How do lots of people afford the brand new luxury cars ?

Exactly this, "credit" has changed wrt car ownership. We use PCP more as car rental ... to get a decent nearly new car, with bells and whistles... then trade up for another. We never own the car outright, but that won't matter until we get to retirement.

If we bought a car we'd have to put up with a much lesser or older one.

My husband gets a brand new company car every four years, he currently has a 50k mercedes. There is absolutely no way we could afford it ourselves. I have an 18 year old banger in contrast!

PCP and leasing deals have made these cars a lot more affordable (on a per-month payment basis) than they would have been in say the 80s/90s. At the same time, more "basic" (non-luxury) brands are much more expensive in real terms than they were back then - people think why get a Ford when I can have an Audi for a not much bigger monthly payment.

If you never intend to own the car outright then you don't care what the sticker price is, only that it costs you £X hundred a month and after 3/4/5 years you hand it back and get another one.

Forgot to say, my apologies - didn’t intend to derail the thread.

And there it is !! DLA doesn’t exist any more except for children under 16. It’s PIP now, a lot harder to claim, and the higher rate mobility component is only awarded to those with the most severe disabilities. DWP are absolutely nothing to do with motability. It’s a charity and they work with the car industry to source vehicles at a reduced rate, and at the end of the lease either the dealers sell them on as used cars or they are auctioned off. The DWP don’t pay insurance or car tax. Disabled people are exempt from car tax and insurance is included in the leasing costs direct from motability. And PIP is nothing to do with the ability to work. It’s designed to help with the extra cost of living with a disability and to help the most severely disabled people stay mobile. And once again, the thread focuses on luxury cars, and my previous post addressed this.

I know someone who has now had three Range Rovers. They've lost about £30,000 on each one due to devaluation, plus the monthly cost of running them. They aren't wealthy!

Personally I don't understand why you would do that. It doesn't make financial sense. I'd much sooner spend that money on property.

However, I'm not into cars. I just want something that looks half decent that will get me from A to B safely (although I'd treat myself to a classic car if money was no object)!

Each to their own though, as we spend a lot on holidays, which are over in a couple of weeks!

They will be either credited up to high heaven or could even be a disability whip. I live on a fairly poor council estate and the amount of brand new 22 plate cars I've seen park up and knowing most of the people on the estate I know for a fact someone who doesn't work could never afford an expensive new car so will be on DLA High rate mobility where they give u a car and all u have to do is pat for the petrol dwp pay insurance and tax etc

Agree there will be some element of that, but given that this is a thread about luxury cars, the two posts here seem to imply that motability cars account for a lot of luxury cars on the road - just pointing out that they don’t. I’ve volunteered with disability charities since PIP was introduced in 2013. The mobility component is a lot harder to claim now and IME most recipients of the higher rate that qualifies them for motability are only interested in a car that suits their disability and gets them reliably from A to B. The majority of disabled people don’t have a lot of money for a high advance deposit, and most of the higher end cars and SUV’s on motability are chosen because they lend themselves more easily to the more complicated adaptations and wheelchair access needed in order to drive them - for which grants are available for the eye watering advance payments. But Kudos to you for your response because many similar threads only have to mention motability cars and there’s a pile on about ‘free cars’ and ‘taxpayers expense’, etc, so it’s good to see a balanced view for a change.

I don't like the idea of paying a company interest or rent for something that I could own outright

@Rosscameasdoody

Unless you needed a higher spec for mobility reasons why would you pay thousands as an advance payment for something you will hand back in three or five years time, depending on the length of the lease ?

For exactly the same reason that anyone buys a luxury car when they could get from A to B in a Ford Focus! People spend their money on what's important to them. Someone with a mobility car may just like to drive a luxury car and use their motability benefit to pay towards it.

I dunno, you can get new audi from about 250 a month.

The fact that you don't buy more expensive cars doesn't mean others don't. People spend on different things. So the sums add up, you just keep going around in circles with the wide eyed "but I don't understaaand" still because you personally don't spend on this particular item so "i don't understand why others do" 🤷🏻

Someone spends 150 quid a month on a gym, I wouldn't spend more than 25, still don't go around "innocently" doing "but hoooow" head tilt.

The thread referred to ‘luxury cars’. There are roughly 60,000 Motability vehicles on the road - hardly a ‘lot’, and the vast majority don’t come into the ‘luxury’ category. Those that do, are usually because the disabled person needs a higher spec to accommodate their disability, or needs wheelchair access. The higher spec vehicles attract a much higher advance payment on the lease, whereas most people opt for the vehicles with little or no advance payment. Unless you needed a higher spec for mobility reasons why would you pay thousands as an advance payment for something you will hand back in three or five years time, depending on the length of the lease ? Just for clarity, not all PIP claimants qualify for a Motability car - they have to be in receipt of the enhanced rate of PIP mobility component, which is awarded for those with the most severe conditions.

www.carwow.co.uk/blog/ev-battery-recycling-what-happens-to-dead-batteries#gref

Maybe this might help.

Come on, loads are bought, not just on lease or credit.
We had only ever bought our cars and the same goes for our friends.
As for those saying people get into debt with new cars or they are low spec, is it because you are jealous?

Afterthought. The title of the thread referred to luxury cars. Why would you assume that this applies to Motability cars ?

Up to five years old now because the leases were extended during the pandemic, and there are long delays on renewing leases because vehicles are taking longer from ordering to delivery because of the chip shortage. If you’re leasing a wheelchair accessible vehicle or need complicated adaptations, you will lease for five years, not three.

We always buy our cars outright, privately. We sell after about 3 years, we often get the similar money. We then put a bit more to it and buy again. Covid was good to us and we got more for our cars than we bought them for. Never new, can't afford it, say a 2nd hand 20 plate hybrid.

The usual methods, which are:

• Inheritance. Maybe not directly used to pay for the actual car, but the inheritance might have covered a big deposit on a nice house so that an average salary goes further.
• High salary. I honestly think some people don’t realise how well paid some sectors are.
• Company car.

I don’t know anyone living on beans who owns a luxury car on credit. I know a lot of people who are on very healthy salaries and also have company car allowances.

When mortgage rates were so low these deals were very affordable for people on a PCP/lease arrangement and the idea of a new car every 3 years is attractive to some people

Things may be different going forward as people's fixed rate deals start to run out. My car is 11 years old and I have no plans to change it for the foreseeable future.

No. The greenest car is the one that already exists.

volkswagen for instance are currently testing a range of small petrol cars yet to be brought into manufacture, so they aren’t all in on batteries. As I say, that’s not what I’ve heard from the manufacturers I deal with, it is perceived a stop gap.

we were all pushed into diesels in the mid 00’s as we were lead to believe it was better for the environment because we cared about nox emissions then. There is a firm belief within manufacturers electric will be similar. It WILL have its place, I’m not saying it won’t, but it isn’t the cure all. Mainly because of the mining issues and the recycling issues. Yes you can replace a cell, but what do you do with that old cell and what do you do to create a new one?

You’ve Ford discontinuing the fiesta because they can’t make it as an affordable small car for the masses. Everyday cars like focus’s and golf’s are creeping up to luxury car costs. It’s certainly going to be an interesting time for the entire car market and car ownership model.

Well they're greener than ICE and every manufacturer is changing their entire production infrastructure and supply chains so I'd suggest they're not investing billions on a whim or stopgap solution.

Batteries are here for the foreseeable future and rightly so.

i do agree. It’s very short sighted of them, I’ve helped a few people argue it with their manufacturer. Some have won some haven’t. others have issues but bmw seem to be the worse for shrugging it off. Which is not what you would expect from a premium item.

i know of a few that just got them running enough, fault codes cleared and they ended up we buy any car’d.

yes they are like a whole bank of little batteries, so yes you can just replace the dead cell.

don’t get me wrong me and the manufacturers I’ve worked with agree there’s a purpose for electric cars and batteries. But they aren’t they green bullet they are reported to be. It’s a stopgap.