Where are all the bargains? I kept looking, but I couldn't find them. Even someone with only a very basic understanding of economics (like me) will realize that the UK economy is currently facing headwinds. Not to say, in official language, we are completely ruined and have been for some time.
That should mean that the prices of fast or very luxurious cars are also in the doldrums. But that is not the case. That must seriously confuse some high-brow compatriots, because second-hand car prices have always been a useful barometer of how the economy is doing. They are the second most expensive thing we buy in our lives.
It's hard to find a bargain
A six-year-old Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio still sells for around £35,000 here. An Italian sports sedan with a reputation for reliability that inspired the McLaren/Honda F1 era, and which holds its value better than an E39 M5 did at the time. It's insane. I've been looking for a bargain for months and unless you're looking for one that's been at least tangentially involved in a ram raid, you're not going to be able to find an affordable one.
And that is the case across the entire market. If I were asked what my absolute “used fast car” bargain of December 2023 was, I would have to look on my keyboard for the button for “glazed facial expression.” All the fast stuff retains its value for a while, even though we live in extremely dark times.
Plus, we're told that these cars – the ones that the market agrees are in demand because their prices aren't falling – are in fact already completely redundant. That makes me curious, because there must be a message for politicians and car manufacturers in this. I think it's something like this: 'It's hard to imagine that you could have handled this worse. And once you get things in order, the Chinese will have run away with your industry.'
The transition to EVs isn't helping
Large numbers of pious metropolitan politicians can tell normal people that the car with a fuel engine should be banned, but those normal people don't give a damn about what they say at the moment. Many of them have already tried an electric car and have now exchanged it for a more old-fashioned one that simply does what a car should do.
And if they haven't tried EV yet, they have a friend or family member with a horror story that influences them. Which in turn means that the only used cars in the UK where you can get a good deal compared to their new price are, you guessed it, electric cars. As I write this, there are 524 Porsche Taycans for sale Auto Trader.
Generations will be written about the mismanagement of the attempt to move away from fossil fuels. The perfect object of study for academics in the attempt to explain their bewilderment, something that may be exemplary of the whole, is Allegra Stratton. Boris Johnson's former climate advisor told us that we should mainly buy EVs, but she continued to drive her smelly old Golf diesel because it suited her life better. Without realizing it, she expressed exactly what the entire country was thinking at that moment.
People want old cars
The market will eventually calm down again. But if you want one good reason why the fast stuff will remain expensive for a while, I would like to point you to VW's new electric 'performance concept car', the ID.X Performance. Designed by a five-year-old who was given a shoebox and a pair of dull scissors, it is the perfect metaphor for the dire state of the European car industry. Without ideas, completely without political and legislative support and, perhaps soon, without money. Because all people want to buy are cars from five years ago.
#Secondhand #cars #cheaper #remain #time
