How long to keep car I don't like?! (to minimise money lost)

[MarsBar1993]

Posting in chat for traffic and/or more life experiences and advice

Long story short our old reliable trusty car broke down and will need engine rebuilt. My DH will do this. In the meantime, I/we needed a car. (and were due to get a second car anyway, just hurried along by our sole car breaking)

Budget was £8,000/£9,000 but due to not finding the models of car DH liked, we decided to up the budget and I bought one for £12,000.00 using a bank loan of £250 a month.

We have had the new car for around 2 months now, and I just don't like it. I can't put my finger on it , I just don't. We buy any car offering £7,500 : (

Naïve me thought that by spending a chunk of money on the car I would automatically love it but this has not happened.

In experiences does trading cars in when buying a new car tend to offer more money?

I am wondering whether to:

a) Suck it up, pay off the loan over 5 years and keep the car for that long and just grin and bear it.
b) Trade it in now at a loss.
c) Trade it in in 6 months/a year - would waiting a bit of time minimize the money lost? Ie it's dropped in value now but would the drop in value slow down?

If it wasn’t brand new I’d be surprised if it had lost over £4k of value in 2 months??

Can you sell it privately and use the money to buy a car you do like? You may have to suck up some loss but surely not over 1/3 of the value.

You are not going to get a good price from webuyanycardotcom
Sell it privately

How important is it to like the car??? If it is fit for purpose does it really matter?

@modgepodge I bought it from a car supermarket and comparisons of cars like for like on autotrader, I probably over paid by about £1,000.00.

@Cappuccinfortwo Fair point! But I just feel for paying £250 a month shouldnt I be paying it towards something I really like?

Although that is a good way of looking at it, as long as its reliable and gets me from a to b...

If you sell privately on autotrader you will only loose about 1-2k maximum. I wouldn't wait as prices for 2nd hand cars are dropping.

What car is it out of interest? It could be maybe some new alloys or an upgrade may help?

Maybe you will grow to love it? Cars (like anything) take a bit of getting used to. Try to view the car in relation to its safety features or ability to fit all family members in

True but then again, you could reframe it by spending the money you would save on not changing on something you like! Maybe I'm biased though as I have only ever had one car and I have no feelings about it either way!

We buy any car quoted me £8k on something I sold for £17k to a garage.

@WarningOfGails Interesting!

I don't mind making a loss of say £1,000- £1,500, it would still annoy me but if I could get £10,500 - £11,000 from a garage towards a different car, I think I would be happier.

Maybe I'll make a trip to a few garages this weekend for their thoughts.

Sell it on Autotrader asap. If you lose £1k, then so be it. It's not the most expensive mistake anyone had ever made.

We buy cars outright. Dh knows alot about cars and worked in the industry years ago. He took me to see hybrids. I drove a Yaris that was like a tank, no power. I got in the Hyundai and loved it immediately. You might not have liked it. I did. It's that simple. Sell it. Buy something you do like. Go for some test drives of other cars now.

I work at a small independent car dealer, when valuing cars we check WBAC too as most customers will do so before they come to us, they can definitely change and influence the market as they're just so big. Sometimes we can't get anywhere near their prices and sometimes we are thousands more. For example we bought a car for £44000 in Dec and WBAC valued it at £34,000z At the moment they're offering stupidly low prices and we can always beat them. But January is usually the busiest month in the motor industry and stock will become scarcer as the month goes on pushing prices up. I would use WBAC as a benchmark and see when it starts going up, you'll probably find they offer more in 2-3 weeks, it could be significantly more if the market acts as it usually does in January (I would say the market is returning to a more normal pattern now following the craziness of post Covid motor industry).

Personally if I really hated a car I would be looking to change if it was possible.