What's your car buying process? (Finance)

[giblets_]

Just wondering what the general car buying process is that people use when buying on finance (PCP/HP - not lease), especially when trying to stick to a fixed budget.

This more applies to PCP because say you have £xx budget for deposit and £xx fixed budget for monthly payments, how do you go about finding the car that fits into this? PCP is so varied that sometimes a cheaper car can cost more per month than an expensive one... And most car sites finance calculators are crap.

So, how do you go about it?

[steve-5snwi]

From the other side of the table, we would normally run the quote based on the details that you have, deposit, term and mileage and then run the figures. Let's say that works out at £300 per month, we would then ask your monthly budget if you then say £250 we would then tell you what deposit you would need or adjust number of payments etc to get to your target.

The downside of giving your budget up front is they could work your figures to match the budget.

[mcg_]

Sure you have car/s in mind. Go get quotes for all of them, and then go from there? I can't imagine you're going to be looking at more than 3-4 cars?

[seadragon]

I been looking at these too, but cant pull the trigger on anything. I read about people getting good deals, but the deposits still seem pretty steep to me. I will keep looking and see what grabs my fancy.