Quote:
Originally Posted by kiloran
Also noticeable that cars are more expensive down south, and always have been.
Bournemouth/Poole motors typically more expensive than Portsmouth, with Southampton somewhere in the middle. It's been that way as long as I've been buying cars (late 80s onwards). You only start to get bargains way out west or from Birmingham north.
We're currently looking for an EV and they're getting on for 20% cheaper north of the border - of course then there's the issue of getting it back home with a 70 mile motorway range! That's an awful lot of Costa and MaccyD breaks  |
There are several reasons for the anomaly of bornemouth cars being dearer than Portsmouth cars. First and most obvious is that Bournemouth is a popular place for retirees with a high disposable income. This normally means there are a lot of 2-3 year old trade-ins in good condition with low mileage. This pushes up the secondhand value of used cars in the area. Sadly that also attracts the less scrupulous dealers from Southampton to "punt out a lemon" via the trade in Bournemouth and while it may look good, it's actually shot to bits mechanically. Often these cars are bought by retirees that only do a few hundred miles a year so by the time the lemon gives up the ghost, it is long out of any warranty period.
Portsmouth on the other hand tends to be a bit more transparent with cars although there are less than scrupulous dealers there too. Given the historical connection to London (many housing estates were built to cope with London overspill) many rogue cars come from London with low mileage (because you can't do many miles a year crawling along at 8mph in a perpetual traffic jam!) and again are "punted out" to the trade. They are then sold to the public with a limited warranty because the traders know (or at least suspect) they will have problems.
Southampton is a mix of the two with a few of its own "intricacies" shall we say.
I'm sure Alan you know all of this living where you do, this was more for the benefit of those on here that haven't "enjoyed" living in that area.
You're spot-on about cars north of the border being cheaper. About 5 years ago a friend of mine wanted a Lexus LS430. He lived in Cambridge (still does as far as i know) and most local cars to him (when i say local i mean anything up to about 100 miles radius) were in the region of £3-3.5k for the one he wanted.
Including bus, train, taxi and air fares to Glasgow and the fuel home (at an average of 36mpg!
) to Cambridge, the one he bought from just outside Glasgow came in at less than £2k - he sold it a couple of years later for about £2.5k if memory serves and that was with a badly dented fron wing after going green-laning with his brothers! His brothers were in Land-Rovers and he decided the Lexus on high suspension setting was good enough to follow. The dry stone wall that jumped out and hit his front wing thought otherwise though!
Had it not had the body damage (or if he'd fixed it and kept quiet) he would easily have got £3k+ for it locally.
As for buying an EV from Scotland and driving home, do they really only have a 70 mile motorway range?
I'd guess you'd spend more on Costa, Maccy-Ds, Burger King, Starbucks etc on the way back than you'd save, that's assuming the battery is in good enough condition to give the full range and that the chargers were working and available at each service stop. Then there's the time factor. I don't know how long it would need to charge to get the next 70 miles but i used to reckon on Glasgow (or Edinburgh) being ~400 miles to Cadnam and that used to take me 10-12 hours near enough non-stop (except for "Comfort breaks" and a bit of a feed at some point) if the roads were ok.
With a 70 mile range, that means at least 5 charging breaks, even if each is only an hour that makes it 15-17 hours, if it charges longer then obviously that increases. No idea on charging cost but you can bet your life motorway service station charging points will charge (monetarily) at a premium so add that on to overpriced coffee and food every hour or so and suddenly it's a lot cheaper (and less stressful) to run a V12 Jag for the same journey and only have sensible stops. Maybe a V12 Jag is an exaggeration but you get the idea.
Of course, if the range is more sensible like 170 miles it blows my calculations out of the water but probably not by much. It's nearly 3 hours travel time so would be more in line with a sensible break time that you'd be wise to take if driving a "normal" car.
Each to their own and all that but maybe it would be more cost effective to buy a BEV from the midlands or slightly north or even from the deepest depths of Cornwall - again these places are historically cheaper than the south of England but i think the savings would once again be marginal.