New car brokers - Car now ordered

Scuzi · 28 Oct 2007 at 19:00

The time has come for me to stick in an order for my new car and having had a browse of some online brokers, savings of up to £6k can be had on the car I'm interested in.The brokers I have had a look at are www.broadspeed.com and www.drivethedeal.com

Drivethedeal had the best offer by far but they won't deal with me because I want the car delivered to my Northern Ireland address.

Can anyone recommend a new car broker they have dealt with? Any good or bad experiences with Broadspeed?
Anything else I should look out for? I'd rather go direct to the dealership as it is a bit more reassuring but given some of the savings, it's hard to ignore these brokers.

Ta

[TW]Fox · 28 Oct 2007 at 19:02

Do it via D2D but collect the car from a UK dealer. The saving will pay for the trip.

Whats the car? if it sucks I withdraw my advice.

Scuzi · 28 Oct 2007 at 19:05

[TW]Fox;10370497 said:
Do it via D2D but collect the car from a UK dealer. The saving will pay for the trip.

Whats the car? if it sucks I withdraw my advice.

The reason Drive the deal won't deal with me is because I will be financing the car and for some reason they don't deal with NI addresses. It sounds stupid and makes no sense but that's what the guy said to me :confused:

I might call them again to confirm.

Car is a Z4 Coupe 3.0 Si Sport, Carbon black, Individual Imola red/black leather. It looks quite hot if I do say so myself. :cool:

EDIT: BTW, I did some sums, the E39 ain't gonna happen.

pinkaardvark · 28 Oct 2007 at 19:50

Scuzi said:
The reason Drive the deal won't deal with me is because I will be financing the car and for some reason they don't deal with NI addresses. It sounds stupid and makes no sense but that's what the guy said to me I might call them again to confirm.

Car is a Z4 Coupe 3.0 Si Sport, Carbon black, Individual Imola red/black leather. It looks quite hot if I do say so myself.

EDIT: BTW, I did some sums, the E39 ain't gonna happen.

You can ask for the finance through the dealer instead. ie drive the deal just hand you off to the dealer anyway don't they?

NickXX · 28 Oct 2007 at 19:52

Scuzi said:
Car is a Z4 Coupe 3.0 Si Sport, Carbon black, Individual Imola red/black leather. It looks quite hot if I do say so myself.

Spot on

Scuzi · 28 Oct 2007 at 20:38

pinkaardvark said:
You can ask for the finance through the dealer instead. ie drive the deal just hand you off to the dealer anyway don't they?

I'm not 100% sure but I believe you pay the broker who then pay the dealer and you pick the car up from the dealer. I'd need to look into it further as I am not quite certain how the process goes - hence this thread.

ste_bla · 28 Oct 2007 at 20:58

Scuzi said:
I'm not 100% sure but I believe you pay the broker who then pay the dealer and you pick the car up from the dealer. I'd need to look into it further as I am not quite certain how the process goes - hence this thread.

broadspeed (iirc) acts as a go between you and the dealer and then if your happy they put you in direct contact and you pay the dealer etc

goreblast · 28 Oct 2007 at 21:29

Drive the deal only put you in touch with the dealer. You then only deal with the dealership. Yes you enter details for a deposit of £500 on the DTD website, but the details are passed onto the dealership who put the payment through.

In September I collected a brand new Ford C-Max 1.8 Titanium car which I had bought through Drive The Deal. I was paying cash so finance wasnt as issue (I got a personal loan) and was able to use my fathers address in Bath for road tax and for Ford Insure to send their quote to which gave me 7 days free insurance. All my dad had to do was forward a couple of letters. No reason you couldnt get someone on here to do that for you. Once you have car over here all you need to do is re-register it (send payment for new tax disk) and return the existing disk to swansea for a partial refund.

DTD offer free delivery to anywhere in England. So I flew over from Belfast to Newcastle and they delivered the car to The Metro Centre in Gateshead. I drove the car to Stranraer and got the boat home. Total cost of getting the car was £300 plus food/petrol. The saving was in excess of £4000. And I didn't have to deal with the smug numpties at my local Lindsay Ford dealership. If you are worried about the delivery miles (mine came from Dees of Croydon so have several hundred on it) you could have it trasported for a little extra I'm sure.

I would say "go for it". Ikea in Gateshead would be the best collection point as it is the most northern city to which you can fly from here (in fact you have a choice of Easyjet or Flybe). Then get the boat home. And while you are there you can do some shopping in either Ikea or the neighbouring Metro Centre. Ikea is handier as there is only one carpark, unlike the Metro Centre. The ther good thing is that the driver will need to get the train back to whereever; the Metro Centre has its own train station.

We will definately do it again when it comes to change.

Scuzi · 29 Oct 2007 at 00:37

Thanks for that goreblast, very helpful

I plan to register the car at my NI address (to get the plate amongst other things) and eventually transfer it across to my address in England.

What I would ideally like to do is run all the paperwork through my NI address but pick the car up from my local dealer at my English address. Hopefully they'll be able to accommodate this. I'll phone them tomorrow.

As a last resort I suppose I'll have to go direct to the dealership.

encephalopathy · 29 Oct 2007 at 10:45

i have done this the other way round and changed the english plate to a NI one after picking up the car in rotherham. if you have the car registered at the NI address rather than the GB one will that cause any difficulties with the insurance (as you know we pay through the nose here).

lastly - why on earth would you take a lovely new z4 to lurgan

platypus · 29 Oct 2007 at 10:48

Deliver it to me and I'll drive it over

.

Giddy · 29 Oct 2007 at 12:17

Good choice the coupe rocks

What options are you looking to spec?

Scuzi · 29 Oct 2007 at 13:17

encephalopathy said:
i have done this the other way round and changed the english plate to a NI one after picking up the car in rotherham. if you have the car registered at the NI address rather than the GB one will that cause any difficulties with the insurance (as you know we pay through the nose here).

lastly - why on earth would you take a lovely new z4 to lurgan

Nah, insurance won't be a problem, I'll just be registering the car at the Lurgan address but will be insuring it at my Winchester address. The last thing I need is to get shafted on insurance

Giddy said:
What options are you looking to spec?

I'm not going to go too mad with the options as it gets expensive but I'm fairly set on the following:
Individual Imola red / Anthracite leather
Individual Carbon Black paint
Piano Black trim
Comfort pack (multi function wheel, rear parking sensors and storage pack)
Hi-Fi stereo with 6CD changer
Bluetooth prep
Cruise control
Xenon headlights
Gradual tint windscreen + sun protect glass

I want the professional Satnav system but it's gonna bump the price above my budget. Besides, I can get a Tomtom for about £200

HEADRAT · 29 Oct 2007 at 13:37

What wheels?

Scuzi · 29 Oct 2007 at 13:43

HEADRAT said:
What wheels?

The normal multispoke M sport wheels. I think they suit the colour scheme better than the 'star' 5 spoke alloys. I was considering going for Montego blue and had I went for that I'd probably have chosen the 5 spokes.

Here's a few pics courtesy of the BMW configurator thingy...

http://www.scuzi.eclipse.co.uk/z412.jpg

http://www.scuzi.eclipse.co.uk/z42.jpg

^^That one doesn't have the piano black trim in it.

HEADRAT · 29 Oct 2007 at 13:52

NIIICE!

That has the same trim as my Z4 3.0, to be honest I think piano black could be a little too much, all that "black" might make the cabin feel claustrophobic.

Wish they did aluminium seatbelt holder on the seats rather than black plastic!

HEADRAT

Scuzi · 29 Oct 2007 at 14:02

HEADRAT said:
NIIICE!

That has the same trim as my Z4 3.0, to be honest I think piano black could be a little too much, all that "black" might make the cabin feel claustrophobic.

Wish they did aluminium seatbelt holder on the seats rather than black plastic!

HEADRAT

I never thought of that, the silver seems to break it up quite nicely now that you mention it.

Aye, an aluminium seatbelt holder would look well. IIRC they have them in the 3 series ragtops, I wonder why they didn't use them on the Z4?

platypus · 29 Oct 2007 at 14:12

Hmm, whatever floats your boat.

Or gives your airplane lift.

OllyM · 29 Oct 2007 at 14:13

Very nice, good choice

Can you get the USB/iPod interface on the Z4? If so I'd think about having that instead of the CD changer...

Scuzi · 29 Oct 2007 at 14:18

OllyM said:
Very nice, good choice

Can you get the USB/iPod interface on the Z4? If so I'd think about having that instead of the CD changer...

Ta

I don't think that's an option as I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. I think the headunit plays MP3 CDs which is quite handy. I don't have an iPod so it's not really that important