I always have this story ready to go when somebody calls prestige brands depreciation beaters. Decided to buy a Mercedes SLK as a fun car for my 50th last November. Dealer had a Feb 2015 model demo with 4.5 k on the clock. £37,000, new he took 10 Grand off it and with four years interest free credit and service plan I thought it was a bargain. February last year ran into a hailstorm with the result a category B write off ! All insurance offered was £21.5 K with the GAP insurance people didn't challenge😳. All I can say is thank god I had the GAP insurance 🙄
Will be interested to see your Mustang video. Before I got my Golf R I looked at the mustang as it's a car I like the look of, but when I spoke to a couple of my mates about it they said the running costs were really high. I should of looked into this further but I didn't as I test drove the R and fell in love with it.
yeah i saw VW lowered the prices by over £3k not sure how they did that considering the GBP lost 20% against the Euro thanks to brexit! Congrats on the purchase mate, fucking great fun to drive
I have had bought and owned around 25 cars in 22 years and only bought 1 from a dealer 18 years ago. I prefer to buy private as you do your own research plus you get to meet the person and that can tell a lot of how the car has been kept, also a lot can be said about where they live. As I would never buy a car with loads of owners and from a rough or weird area. Price is a big difference too. But my max budget has always been £15k but if spending £25k plus would be tempted to go to a dealer. Your R would be worth a hell of a lot more than £22k. That's a insulting offer to you and the car.
Totally agree with you mate. As for the 22k value it is an insult but nothing personal, id do the same if i were buying, try and get as much car for as little as possible lol. I wouldnt talk prices down though which a few people seem to be doing (they coud be used car dealers thinking about it!)
Jay Kay I have also found that you can get a low mileage Audi S3 for a lot less than the Golf R. Also found the Audi S3 is a favourite car to steal and best for get away drivers from the law
yes i know mate, like i said in the video this was last march when the car was RRP 35600. I have seen how VW lowered the price by over 3k. So obviously had i of waited a year id have got one brand new for 24500 . I dont get it because the GBP dropped 20% against the euro, so prices should have gone up in reality
Jay Kay you'll never get a new one GR7 for £24500, the base price is around £28k for a manual poverty spec. I got a lapiz DSG with pan roof, tech pack, rear tints & 5 years warranty for £30600 in Nov & I squeezed every penny out of the dealer
There's a GR7 at VW Inchcape Oldham slightly better spec than your Jay, same year & colour, slightly more miles for £26.999. It's the 66 Reg ones that are just over £30k
Straight away i just saw a 16 plate with my spec only in white for £30k. Prices are all over, infact as per my latest video i dont take autotrader seriously. Cars might be listed for a certain price but what is their actual value, and what do they sell for? Noone can say to me that a 66plate is worth 4k more just because of the reg and the fact it has nav pro. That was only a few hundred quid more of an option! Nah thats mickey mouse
Current Ford Mustang has an ncap rating of 2....saw a crash test of one, jeeeeezzzzzz!!!! BMW it is then lol. Although Ford have said the new Mustang should be better.
Use websites like Carwow, broadspeed and drivethedeal to get some better discounts. I remember back in Oct/Nov last year they were giving 20% discount or around £7k off. Even the facelift Golf R has gotten £3k discounts. Idk why but the used S3 prices have risen since your last video. Now there's a 63 plate S3 with 19k miles on sale for £26k. That's crazy to me, I can get a 16 plate Golf R for under £25k with under 10k miles.
really?? That is strange. Have you only seen one S3 go up or all of them? I was wondering when VW cut the price. How have they done it when the GBP fell 20% against the euro after brexit i dont know, i priced in price increases for all German cars! Oh well you cant win them all lol
I've been noticing it since around Oct/Nov time. In the summer you could find 63/14 plate S3s with under 30k miles for around £20k, similar to the Golf R. So in 6 months those cars are selling for £5k more and the only reason I can see is these garages that are flipping them for profit. That exact same 63 plate S3 was on sale last week on Autotrader by Evans Halshaw for £22k, it got bought within 2 days by a garage and now they put it on sale for £26k. The annoying thing is I was interested in the car at £22k but no way I'm paying £26k for it. I've been seeing it for a while now, they're flipping private cars and garages and somehow people are buying them. Not seeing it with the Golfs though. VW discounted the pre-facelift GTIs and Rs massively to get rid of stock before the facelift comes in. Looks like not many people are interested in the facelift R so they are already giving discounts of £3k. The RRP for the facelift Golf R DSG is £33,935 now, so with your extras it comes out to £35,555 so pretty much the same. Audi did the big discounts for the pre-facelift S3 just before the S3 facelift came out too. I have a feeling you were comparing the Golf R price to the facelift S3 rather than the pre-facelift, Audi didn't give discounts when the facelift was released. The reason I'm saying that is because the RRP for a facelift S3 S-tronic is £34,920, so £1k more then the Golf R.
used car dealers pushing prices up. I see. I spoke to two in the last two weeks, both selling an M3 and both in nottinghamshire (13 miles apart from eachother). I went to see the first one two saturdays ago and then went to see the second one last saturday about doing youtube vids, and he said to me "you spoke to our friend last week didnt you!" So that says to me used car dealerships are working together... I could be wrong and maybe that was some weird coincidence but it seems fishy to me that rivals are sharing information with eachother. As for the price of the S3 being forced upto 26k the only way that will sell is to someone with bad credit and that dealer is able to sell them the finance... its a piss take really as it makes private selling a joke where private sellers sell their cars a lot cheaper to get them shifted but used car dealers can use finance. It was the same with my landcruiser, most of the sellers on auto trader were dealers so were asking nearly 12k for it. I managed to find a private seller in Brum and get the car for 7k with less mileage than those on autotrader! The thing is, they as silly prices but never seem to sell their stock from what i see. I'm seeing it with BMW m2 as well, 90% of them for sale on trader are dealers, and they ahve been for sale for ages! The S3 i saw for sale which i mention was private sale. Most adverts on autotrader these days are trade. And even some "private seller" ads are dealers too. It needs government regulation IMO as they are manipulating prices like you just highighted
It does seem like there is some kind of collusion going on raising the prices. With the Golf R's there is a bigger market for them and it looks like they sell fast. On Autotrader there's only 87 5 Door S3's from 2013 onwards but 338 5 door golf R's. So maybe that's stopping them, they know if they raise the price, the customer will just choose from the other 5 that are similar. I actually started seeing a couple private sellers on Autotrader writing 'Not selling to any agencies', so looks like they're actively searching for this. I've seen that too. There was a 14 plate S3 with 57k miles selling privately for £19.5k, some dealer bought it and put it up the next week for £23k and it stayed there for 4 months. I have a feeling its still not sold but he just gave up listing it on Autotrader.
I'll do a video on this I think as it will be interesting to get more opinion on this. It's quite serious imo because I quite enjoy buying from private sellers. You pay proper market price and don't get the usual dealer bs. Just looking on trader now for the m3 and one 'private seller' is offering life time warranty and zero % finance!! How is a private seller going to compete with that?? Their warranty won't be worth a light either... if I was going to buy used and pay dealer prices I'd rather buy approved used and get proper warranty from someone like sytner. But I wonder what sytner used car warranty is like on old cars like the e90. I doubt it would cover gear box failure or if cylinder issues develope such as warping and cracking
hopefully this sunday im taking the M2 out mate. Saturday im going to head over to Sytners and try and test drive the M240i. Have you seen it? Its over 12k cheaper than the m2, has only 35bhp less and there are loads for sale so you can get a great deal!
Jay Kay it's one of my favourite cars believe it or not the M140i/240i mate, and the dealers are knocking 15-18% off them if you get on a finance deal (I know you pay cash), they're great value for money you can get a M140i for 26 grand ish, with the deals, and apparently according to Joe Achilles, they feel as quick as the M2, and they're subtle which you like, I think an M240i would be a great car, please try and record the test drive etc, it would be great to see
definately mate i will do. Hopefully the M2 video will happen too but id have though the 240i test drive would be easy because as you say there are some cracking deals on that car!
stealers wont knock anything off used for some reason. Try and find one private if you can mate. What sort of prices are stealerships asking for the cars youre looking at?
Jay Kay For one around 18k miles, with limited optional extras. £21k 14/15 plate. I was trying to find one with leather seats. I've spotted one at £20500 at the stealers, but it's down south and it's tornado red which I quite like .. for me I've never spent more than 10k, so to give someone 20k plus on private sale is quite worrying, and I'm finding private they ain't much cheaper .. 🙁
Jay Kay it was far too tatty that one I just looked at for the money.. he even admitted they need to drop it at least 1k lol.. he reckons best waiting till mid march, new model coming or facelift, better prices on used ones
Hi mate because I'm not really fussed about leather. I originally want a black r with nothing but dsg and pretorias but I would have to of waited 6months
that clears the leather question up. ive watched most of your vids and found them very informative desperately looking for an R but just cant seem to find right spec prets nav DSG blue .looking on autocar every day
sorry yeah the watch im wearing is my action cameras remote lol. What reg are you looking for mate? You can get the R for a steal if you look at 14reg. But you wont get the latest cool infotainment system like mine. That personally wouldnt bother me but if you use it as a daily it might bother you i guess
he may have a volvo as well but he 100% has a golf. it feature in one of the last episodes of the grand tour. which is an epic series for those that liked topgear
Watch Grand Tour Clarkson doesn't like the Mustang. Clarkson races Hammond who is in the Mustang V8 & Clarkson in the Focus RS. Focus leaves the 5.0 V8 for dead on a drag. Clarkson slates it.
Jeremy certainly ain't raving about it in the article, hears one snippet. Confused by the price tag and the sheer amount of stuff you get free, I plunged into the cabin with a raised eyebrow, looking for where Ford had cut corners. It doesn’t take long to find them. Lada would describe the plastics under the steering wheel and around the glovebox as “a bit cheap”, and I suspect the seat leather came from a polyurethane cow. And another snippet. It’s billed as a sports car, but that’s like calling the Flying Scotsman a “sports train”. It just isn’t. It’s too heavy. The only thing he seems to think is good is the price, I agree it's a lot of car for the money but I think one you would regret very quickly.
"If I were to sum it up as a car, I’d give it four stars, because a big V8 coupé for £36,000 is remarkable. But because it’s a Mustang, because of Steve McQueen: well, that makes people yearn to own one. And now you can. And there’s no earthly reason why you should not." Again you are not getting Clarksons style. He nit picks (which every good reviewer should do, but the conclusion is what the sum of the article is.
I always have this story ready to go when somebody calls prestige brands depreciation beaters. Decided to buy a Mercedes SLK as a fun car for my 50th last November. Dealer had a Feb 2015 model demo with 4.5 k on the clock. £37,000, new he took 10 Grand off it and with four years interest free credit and service plan I thought it was a bargain. February last year ran into a hailstorm with the result a category B write off ! All insurance offered was £21.5 K with the GAP insurance people didn't challenge😳. All I can say is thank god I had the GAP insurance 🙄
You can't say any more that! Nothin loses money like cars lol
Will be interested to see your Mustang video. Before I got my Golf R I looked at the mustang as it's a car I like the look of, but when I spoke to a couple of my mates about it they said the running costs were really high. I should of looked into this further but I didn't as I test drove the R and fell in love with it.
I got my Golf R for £27,600. Waiting for delivery March 1st on the 17 Plate :) can't wait!
yeah i saw VW lowered the prices by over £3k not sure how they did that considering the GBP lost 20% against the Euro thanks to brexit! Congrats on the purchase mate, fucking great fun to drive
hi that sounds a good price . what up grades have you . prets,nav,?
STEVEN BEST came as standard with winterpack and nav. But will be buying some prets later down the line
Hi Jay great interesting video thank you :-)
Thanks mate. Just got back from doing the m2 video which should be up tomorrow
Another great vid bud 👍🏻
Cheers matey
holy shit....that's an awesome price
it was at the time, but then in November VW lowered the prices by over £3k lol
Collect my Golf Estate R (NAV) on the 2nd March and can't wait to have a ghost family bus. Lol
Not long now mate! Congratulations on the purchase
Why not wait for 2018? notable changes including the bump horsepower from 292 to 305
Jimmy Marlin didn't like the 2018 interior. Too space-agey
I have had bought and owned around 25 cars in 22 years and only bought 1 from a dealer 18 years ago. I prefer to buy private as you do your own research plus you get to meet the person and that can tell a lot of how the car has been kept, also a lot can be said about where they live. As I would never buy a car with loads of owners and from a rough or weird area. Price is a big difference too. But my max budget has always been £15k but if spending £25k plus would be tempted to go to a dealer.
Your R would be worth a hell of a lot more than £22k. That's a insulting offer to you and the car.
Totally agree with you mate. As for the 22k value it is an insult but nothing personal, id do the same if i were buying, try and get as much car for as little as possible lol. I wouldnt talk prices down though which a few people seem to be doing (they coud be used car dealers thinking about it!)
Jay Kay I have also found that you can get a low mileage Audi S3 for a lot less than the Golf R. Also found the Audi S3 is a favourite car to steal and best for get away drivers from the law
not being a knobhead mate, but you can get a golf r with winter pack and nav for 27 now without discount
yes i know mate, like i said in the video this was last march when the car was RRP 35600. I have seen how VW lowered the price by over 3k. So obviously had i of waited a year id have got one brand new for 24500 . I dont get it because the GBP dropped 20% against the euro, so prices should have gone up in reality
Jay Kay you'll never get a new one GR7 for £24500, the base price is around £28k for a manual poverty spec. I got a lapiz DSG with pan roof, tech pack, rear tints & 5 years warranty for £30600 in Nov & I squeezed every penny out of the dealer
Geordie3458 November is when VW included more kit in their cars and knocked £3k off over night
There's a GR7 at VW Inchcape Oldham slightly better spec than your Jay, same year & colour, slightly more miles for £26.999. It's the 66 Reg ones that are just over £30k
whats the mileage and spec of the 16?
Same spec as your but with the discovery pro. 4500 miles
Straight away i just saw a 16 plate with my spec only in white for £30k. Prices are all over, infact as per my latest video i dont take autotrader seriously. Cars might be listed for a certain price but what is their actual value, and what do they sell for? Noone can say to me that a 66plate is worth 4k more just because of the reg and the fact it has nav pro. That was only a few hundred quid more of an option! Nah thats mickey mouse
Current Ford Mustang has an ncap rating of 2....saw a crash test of one, jeeeeezzzzzz!!!! BMW it is then lol. Although Ford have said the new Mustang should be better.
lol i heard that too! Im not sure id buy one in that case haha but definately worth a test drive for sure. Id love to do the M3 V8 too but we'll see.
Use websites like Carwow, broadspeed and drivethedeal to get some better discounts. I remember back in Oct/Nov last year they were giving 20% discount or around £7k off. Even the facelift Golf R has gotten £3k discounts. Idk why but the used S3 prices have risen since your last video. Now there's a 63 plate S3 with 19k miles on sale for £26k. That's crazy to me, I can get a 16 plate Golf R for under £25k with under 10k miles.
really?? That is strange. Have you only seen one S3 go up or all of them? I was wondering when VW cut the price. How have they done it when the GBP fell 20% against the euro after brexit i dont know, i priced in price increases for all German cars! Oh well you cant win them all lol
I've been noticing it since around Oct/Nov time. In the summer you could find 63/14 plate S3s with under 30k miles for around £20k, similar to the Golf R. So in 6 months those cars are selling for £5k more and the only reason I can see is these garages that are flipping them for profit. That exact same 63 plate S3 was on sale last week on Autotrader by Evans Halshaw for £22k, it got bought within 2 days by a garage and now they put it on sale for £26k. The annoying thing is I was interested in the car at £22k but no way I'm paying £26k for it. I've been seeing it for a while now, they're flipping private cars and garages and somehow people are buying them. Not seeing it with the Golfs though.
VW discounted the pre-facelift GTIs and Rs massively to get rid of stock before the facelift comes in. Looks like not many people are interested in the facelift R so they are already giving discounts of £3k. The RRP for the facelift Golf R DSG is £33,935 now, so with your extras it comes out to £35,555 so pretty much the same. Audi did the big discounts for the pre-facelift S3 just before the S3 facelift came out too. I have a feeling you were comparing the Golf R price to the facelift S3 rather than the pre-facelift, Audi didn't give discounts when the facelift was released. The reason I'm saying that is because the RRP for a facelift S3 S-tronic is £34,920, so £1k more then the Golf R.
used car dealers pushing prices up. I see. I spoke to two in the last two weeks, both selling an M3 and both in nottinghamshire (13 miles apart from eachother). I went to see the first one two saturdays ago and then went to see the second one last saturday about doing youtube vids, and he said to me "you spoke to our friend last week didnt you!" So that says to me used car dealerships are working together... I could be wrong and maybe that was some weird coincidence but it seems fishy to me that rivals are sharing information with eachother.
As for the price of the S3 being forced upto 26k the only way that will sell is to someone with bad credit and that dealer is able to sell them the finance... its a piss take really as it makes private selling a joke where private sellers sell their cars a lot cheaper to get them shifted but used car dealers can use finance. It was the same with my landcruiser, most of the sellers on auto trader were dealers so were asking nearly 12k for it. I managed to find a private seller in Brum and get the car for 7k with less mileage than those on autotrader! The thing is, they as silly prices but never seem to sell their stock from what i see. I'm seeing it with BMW m2 as well, 90% of them for sale on trader are dealers, and they ahve been for sale for ages!
The S3 i saw for sale which i mention was private sale. Most adverts on autotrader these days are trade. And even some "private seller" ads are dealers too. It needs government regulation IMO as they are manipulating prices like you just highighted
It does seem like there is some kind of collusion going on raising the prices. With the Golf R's there is a bigger market for them and it looks like they sell fast. On Autotrader there's only 87 5 Door S3's from 2013 onwards but 338 5 door golf R's. So maybe that's stopping them, they know if they raise the price, the customer will just choose from the other 5 that are similar.
I actually started seeing a couple private sellers on Autotrader writing 'Not selling to any agencies', so looks like they're actively searching for this. I've seen that too. There was a 14 plate S3 with 57k miles selling privately for £19.5k, some dealer bought it and put it up the next week for £23k and it stayed there for 4 months. I have a feeling its still not sold but he just gave up listing it on Autotrader.
I'll do a video on this I think as it will be interesting to get more opinion on this. It's quite serious imo because I quite enjoy buying from private sellers. You pay proper market price and don't get the usual dealer bs.
Just looking on trader now for the m3 and one 'private seller' is offering life time warranty and zero % finance!! How is a private seller going to compete with that?? Their warranty won't be worth a light either... if I was going to buy used and pay dealer prices I'd rather buy approved used and get proper warranty from someone like sytner. But I wonder what sytner used car warranty is like on old cars like the e90. I doubt it would cover gear box failure or if cylinder issues develope such as warping and cracking
I hope you get the BMW M2 mate, be a good replacement
hopefully this sunday im taking the M2 out mate. Saturday im going to head over to Sytners and try and test drive the M240i. Have you seen it? Its over 12k cheaper than the m2, has only 35bhp less and there are loads for sale so you can get a great deal!
Jay Kay it's one of my favourite cars believe it or not the M140i/240i mate, and the dealers are knocking 15-18% off them if you get on a finance deal (I know you pay cash), they're great value for money you can get a M140i for 26 grand ish, with the deals, and apparently according to Joe Achilles, they feel as quick as the M2, and they're subtle which you like, I think an M240i would be a great car, please try and record the test drive etc, it would be great to see
definately mate i will do. Hopefully the M2 video will happen too but id have though the 240i test drive would be easy because as you say there are some cracking deals on that car!
Jay Kay can't wait
Looking for a used one at the min.. fuck me, dealers won't knock nothing off for me. Going to look at another in the morning.
stealers wont knock anything off used for some reason. Try and find one private if you can mate. What sort of prices are stealerships asking for the cars youre looking at?
Jay Kay For one around 18k miles, with limited optional extras. £21k 14/15 plate. I was trying to find one with leather seats. I've spotted one at £20500 at the stealers, but it's down south and it's tornado red which I quite like .. for me I've never spent more than 10k, so to give someone 20k plus on private sale is quite worrying, and I'm finding private they ain't much cheaper .. 🙁
I see your point and that is fair enough mate. In my experience with buying used cars you have to be patient but willing to travel a bit if you can.
Jay Kay it was far too tatty that one I just looked at for the money.. he even admitted they need to drop it at least 1k lol.. he reckons best waiting till mid march, new model coming or facelift, better prices on used ones
hi jay kay why did you not get leather in your R. what is the watch you are wearing
Hi mate because I'm not really fussed about leather. I originally want a black r with nothing but dsg and pretorias but I would have to of waited 6months
that clears the leather question up. ive watched most of your vids and found them very informative desperately looking for an R but just cant seem to find right spec prets nav DSG blue .looking on autocar every day
sorry yeah the watch im wearing is my action cameras remote lol. What reg are you looking for mate? You can get the R for a steal if you look at 14reg. But you wont get the latest cool infotainment system like mine. That personally wouldnt bother me but if you use it as a daily it might bother you i guess
64 plate ish . sorry i meant auto trader
ive seen a few mate. Increase you distance, perhaps put it to national. Ive seen a couple with my blue leathers, dsg and sunroof for 20k. Bargain tbh!
you know which car Jeremy Clarkson drives? mk7 golf gti
I heard he drives a volvo?
he may have a volvo as well but he 100% has a golf. it feature in one of the last episodes of the grand tour. which is an epic series for those that liked topgear
I saw the first two episodes and it was awesome lol can't wait to see the rest when I get a minute
Watch Grand Tour Clarkson doesn't like the Mustang. Clarkson races Hammond who is in the Mustang V8 & Clarkson in the Focus RS. Focus leaves the 5.0 V8 for dead on a drag. Clarkson slates it.
www.driving.co.uk/car-reviews/the-clarkson-review-ford-mustang/
you really need to see the grand tour as "entertainment" rather than "factual" viewing mate
Jeremy certainly ain't raving about it in the article, hears one snippet.
Confused by the price tag and the sheer amount of stuff you get free, I plunged into the cabin with a raised eyebrow, looking for where Ford had cut corners. It doesn’t take long to find them. Lada would describe the plastics under the steering wheel and around the glovebox as “a bit cheap”, and I suspect the seat leather came from a polyurethane cow.
And another snippet.
It’s billed as a sports car, but that’s like calling the Flying Scotsman a “sports train”. It just isn’t. It’s too heavy.
The only thing he seems to think is good is the price, I agree it's a lot of car for the money but I think one you would regret very quickly.
"If I were to sum it up as a car, I’d give it four stars, because a big
V8 coupé for £36,000 is remarkable. But because it’s a Mustang, because
of Steve McQueen: well, that makes people yearn to own one. And now you
can. And there’s no earthly reason why you should not."
Again you are not getting Clarksons style. He nit picks (which every good reviewer should do, but the conclusion is what the sum of the article is.