Is it me or are all the £1500 cars now £5k?

Rilot

Rilot

Rilot

Don
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
23,267
Location
Wargrave, UK
I've been out of the loop of this end of the market for a while but it seems to me that everything around the £5k mark are cars I would be wanting to pay £1500 for a couple of years ago.
The reason I post this is because a mate of mine was complaining that he couldn't find anything decent to buy in the old, luxo-barge category for around £5k. "Hold my beer" I say, and I came up with nothing but 200,000 mile, 17-year-old, 730ds, A8s and the odd Lexus LS430. There were a few F01 7-series, and the odd D4 A8, but these were suspicious in that there were so few of them. Most at this price point were tired, old E65s, D3s etc.

Maybe I'm looking back with rose-tinted beer goggles, but I swear you used to be able to buy a halfway decent old barge with less than 100k on it and fewer owners than Boris has had mistresses for around £4k (which allowing for inflation would be £5k today).
 
Yeah the entire market has shifted upwards really.

Struggled to find a banger first car for my brother and sister. In the end we paid about £2500 I think for a 2010 ish Fiesta 1.25 with 100k miles in naff condition.
 
They're actually back on their way down, since Covid it's been a bit of a joke how some very average cars were attracting hefty asking prices that were bring met.
 
Yeah.
Its why I stuck with the old banger we have.
Even with the gear box issues.

Paid 3k for the 207 automatic.
Looked at options due to repair costs.. I was shocked!
 
All the older stuff is farmed off to WBAC these days or fired on Gumtree/ebay, often as a private sale despite dealers selling them only to meet at the dealers house rather than at the store so they can get away with no warranty.
 
I just got Webuyanycar and Motorway quote on my mums 2015 Nissan Micra and came back with £5,665 and £5,530. I cant remember what she paid for it new but sure it was not much more than 10K
 
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Yeah prices are meant to be going down I heard, but then that was more for the stuff that was supposedly within the 0-5 years old category... a category still many people can't afford. So the stuff that's over 5 years still seems quite high.

It's difficult to know what to do right now as you've got a lot of people trying to hold out for the EV situation (infrastructure and cost to buy) to improve, energy prices, the war on emissions and that your car might become ULEZ non compliant etc. Bit of a minefield. Then the longer you hold on to older cars, they edge further and further into the category of being worth say a few thousand or a few hundred based on whether the clutch goes or something major, essentially writing it off. It's a bit of a gamble. You hold on too long and you get a whacking great bill. You sell now and you end up paying a lot for something not that much better, full of compromises and backwards steps.

Besides, insurance costs and the state of the UK roads. Car ownership in the UK is pretty hard. :(
 
cap-hpi interview on r4@1 - discussing (as we knew) 8% drop at top end £20K typical £1600 they said over last 2 months alone
so they said you should get a good deal on that over-priced stock end dec/jan, as further fleet cars, at top, arrive at end of lease ...

can't but believe that effect will filter down the market in Spring - normal service resumes.
 
You can still find some good deals on model-specific Facebook groups with the added bonus that you can search the seller's posting history in the group to see if they've mentioned any issues with it. I've bought quite a few cars recently that way, in every case for a good bit less than similar cars were going for on Autotrader / eBay.
 
I think a fair few have been exported east-wards as well, given by the number of UK-registered cars I've seen being trailered across Germany..
 
Not sure. A lot of expensive cars have depreciated fast. Where as cheap eco hatchbacks which used to be sub 2k have gone up :/

People don't have the cash anymore and are just after cheap cars they don't have to keep pristine to hand back to a dealer after 3 years.

Pre 2018 tax change cars with £0 tax seem to be in high very demand. I attempted to buy one last year and all were sold by the time I could visit. Only managed to get a £30 diesel emissions fraud mobile for now.
 
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Yes, what was once considered a heap of junk £800 car is now £5000.

I remember the day back about 20 years ago I was given a free Escort XR3i, it broke down and they literally gave it away because old cars back then were only worth a few hundred quid and that was if they had no major issues.
 
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The market is silly - I paid nearly £4k for a 2009 530d Touring last year!
Granted it’s been marvellous, but historically something like that would have been a good grand less.
Madness
 
Looking at replacing my 09 Yaris that i have had for 6 years now, but with doing under 5k a year its looking like I'll just keep driving it until it literally falls apart.
 
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Thats interesting to see it confirmed, I'd suspected that the big rises were only really on the bottom of the market and it wasn't as severe as you went up, but nice to see it on a graph. Think I picked the right time to give up with bangers after never having anything much under 10 years old since forever and buy a decent 2 year old car!
 
Yeah prices of older stuff still are mental. Newer stuff is coming down nicely and will probably reach where it should be fairly soon. No idea when the bottom of the market will get back to being sensible.. i guess it will at some point if newer cars are more realistic?

The value of my car has come down a lot though a 2010 Avensis with 120k, last year they seemed to be going between 4 and 5k which was ridiculous for what it was, looks like they're now around 2.5k which is still at least a grand overpriced in my view, it's clearly a 1000-1500 quid car in anybody's book.
 
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