Car finance/Hire purchase vs personal loan?

[skithepowder]

What are the benefits of car finance or hire purchase compared to a personal loan, particularly on a used car?

AUC hire purchase deals seem to be around 10% vs 3-4% on a personal loan. Obviously this means the dealer finance options are much more expensive so where are the benefits in dealer finance? Is it just for those who can't get a good rate on a personal loan or am I missing sown thing?

[Defcon5]

10% seems ridiculously high for APR.

Only benefit I can think of is you can voluntarily terminate the agreement halfway through the payments - useful if some kind of tax change/reliability concern (RX8 etc) sees the value of the car drop through the floor

[bogie]

just get the cheapest personal loan you can, most banks seem to be sub 5% for unsecured car loans....

[DukeDickson]

Defcon5 said:

10% seems ridiculously high for APR.

Only benefit I can think of is you can voluntarily terminate the agreement halfway through the payments - useful if some kind of tax change/reliability concern (RX8 etc) sees the value of the car drop through the floor

That seems to be about the norm for used car PCP.

The benefits are VT, as already pointed out, protection from more than expected depreciation, better deal from sales type as he's getting a bigger bonus and, if you have the cash to buy, what you can do with that money to mitigate the costs.

The right answer is probably different for many people.