivalent running costs and of course manufacturer warranty as well.

Obviously what that's 'worth' to each person will be different, but it just can't be compared to spending £2k on a 10 year old car.  It can only be compared to buying a brand new car, then selling it 3 years later.

Cars aren't like property.  They just get worse and worse as they age, less reliable, more frequent repair bills, lacking tech & spec that can't be added, looking worse and worse as the years pass and constantly losing value until the maintenance & repair costs outweigh the sales potential and they get scrapped.  I don't understand why anyone would want to own a 'standard' daily car tbh…  The only exception is a 'special' car that'll continue to be an appreciating asset as with property.  

Spot on Tom. There’s a phrase I’ve heard banded about in the past which is “buy assets, rent liabilities”, so there is logic in car leasing. 
 

I would do leasing more often, but I change cars way too often and there’s not much flexibility in lease contracts so HP suits me better. I just structure the deals myself to get all the good features of a lease, with none of the downsides. 

[Guy Heaton]

4 hours ago, Incontro said:

No sympathy for the "look at me in my brand new Audi A3, whilst jetting off to Ibiza on an expensive package holiday" instagram crowd that financed themselves to the max 😂

I'm 50.  My wife is 46.  We are not exactly the instagram generation and we are not hung up on getting the latest reg on the 1st of march.  Both our PCP deals were cheaper because we didn't do this, we took stock or factory order midway between plate change dates.

At this stage in life we have a decent income but we are time poor and need reliable cars.  I would love to be able to run that classic straight-six X300 Jaguar but I don't have the time to have it off the road for days being fixed.  I've been stung trying to do this in the past.

We do get Ford privilege discount which helps but it's still a simple calculation.  We pay a fixed amount every month and for that we know we wont have any unexpected bills.  We get warranty, breakdown, courtesy car etc.  We change every 18 months to 2 years, and the change costs what the service would cost so it makes sense to us.  We can continue to roll over this way until we retire. 

I have learnt some things too about PCP.  Adding options is a mistake, it bumps up the monthly, and it can be best to get the next spec up.  Auto increases the monthlies a lot too.

To me, the car is increasingly becoming a commodity, a white good like the fridge or the washing machine.  If I can't have the Jag I want my car to be reliable, comfortable, well-equipped.  There really are very few interesting cars anymore that I'd bother spending a lot on.  Honestly, the last car I really loved and had an emotional attachment to was my MG ZS180.  V6 engine, handled great. Chocolate clutch but hey.  I know the modern 3 and 4 pot highly-turboed engines are more efficient etc., but they are just meh no matter how boomy an exhaust or how much fake engine noise they pipe in.

That said if I end up WFHing more and doing less miles I might want a Fiesta ST for a last hot hatch fix but it would still be PCP.

[Incontro]

Ford priviledge must help a lot (20-33% discount?), but I can't help but think that a 5-8 year old used car (e.g. Focus) would be just as reliable, whilst spending far far less on ownership. And you would get to call it your own, mod it, etc. Different people prefer different things - newer cars, the dealership experience vs the indy mechanic experience, fixed costs/predictibility rather than even taking low calculated risks, etc. Not everything in life is only ever about cost, otherwise it makes for a very boring life. Each to their own.

One thing is for certain though - if there weren't any people buying new cars, then there wouldn't be any cheap used cars for other folk like me to buy hah

[Guy Heaton]

Oh aye.  I do miss the emotional attachment to a car.

[TomsFocus]

6 minutes ago, Incontro said:

... but I can't help but think that a 5-8 year old used car (e.g. Focus) would be just as reliable...

Cheaper yes...just as reliable?  I really hope the brand new Focus' aren't as bad as the Mk3s!   I've now owned 5x 6 year old cars, as the newest things I could afford at the time, 3 Focus', a Vectra and a Golf...all ruined by previous owners by that age, Focus's had done less than 50k each, other 2 nearly 100k.  Still depreciating heavily, breaking literally from the day I bought them home and needing constant repairs afterwards (with the exception of the Golf so far) so not allowing any trust in them at all...  Without having the modern tech I wanted either, and the bodywork being pretty scruffy on all of them, stone chips etc.  And then had months and months of hassle trying to sell each one at the end and realising they were worth even less than I'd anticipated...

I'd much rather have financed something newer if that had been an option, the payments wouldn't have been much different overall but I'd have had a better 'experience' from it.  As you know, I'm now in a position to buy another car, but due to inflation and new cars generally getting more expensive I still can't afford anything new enough to suit my needs, or anything interesting enough to suit my wants...so I'm looking at making exactly the same mistake again, buying an already well used car at around 6 years old that's a compromise that doesn't meet either my needs or wants...so it now seems like an exercise in futility!   

 

[Matthew McGuinness]

 

1 hour ago, TomsFocus said:

I think some people miss this point...  You don't end up with 'nothing' at the end of a 3 year deal, you end up having had 3 years use of a car with the latest tech in safety & security, modern infotainment & connectivity, comfort, refinement & reliability, along with lower equivalent running costs and of course manufacturer warranty as well.

I completely agree. This is one of the reasons I have my fiesta on PCP. Another unexpected reason for me was that my insurance went down by £800, which being 20 i am grateful for.

But that being said i think my next car will be around d a 2 year old fiesta St either by hire purchase or a car loan.

[Matthew McGuinness]

6 minutes ago, Matthew McGuinness said:

 

I completely agree. This is one of the reasons I have my fiesta on PCP. Another unexpected reason for me was that my insurance went down by £800, which being 20 i am grateful for.

But that being said i think my next car will be around d a 2 year old fiesta St either by hire purchase or a car loan.

Just to add, i bought mine in the end of September and both Evans halshaw and bristol street motors were doing some crazy deal. I also used carwow and played dealers against each other to get the best price i could.

[Guy Heaton]

It's not so much the newness that's the thing for me, it's the unconditional warranty.  If I could get that level of cover on a 10 year old 540 touring I'd be just as happy.