The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

The credit system in the UK is in need of a really good shake up. Credit decisions seem to be made based on some very iffy information and totally illogical. Take two people doing similar jobs, earning the same amount of money who both apply for credit on similar cars. The first client has a perfect, unblemished record. He has a mortgage and a couple of Read more »

Buy or lease a new or used car and you’re pretty much guaranteed a 3 year period of fairly low cost motoring, subject to the car of course and your annual mileage. But you have a new car that will have on average maybe 2 services, that can be carried out by a non franchised dealer and maybe a couple of tyres. Compare that with the rocketing costs of Read more »

Now here’s an interesting scenario. As I’ve widely reported over the last 18 months or so deliveries of new cars have become a nightmare. All too often the dealer has called and said that delivery has been delayed not just by a couple of weeks but in some cases months. In most cases we’ve been able to get around the problem by extending the current Read more »

Years ago, when I always bought used cars, and had a mechanical problem I used to dread going into a garage and explaining the fault because I knew I would be met by a sharp intake of breath by the mechanic and ‘Do you want me to do a quick bodge job or do you want me to sort it out properly?’ After which he would explain the problem in technical Read more »

Image via Wikipedia

There has been a shocking rise in car thefts. It is the first time car thefts have increased in almost 20 years. The amount of money available to spend on car crime has been either slashed or cut completely according to the police. The Association of Chief Police Officers has said that things are likely to get worse as annual funding of £300,000 to its Read more »

The latest, and potential ongoing, problems with the US economy means that the future of the US dollar is becoming a lot less predictable. One of the downsides to this is the global use of the US dollar to set oil prices. Whilst countries around the world have pushed to change this method of establishing prices it looks as though we’re stuck with it for the Read more »

Insight Part 2: Whilst I’m in the mood to expose some of the trade secrets that lay behind contract hire rates let me delve a little deeper into the area of vehicle pricing and depreciation. Fleet News recently reported some incredible increases in new car costs, mainly as a result of the exchange rate against the Euro. Since January 2008, according to Read more »

Insight Part 1: I’m often asked why there can be some incredible differences between the contract hire rental rates quoted by different companies advertising on the Internet. There is no simple answer to this question, in some respects it is not dissimilar to the answer that an insurance company would give as to why insurance premiums can be Read more »

This is now getting bloody monotonous! Every week I seem to read something about warranty claims that aren’t being honoured by the dealer or manufacturer because the claim has been made just outside the warranty period or mileage. Last week it was the Guardian, this week it’s What Car that have made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end! Read more »

If you are a regular reader of my postings you know that I rage on about simply taking the cheapest lease rate. In a recent article in Fleet News I found that I wasn’t the only one holding these views, most of the leasing companies do also. In fact it seems that the reason why many large lessors have pulled out of the broker market is that they don’t Read more »