Shopping around for a car need not cost you an arm and a leg, even in the current difficult financial situation. With a few simple and straight forward tips, you can keep down the cost of buying your next used car. We sell used cars in Southport and would like to offer you some of our advice.

1) Look for a used car instead of a car that has been driven straight off the production line. Brand new cars very quickly loose a lot of their purchase value – as they are being driven out of the dealer’s showroom in fact. Not only in taxes, saved especially for new cars, but also in the value. Once a car has been used, even for just a few miles, it’s lost some of it’s value.

2) Look for new cars that have been used as dealer’s demonstration vehicles. The garages selling these ex-demo cars will have looked after them well – they want the cars to give a good impression to buyers. But because they have been used, even if only for a hundred miles, their value is much less. Therefore, the car showroom is willing to offer customers a huge discount for you to take the car off their hands.

3) Buy at the end of the month. If you are buying a used car or a new car from a car salesroom, then the chances are high that the salesman is working to targets. Especially in the current difficult financial climate when people aren’t spending, salesmen will frequently be missing their targets and keen to make as many sales as possible, especially just before the targets end at the end of the month. Whilst they will be keener to force a sale onto would be buyers, they will also be keener to negotiate the sale to ensure that it does run to completion and you don’t walk away. Work this valuable knowledge to your advantage to get the best deal possible.

4) Do your homework. Look around for suitable used cars that interest you locally and then check prices in other sales rooms, the press and industry magazines. Make sure that the screen prices you are being quoted are comparable to those shown elsewherefor similar vehicles.

5) Sort your finance the proper way, not the lazy way . Don’t just accept the finance offered by the salesroomrep, or even finance from car loan specialists. An unsecured bank loan may be cheaper in the long term. Ask your bank for an illustration of how much the repayments would be on the likely loan you would need and then compare that to the cost of the loan from the car salesroom.

6) Be wary of add ons – many car sales rooms increase the price a lot, and their profits substantially, by offering warranties for everything imaginable under the sun. Maintenance, loss of value if the car is stolen, paintwork protection etc. Ask yourself, do you really need to insure your car against all of these possibilities?

Buying a new or used car need not be very expensive. Selling Southport used cars, we will offer you friendly and honest support and advice – and we hope that your local dealer will help you in the same way. Do your homework first and buy at the right time and you might get an excellent deal.

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