Fool's Eye View

[ March 28, 2000 ]

Buying a Car?

By Nigel Roberts (TMFNigel)

Chippenham, Wiltshire -- The launch of the carbusters.com website from the Consumers Association this morning coincided with leaks appearing in the Daily Telegraph that the Government is about to force the car manufacturers to cut their prices by up to a third, by compelling them to offer individual buyers the same discount they give to corporate buyers (leaks that were described as "pure speculation" by the Department of Trade and Industry). This would follow the recommendations of the Competition Commission inquiry into the industry, due to be published this week.

All of this is of great interest to me at the moment, for two reasons. Firstly, over the next few weeks I am going to be getting down to writing the long awaited Fool's Guide to buying a car, and secondly I am currently in the process of buying a new car for myself.

I have now narrowed my choice down to either a BMW 5 series or a Rover 75. Over the weekend my local Rover dealer gave me an extended test drive of the Rover 75, the 2.5 Connoisseur SE, with satellite navigation, which retails at £27,550 in the UK. I was prepared to be a little disappointed with it, having read a few poor reports in the motoring magazines, but I have to say that I was very impressed. I particularly liked the satellite navigation system, which had a very pleasant sounding lady giving me directions. Even though she got a bit confused at one stage and told us that we had arrived at our final destination when we knew we still had another 12 miles to go, I still thought it was wonderful. All cars will have this one day, but not until the £2000 extra cost has fallen a lot!

Having said that, I am going to buy a BMW (which will be delivered tomorrow -- yippee!), mostly due to all of the uncertainties currently surrounding Rover. I also hasten to add I will not actually be buying a NEW car, I will be buying a NEARLY NEW car -- there is no way that I am going to pay the extortionate prices demanded by the motor manufacturers in the UK, and I will let someone else take the pain of the depreciation as soon as you drive the car of the dealer's forecourt.

Today the Consumers Association launched a website that aims to make it easier for us all to import a car to the UK, so I thought I would give it a go, comparing the real prices I had been offered for the Rover that I had over the weekend. The only problem was that when I logged onto www.carbusters.com I found that they could not offer exactly the same model, so I have compared prices based on the 2.0 V6 Connoisseur SE, and assumed that I would have been able to persuade my local Rover dealer to knock off the same 3% discount that I had been offered on the other model. I also decided to check the prices at another car import website: www.oneswoop.com.

                  UK dealer  carbusters.com  oneswoop.com
Price on the road  £23,280       £21,742        £17,364

Wow! So the Consumers Association site could save me £1,538 -- but I would also have to pay Which! another £260 as a 'finders' fee. At oneswoop.com I could save £5,916 or 25%! I must admit I was amazed at this, although with all the publicity around about cheaper prices on the continent I should not have been, but these prices are based on delivery to your door, and the companies take away all of the hassle of contacting a dealer in Europe and arranging the import yourself.

Now I know nothing about oneswoop.com, and I would be very dubious about handing my money over to them without doing a lot more research on them, and I have to say that I was not very impressed that despite repeated attempts to get a 'firm quote' by clicking the 'request quote' button I got repeated errors, so I don't know if this price indication from them is 'real' or not. Please don't take the fact that they have been mentioned in this article as any sort of recommendation: it is not. I sent them an e-mail asking them to call me to answer some questions for this article, and a response came back quickly that they were just sooooo busy at the moment they would get around to looking at my e-mail some time in the future. Mmm -- best to be a bit dubious about them, but the potential savings look great. If you have a look at the Buying a Car discussion board you will find Fools have posted many links to other car brokers who may be able to get an even better price for you.

One of the problems with buying a car this way is that the delivery time is very extended. Carbusters are quoting 3 to 4 months on the Rover 75, and much longer on a new BMW. Many car buyers hate having to wait for a car to be delivered, I know that I do. When I buy a car I really want to drive it away there and then, or at the very most within a month of ordering it; having to wait 6 months for delivery would be just too unbearable for me! But lets hope that this adds to the pressure on motor manufacturers to see sense and encourages them to re-evaluate their pricing strategies in the UK before they are forced by the Government to do it.

Any feedback on this feature can be directed to the Fool's Eye View discussion board.

Related Links:
• Competition Commission
• Department of Trade and Industry
• Auto Industry website from the DTI
• Carbusters.com
• Oneswoop.com
• Which! website
• Buying a car discussion board