Secondhand car price crash? (Vol. 2)

WBAC still send me emails with offers for our ID3 which went last year. Offer has barely moved.

I think they overshot a bit with the pessimism. They were offering £16/17k on virtually brand new cars that cost mid 30's.

The prices are still dropping but the price points for models are forming.

We buy a few from our leasing partners and others from auction. Our buyer never gets carried away, just buys what looks amazing value and we can put a good margin on and still be cheap in the market place. On average we are selling most EV’s within 14 days of arrival so this works well for us.

To show how volatile the market is there is a black I4 35 Sport (not the best drivetrain or spec) that’s for sale in Sussex, lovely car with loads of factory options and should retail of retailed for 40k, It was very in a Motabilty auction of all places, I asked our buyer why he stopped bidding at under £32k only to be told “ask me in a month”.

Sure enough, a couple of weeks after the sale the car is already £36,495 and no doubt will be £35k next week so the margins will be slim for the value of the car.

Aside from taking a butt raping in depreciation if you can't move them on quick enough, what borkage are you potentially on the hook for with them? Presumably you can quickly see what the battery life is in the vehicke menu so will know whether you might have to budget for replacing one of those, but what else goes wrong on them? It's not like buying a 5 year old diesel where your borkage amount could be anywhere from 0 to 5 figures depending on a lot of luck with the condition of the engine, injectors, EGR, DPF, ad-blue system, DMF, fancy autobox. EVs are - theoretically - quite simple in nature vs ICE.

Pure coincidence, I replaced by 18 plate Dacia with an EV last month. That Sandero has a place in the market. Built (and drives) like a tank and tons of space inside. Didn't go to a forecourt or trader though. Moving to an EV felt like swapping a typewriter for an iPad.

Meanwhile it is no surprise Cazoo called in administrators.

I can't bring myself to waste a small dealer's time. I feel like they can sense it.

That's not to say I've never test driven and walked away from a car at a small dealer, but I have to have the intentions of buying the car if it's right.

But main dealers I'd happily book a test drive with the intention of buying private.

Most don’t admit it until they have had a drive and let their kids jump all over the car but this is fairly rare as our salespeople are fairly good at spotting time wasters and can often filter them out. To be fair if someone says they just want to have a look we leave them to it, they just don’t get to drive it.

We'll book a 4 day demo for lease drivers using the manufacturer demo program. If we set up a salary sacrifice scheme we offer to do a 1 or 2 day event at the companies head office and have handful of cars on site for staff to drive

I don't think you are because the main dealers provide other services for the cars after you've purchased them, so if you go buy the car elsewhere you can still recall having a good experience and taking it to them for service and maintenance.

They are also paid to represent the brand and generate sales for the company overall.

A small indie who has various brands is just there to sell that particular car.

That's not what a GM will say when you're using their assets and taking time out to demo someone you'll not be able to sell to.