2nd hand car prices still inflated?

Associate
Joined
2 Jan 2009
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2,049
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London
You see similar progress in other product areas though and the same thing doesn't happen

Your current television is far more complex and capable than the one you bought in 2008 but probably cost you less money.

But if you want to, we can control for the effect of progress in car prices by picking a car that is still on sale today but has the same or lower specification than it did on release.

In 2021 a BMW M340i cost £49,110. The list price today of this same car, on the same platform, is £59,835. But this doesn't tell the whole story as the current version has had a number of standard specification items removed - an equivalent specification car to the 2021 version actually has a list price of £64,310 (but does now have electric seats which it didn't before).

Adjusted for inflation, that 2021 car would now be £58,950, about £5k less than it is currently selling for.

There is absolutely no question that many new car prices are increasing above inflation - and lets not forget that we've had 2 years of very high inflation so to be above even this really is quite significant.

What is interesting though is this is happening at the same time as depreciation is very much returning to the used car market. Not in the way it was before, but still significantly enough that the gap between new and used cars is getting bigger and bigger, which will eventually filter through to the pricing of these cars on finance.
A similar example can be found on the Civic Type R. Previous new one launched at £33k in 2020, the new one but pretty much the same bar tweaks and small incremental improvements launched at... £50k!
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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5,183
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Riding my bike
Interesting thread.

Looking at the question from the other side of the mirror.

Have car manufacturer profits gone up?

If yes then price gauging. If no then cost of manufacture/taxes/Brexit.
 
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