After a bit of advice, has anyone used companies other than MINI finance to buy their car on an agreement with a final balloon payment, otherwise known as PCP I believe.
If so who did you use or who would you recommend?
Just the MINI finance package is seeming a little high with the APR, so I want something to compare against and bargain with
Sainsbury's Bank was doing some good deals and you do not have to buy the car through them but will do a PCP on a car from your favourite dealer but at a very slightly higher APR. Would be worth looking at their website
I got a quote from a company called Sprint Contracts - Trade Price Car Leasing and Contract Hire - All Makes and Models - who did a good deal on my colleague's Nissan 350z. On a PCP with a £1000 deposit they came out about £3 or £4 pounds a month cheaper than MINI finance. Car gets delivered to your door, and they were spot on with my mate.
Ended up going with the dealer because they were just round the corner and I have had good service so far. Might be worth a try though as they were the cheapest that we could find and we did quite a bit of research
alliance & leicester do one, not sure how the rates are these days. pcp is an expensive way to finance a car though, you're much better going for straight hp if you can't manage a personal loan
PCP can be a bit high on APR against loans but they do have advantages , like you can get a higher spec car for a lower monthly payment and once you have paid 50% of overall price you can just hand the keys back and walk away , so gives some flexibilities that you do not have with other personal loans.
you can do that with hp too - i did it on a fiesta that i was in negative equity with before my first mini. one thing to watch with pcp is the excess mileage charge which can be very high in some cases
This will hopefully work out well for me. My annual mileage is usually pretty high (circa 25k) but it can also be very low some years. Have just taken out PCP on 10k a year agreement which keeps my monthly payments low for a brand new car, and will pay the excess mileage at the end. MINI excess charges are very low, mine is less then 2p per mile, the advantage being that if I do end up with a high mileage car when I choose to trade in I can just hand it back. Have got fed up with trying to sell quite young cars with high mileage. To buy my car on a straight loan/finance would be costing me almost £100 a month more. The other thing I found was using this package the monthly payment is less if I buy new than if I buy 12 month old, higher GFV. So fingers crossed it doesn't all backfire on me. This said the APR did worry me a bit, but if you sign up I think the key is to play the system as is suggested above, get out early and not pay the final balloon payment etc.
If you go to a third party and there is a possibilty you will exceed the mileage allowance check the charges, it is the norm for them to be over 10p/mile.
I've had that happen to me before where the car was worth less than the final payment so I walked away.
the good thing about MINI so far is that its always been worth more than the final payment, but I see those days been short lived, so for me I think the full finance deal might be better next time.
its not me, its the GF thats looking to buy, so i don't know off the top of my head what it is, I know it was 12% or there about.
compared to loans which are sitting around 6% I thought it was very high, so wanted to compare to a competitive PCP scheme to knock them down to a realistic level.
The tough call is the high mileage that you do, sometimes it might make more sense to just lease a simple spec car for a flat fee each month and have no connection to it, but then at the end of the day why buy a MINI, why not buy a Focus and have no emotional attachment
its not easy for anyone to buy or sell a MINI, as we all get far too emotional about these chunks of metal
Agree with Humph - you pay a lot less than a normal loan/finance, and only need a small deposit. i think the APR on mine worked out at about 11%, but don't look at this, just at what you can afford a month. I am on 15K miles a year, but it is only about £30 per 1000 miles if you go over.
The GFV on a MCC with decent spec (Chili pack, DSC etc) was about £8600, so unless the bottom drops out of the market you should make a decent amount back for the next one should you make the final payment.
The way I look at it, I'll be driving an £18k car for just over £300 a month with only £1k down. Can't get a loan like that over 3 years!!!
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