550i Touring no more

[daemon]

Fox- said:

scz4 said:

There are two F11 550i's on the AUC website, the silver one has been for sale for 8 months now and it fully loaded, just about every option ticked! It was up at early £40's now £36K.

It always amazes me why some dealers put cars up at such optimistic money. If that car was £36k 8 months ago perhaps they'd have sold it by now. I often come across nice cars at OTT money that if you ring up and bid them £5k under they'll send you away with a flea in your ear yet 4 months later it'll still be there but... £5k cheaper.

Surely as franchised main dealers nobody knows what these cars are worth better than them?

Its quite simple really. They'll have valued the car to retail it at a particular price point. They will hold at that price point for a specific timeframe at which point they will make a decision to reduce or not.

Chances are they're probably now into the realm of aiming to get their money back on it.

Clearly selling your stock at cost price is Not A Good Idea, so up until they make that decision to blow it out they'll be expecting as close to retail money as poss for it.

Hence when its just stocked the "I'll give you five grand less for it mate" line isnt going to hold much sway - they'll rather hold on for a period of time, knowing that 19 times out of 20 they wont have to drop the price significantly to sell it.

I am sure you would agree that it would make little business sense to just adopt a firesale approach to every car all the time and accept the first offer they're made on a car, just to move stock.

[Fox-]

daemon said:

I am sure you would agree that it would make little business sense to just adopt a firesale approach to every car all the time and accept the first offer they're made on a car, just to move stock.

Absolutely, and I guess there is a hint of selection bias going on in the ones I keep seeing because I'll think 'That was there ages ago' whereas the ones that do sell are never thought of again because... they've sold...

[gizlaroc]

Fox- said:

Which, F10 wise, you really, really don't see this. I thought the same, why not get a 550i? Nobody wants them, right? They are £27k+ for a 2010. The equivalent 530d is thousands and thousands cheaper.

It works for 535i v 530d, they are generally the same money. But then you realise there are 25 530d for every 1 535i which means unless you literally don't care what colour it is or what options it has, you are going to be searching for ever more for the right 535i.

So you end up with a 530d even though you've no real need for a diesel simply because when buying used, there isn't really anything else if that's the sort of car you want.

All of your points re: running costs make perfect sense but still people buy diesel not petrol so the used market just doesn't contain the choice you need to buy the right car.

Sorry you're right, I was looking at 550i's and 535d's up to 3 years old, and under 50k miles and they were the same price.
Yeah, you can get a 530d with the same spec. for less money.