THE MIDDLE LANE
Classifieds caught your eye? Maybe it’s not all foolhardy thinking, argues Sam
There it is, glistening alluringly in the supermarket freezer cabinet. A tub of ice cream. And on it, a label: 75 per cent off.
Quarter-price ice cream! OK, so I didn’t come to the supermarket for ice cream. I only needed toothpaste. Also the ice cream is mustard flavour (really, seriously, not a typo), and obviously no one wants mustard ice cream, hence quarterprice. I know, it’s only a bargain if you wanted it anyhow. But still, how can you turn down an offer like that?
In entirely related news, I have been browsing the usedcar classifieds a lot recently. I am meant to be choosing a large, boring, economical family car suitable for loading with children/bikes/garden waste – Octavia estate, Ford S-Max, that ballpark – but keep finding myself inexorably drawn to the depreciation heroes. You know the ones. Huge amount of car, suspiciously tiny amount of cash.
Case in point: a Merc CL500 for £2,750. OK, so it’s 18 years old and has over 100,000 miles on the clock. But still, a super-luxo-coupe with a 300bhp, 5.0-litre V8, for under three grand? What were they new? Seventy grand? Eighty grand? More? A 100,000-mile Merc CL costs the same as a 100,000-mile Dacia Sandero. How can you turn down an offer like that?
“BUYERS OF EXPENSIVE, THIRSTY, RESIDUAL VALUE DISASTERS, I SALUTE YOU”
I know, it’s only a bargain if you wanted it anyhow. I am aware a Merc CL is not a large, boring, economical family car. I am aware it will cost a million pounds to insure and fuel. And I’m also aware its ‘Active Body Control’ suspension is famed for being a) supremely comfortable, b) prone to frequent, catastrophic failure and c) ruinously expensive to repair. It is, in other words, a mechanical disaster waiting to happen.
But hey, what if it’s a long wait? What if you sneaked a couple years’ trouble-free motoring – monkeys, typewriters, Shakespeare – before inevitably abandoning your CL on the hard shoulder of the A3? Imagine how good that would feel! Imagine if that mustard ice cream turned out not to be awful!
And it’s not just CLs. V8 Jag XJs for £2,000, BMW 745i for £2,500: as we marvel at the awesome, unstoppable force of depreciation, I ask that we join together to pay tribute to the dreamers who purchased these cars new. Let us honour the borderline delusional souls who, 20 years back, paid full whack for these shiny new Mercs, these box-fresh Jags, these zero-mile Beemers, unconcerned by quite how much cash they’d lose.
Buyers of expensive, thirsty, residual value disasters, I salute you. Without you, our classifieds would be a whole lot less interesting, though admittedly a whole lot less likely to end up with me buying a very complicated and impractical Mercedes that self-immolates within 10 minutes of driving.
And since you ask, yes, obviously I bought the mustard ice cream. And since you ask, yes, obviously it was terrible. And since you ask, no, I haven’t bought a CL. Yet. But how can you turn down an offer like that?