Bargains on a plate
MARCH and September are the trade’s hot months, sparked by the number plate change. In three weeks’ time the 20 plate’s release will account for a fifth of all annual UK sales — and who wouldn’t want to save thousands of pounds on a brand new vehicle?
Happily, with nearly half a million cars set to leave showrooms in March alone, consumer experts at motoring magazine and website What Car? ( whatcar.com/new- car- deals) have used mystery shoppers to gauge how much you can expect to save if you haggle hard.
Nine brands in the UK are offering new car buyers more than 10 per cent off the list price, some more than 20 per cent.
Citroen is the biggest discounter with an average 16.5 per cent — or £4,400 — off across all models. That’s nearly double the average discount offered across all manufacturers of 9 per cent — £3,199 in cash terms.
While some hard-to-sell cars are being cut by up to a third, others are in too great a demand to offer much room for haggling. Take the nippy new Peugeot 208 hot-hatch — a worthy successor to the ‘yuppie’ Peugeot 205 of the 1980s. The model I drove in a fetching Faro Yellow was the five-door 1.2 3-cylinder PureTech 130 hp petrol version GT line trim with an automatic eight-speed gearbox. It sprints from rest to 62 mph in 8.7 seconds up to 129 mph, yet still offers up to 51.9 mpg with 103g/km CO2 emissions.
WhatCar? reckons you should aim to haggle £842 off the £23,350 basic list price or 3.6 per cent, to take it down to £22,508. Not huge. But it’s a car in demand. An all-electric 208e version is also offered. But much bigger discounts are available elsewhere.
The biggest specific discount is a saving of almost 30 per cent on the Fiat Tipo 1.4 Easy, slashed from £14,155 to £9,995.
WhatCar? editor Steve Huntingford said: ‘This is the time for buyers to do their homework before signing on the dotted line. What’s encouraging is that some of the most popular models on the road are being offered with very high discounts.’