The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

I can’t remember writing about the emissions based parking charges introduced by Richmond council in South West London although I seem to remember reading about it somewhere. Anyway, forget it as it’s just been scrapped. The scrapping of the scheme flies in the face of those that argue that local authorities and central Government use the ‘green argument’ as a means to screw more money out of the motorist when Read more »

As companies look at various ways to raise money, as we slowly emerge from recession, some are now looking at their company cars as a possible way to raise funds for expansion. For those that don’t want to approach their bank to increase their borrowings this could be a good alternative. The scheme, known as sale and leaseback, is an arrangement between a leasing company and the customer whereby the leasing Read more »

Even without the full increase in fuel duty we are seeing a constant increase in fuel cost. Petrol rose by 23% (21 pence per litre) last year whilst diesel increased by 13% (13 pence per litre) and we have already seen fuel increase by about 8 pence per litre this year. On average petrol increased every 2 weeks and as the increase was spread over the year it hasn’t led to serious discontent. But with fuel set to rise Read more »

There has been an upsurge in companies known as claims management companies who claim to rid you of credit card and loan debt by claiming that contracts are ‘unenforceable’. In an investigation the BBC found that some firms were claiming very high success rates as high as 93% but when pushed could not provide evidence of anything like that. They were also accused of using misleading statements by Read more »

Cleaning up your credit file has never been more important. Less money is available to lend which means that you really must make sure that you have no errors on your file and anything that can be corrected is corrected before you apply for finance. Even using a bad broker, who makes multiple applications to several finance companies, using your single finance application, can cause you to have your credit Read more »

 Well here we are into a new year already. Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year celebration. Last year wasn’t as good as it should have been but didn’t end up as bad as I thought it might do due to an enthusiastic flurry in December. Unlike the last recession, during which we struggled to find clients that wanted to take out finance, I had about 5 times as many people looking for finance in this recession than I Read more »

It looks as though we may have seen the last of one of our more popular lease brands, Saab. Talks had been taking place to sell GM’s money losing brand to Spyker Cars NV but these have now broken down and whilst I have read that the Swedish have tried to put together a package to save their famous brand it now looks very unlikely.  By Graham Hill

Warnings have been issued to employees that are considering a cash for car option. The warning from the boss of Pendragon Contracts, Neal Francis was making the point that lenders are more likely to consider a company application for finance either for company vehicles or as part of their salary sacrifice scheme. He pointed out that the market had changed significantly and individual applications are not as Read more »

It would seem that some of the carbon friendly effects of the recession are better management of family vehicles and in many cases a reduction in the number of vehicles being driven by the family. Added to which many employees are opting for cash for cars in place of the old company car scheme, effectively seen as increasing their income, as they now use the family car which they had anyway and was Read more »

VAT is about to increase as of 1^st January 2010. This means that there are going to be some very strange things happening between now and the end of the year in order to entice you to part with your dosh well in advance of your new car being delivered. If you are buying a new car for cash, that won’t be delivered until early next year, you may want to pay for the car in December in order to save some of the VAT. It is Read more »