The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

It’s been a busy week this week, I attended a round table discussion hosted by Motor Finance, the journal of the industry and one for which I have written a regular column for many years. This was followed by the annual dinner of the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA), attended by 1400 guests, all movers and shakers in the finance and leasing industry. Recession – what recession? Anyway, going back to the round table, one of the main items on the agenda was the new EU Consumer Credit Read more »

The AA has suggested that the way we pay for Road Fund Licences be changed to a monthly direct debit system whilst retaining the option to pay annually, in a similar way to TV licences. As they pointed out through their head of public affairs, Paul Watters, ‘We always favour methods that make payment easier.’ It therefore makes sense to introduce a method that helps to collect more of the overdue licences especially as the latest Government figures show that road tax evasion has increased by Read more »

This year has been a bit of a struggle for many industry sectors but not so much for the motor industry. Following the scrappage scheme it was expected that the motor industry would contract and dealerships close, something I personally didn’t think would happen. In anticipation of a potential downturn the manufacturers started to scale down production in 2008/9, some would say too far, as virtually every new car drifted out to long delivery lead times as demand remained relatively high. This Read more »

During many of my discussions and presentations it is often clear that those using vehicle finance or personal loans think that there is some sort of master format that means they don’t have to bother reading it. Those that may understand that this isn’t the case may ask which terms are important, the ones they need to read? Whether it is only necessary to understand the terms in a lease as opposed to a personal loan. The fact is that EVERY term in a contract is important and should be read and Read more »

If you were to have some major surgery, I’m sure you would need to know that the person carrying out the work was a qualified and capable surgeon with a history of successful operations. If not you may end up a paraplegic or worse still not survive the operation, so I’d say that it was quite important to feel confident that you are using a professional who is good at his job. On the other hand you may have a faulty gas appliance and need a repair carried out. Who would you call in to carry out the Read more »

Insurance and fuel duty increases have been blamed for the inflation busting increase of 6.3% announced by the RAC in their Cost of Motoring Index. The average cost has increased by £346 over last year’s cost taking it up to £6,000. Depreciation has also had an effect although some costs such as Vehicle Excise Duty (car tax) and car finance have dropped. The annual study assesses the running costs of 17 new cars from the Toyota Yaris to the Land Rover Discovery. Each model’s bills are weighted Read more »

I’ve heard today that VW have slipped back on deliveries even further on the new Passat CC’s, that we have on order. Deliveries of cars ordered as long ago as September have now slipped back to February/March next year. Touareg’s on order have also slipped back to March. Considering the fact that we were quoted deliveries for end of November this is a disgrace but even worse we still don’t have specific delivery dates. Typical of many manufacturers the marketing team decided Read more »

Not only is my blog still number one in the world on Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, Ask Jeeves and AOL when you search on the expression ‘car finance blog’ (on Google I am number one out of 77 million I’ve now found that I am 27th in the world on Yahoo if you search the expression ‘finance blog’ out of 1.6 billion. Not bad eh!

Talk about left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing! VW has had some great deals towards the end of this year. Demand was great but they hadn’t realised that when they promote a car they should make sure that they can meet demand – sounds a bit logical to me. But no, that would be far too simple and obvious so now we have some very unhappy customers who are still not being told when they can expect to receive their Passat CC’s or Touareg’s even though they were originally told Read more »

I was talking to a client recently after he had been to a dealer for a test drive. Whilst there, he was shown a ‘pre-registered’ car that had just 10 miles on the clock and was £3,000 less than the list price. He was interested in the car and asked my advice and as this is quite a common occurrence I thought I would share the facts with readers of my blog. First of all there is no such thing as a pre-registered car with respect to dealers. This was made illegal by Stephen Byers at the time he was Trade & Read more »