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Went to see a blue 2011 A3 Sportback at smallish dealer's in Sussex yesterday. Originally an £18k car plus £10k spent on extras, e.g. leather heated seats (extra for heaters), paint finish, special wheels finish, satnav (£1600 from VAG!). Sticker price today £13.5k. So it's lost more than half its £28k original value .. all because of add-ons. Crazy waste of money, I thought. Then I opened boot; no spare wheel or even a space saver, just foam cannister. Spending maybe £100 in the first place just on a space saver would have made more sense than all the flash stuff, surely. And when I sat on the leather it felt so cold, and reminded me why I prefer fabric seats. The murky grey finish on nasty looking plastic in front of gear selector was bubbling up because, said the salesman, of a make-up spillage. My 6 year old A3 looks nicer, especially the walnut cappings trim; I shall keep it.
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I remember when I bought my A4 Cab having a chat with the sales guy over the options.
He basically told me that they would be worth 10% of what I paid for them at trade in time, but some were must haves. In my case he said nearly all A4 cabs have leather, so if you don't then it will really affect the value at resale time, but most of the other stuff would made no difference
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So basically, most Audi owners are morons?
I thought that was obvious but confirmation is always welcome :-)
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I had an Audi A4 Avant 2.5 diesel back around the late 90s / early noughties. Nice place to sit but horribly nose heavy understeery thing. Quick enough in a straight line but it didn't like fast corners. Ate front tyres too.
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>> So basically, most Audi owners are morons?
Does that include me? I don't own the A3 I drive - company/lease vehicle.
But I did spec about £5k of options including full leather, sat nav, heated seats, upgraded stereo, folding/dimming door mirrors, pearlescent paint, ambient lighting, made the bi-xenons HID lights adaptive.
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The 2012 A3 Sportback I bought for my ex's daughter has heated (fabric) seats. I think they were a £200 extra, probably adding nothing to the value when I bought it from the lease company earlier this year. And now need to move it on.
Anyone want a nice 330 convertible with unheated leather seats. Going cheap on Black Sunday because I have seen a nice 330 Touring to replace it?
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The list price of the heated seats on mine were around £200. The monthly rental for me was a few pounds more per month.
I also forgot I'd added privacy glass and the comfort pack with parking system plus (so auto dimming rear view mirror, cruise control and parking sensors plus which are front/rear and use the display as well). Cheaper to get it all as the comfort pack than individually.
What I ruled out were progressive steering and adaptive dampers. Had the latter on the Passat CC (Very good) and the progressive steering impressed on a Golf GTD.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sat 29 Nov 14 at 23:45
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I have no idea what were extras on my SE edition. Auto dimming rear view & side mirrors, reverse parking sensors, decent wireless set, dual zone climate control, full size spare ( I think). Maybe these were all standard on the SE? Although another 150 horses and an extra forward gear would have been nice options.....
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IMHO the 'just a few pounds a month' argument for optional extras on a lease car follows the same logic as a Redefusion telly.....
IIRC, the lease companies my employer uses in the UK load up the cost of any extras on the lease and pro-rate them over the course of that lease i.e. the employee pays for them in their entirety, possibly with interest - they are attributed no residual value whatsoever. The only exceptions being metallic paint, auto and leather.
With the option of variable length leases, my tactic was to go for the 'best' engined car I could (330d versus 320d for instance) over the shortest period (2 years) and to specify only the options I felt I needed. I will admit to having been bemused at colleagues who drove cars with 10K of frippery on them and had to take 4 year leases in order to afford them, then handed them back with the options they'd funded (some of which probably increase resale value) to the lease company at the end.
Each to their own I guess.
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>>I felt I needed. I will admit to having been bemused at colleagues who drove
>> cars with £10K frippery on them and had to take 4 year leases in order to afford them,
Instead of buying car and adding bits here & there it is probably cheper to buy higher up the range and they can come as standard. Works for some makes e.g. Honda, Toyota, but does not for a Porsche, BMW etc where the option list can add 30%-50% the car cost if you get carried away.
A work colleague of my son paid almost £70K for a £45K base priced Porsche Cayman.....easy come easy go Aberdeen contractor. If the base car and the options car sat side by side in a carpark few, apart from the owner & the salesman, would notice few if any of the differences.
Last edited by: Falkirk Bairn on Sun 30 Nov 14 at 07:31
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If you're spending a lot of time in the car, no reason not to make it comfortable! I only ever had two company cars. One was a Mondeo 2.0LX, on which IIRC I specced no extras at all (this was back in 1986, and a surprisingly good car for our needs, albeit a little tinny). The next one, which followed the Mondeo, was a Saab 9-3. I added an upgraded sound system (giving me more speakers, a CD changer and more power), and heated seats. When you cover around 20k a year (of which only just over 3k was on business), the minimal additional cost was quite acceptable.
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I will admit to having
>> been bemused at colleagues who drove cars with 10K of frippery on them and had
>> to take 4 year leases in order to afford them, then handed them back with
>> the options they'd funded (some of which probably increase resale value) to the lease company
>> at the end.
>>
Isn't that the same as everything on the car on a lease? You pay for it and then hand it back, it's just the amounts that differ.
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I could do my job with a company Astra van but they give me an E Class estate. The former would be much cheaper for all parties, but it wouldn't be as nice. Depends what you think is worth paying for and what you don't.
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>> I could do my job with a company Astra van but they give me an
>> E Class estate.
Kind of, but not really. You wouldn't do as many miles as you do now, nor would you be in any shape to perform when you did, nor would your clients be quite so prepared to do business with you when you got there and sullied their car park.
>>The former would be much cheaper for all parties, but it wouldn't
>> be as nice. Depends what you think is worth paying for and what you don't.
All the above is the argument you give the FD when he comes up with that one!
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>>
>> Isn't that the same as everything on the car on a lease? You pay for
>> it and then hand it back, it's just the amounts that differ.
>>
Not quite, for the car 'model' you lease you're funding depreciation and maintenance which can be minimised if you choose wisely. Whereas for the options you're funding the entire cost irrespective of any increase in the residual value from which the leasing company will subsequently benefit. OK if it's GBP500 for some seat heaters and cruise control but when you tick GBP10K worth of options I'd argue not.
As to the options themselves, I'm sure that they are very profitable for manufacturers, many (optional depending on market) features on VAG cars are little more than software features in the ECU (hill hold & tyre pressure monitoring for instance). I doubt that the column stalk with a cruise control switch costs VAG GBP200 more than the one without the feature and the rest is software ?
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>> Not quite, for the car 'model' you lease you're funding depreciation and maintenance which can
>> be minimised if you choose wisely.
That's what I meant, probably didn't explain myself well. Mind you I wouldn't imagine companies cars to be too expensive or there wouldn't really be a benefit.
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I went to the local Tesco's today. The approach road on the site splits into two and one route goes across the length of the front of the building. I took that route. I saw the trolley herder struggling with the line of trolleys he was going to push across the road and towards the front door of the store (to go in the vestibule): He'd got a little bit of slow momentum going and it would have been a nuisance for him if I'd forced him to stop, so I gently stopped my car and bade him to continue across, which he did, with a nod and a smile.
I'd say it would take him about 6 seconds to complete the crossing. He was starting from my left. But when he was in the middle of the manoeuvre, a car decided to overtake me on my right, and had just nosed ahead of mine when it had slam all-on.
It was an Audi A3.
When the guy and his trolleys were out of the way, I continued, rounded the corner to my left and parked, about 25 yards from the storefront. There were other vacant bays dotted about. As I left the bay on foot, I noticed the A3 had parked in the very nearest-to-the-store 'Disabled' bay, and a woman was hot-footing away from it towards the store in a very non-disabled-like fashion.
The tailgate of the A3 was filthy; the numberplate virtually unreadable.
I didn't have many items to buy, and walked out of the store about 15 minutes later. I noted that I thought the same woman was following me out. Getting in my car, I saw that indeed it was - she was heading to the A3. I drove out of my bay, and she reversed round in front of me, so I was behind her. We drove round the RH corner so we were now on the road parallel to the front of the store again.
The road has a zebra crossing aligned with the store's door. As she got to the zebra crossing, a pedestrian coming from the right was already halfway across, so she brought the A3 to a stop. But by the time that pedestrian had just finished crossing, another had stepped on from the right and was by now a good 30% of the way across.
But the woman in the A3 merrily set off, so that the pedestrian almost banged his knee against the side of her rear bumper.
I'd been sorely tempted to write "MY disability is that I'm blind" earlier in the dirt on her tailgate. Wish I had.
Not doing anything to help dilute the stereotyping, is she.
:-(
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Leaving the gym car park on Wednesday night and there's a bit where it goes to one lane next to the building. A car had let a few in front of me through so I flashed for him to come through. Seemed fair.
The car was in the single lane bit (so wide enough for one car) and the car behind (BMW) was tooting his horn. Nowhere I could go so why did he do that apart from me being courteous?
And then in our Tesco car park I was passed by a Fiesta driving slowly and badly manoeuvred. Driver was holding a smart phone and talking looking at it. Steering with other hand. And changing gears (manual car)... Trolleys were part of what she struggled to let pass and also other cars in the other direction.
I caught up as she stopped in a stupid position near the store front. Planned on making her aware she was in the wrong. But now she was holding a second smartphone. So she had stopped (blocking other cars) but the engine was running.... So would she get double points/fine? :-)
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He basically told me that [the options] would be worth 10% of what I paid for them at trade in time...
Isn't the other side of that that the options cost the manufacturer or dealer far less than their list price, so the margin is far greater than on the basic car? That's what's being reflected in the low trade-in value. So the trick is to negotiate on the entire package, not to get £6,000 off the car and give it all back on the options. We didn't pay any extra for our LEC with auto, leather, and heated memory seats, compared with similar cars that lacked some or all of those - but I know the first owner did because I've seen the invoice price.
As RTJ comments, it's a different matter with company cars, where you can see from the outset the true cost of an option. That should be an incentive not to go mad - but not everyone can resist - eh, RTJ?
}:---)
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>> He basically told me that [the options] would be worth 10% of what I paid
>> for them at trade in time...
I don't get this fixation on cost effectiveness, if you are buying a car which you know is going to depreciate, is for your own pleasure, so what? I will not buy a car that does not have cruise control and auto climate control, my choice, my money.
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It's not necessarily about cost effectiveness, ON; just about understanding the true cost before you commit yourself.
Before I ordered my last company car I calculated that in contributions and tax over the three-year term, the cost to me would roughly equal the list price of the options. Of course, I ended up buying the thing after two years, so if, as we suppose, the options made little difference to the retained value, I got them for two-thirds of list. Ten years on, seat heaters, CD changer and boot divider are still working, so I reckon I've had my money's worth there.
Given that BIK tax is higher now than it was then, I'd expect an option now to cost more over three years than its list price - unless it reduces your tax liability by increasing the amount of personal contribution you can offset against BIK. No reason not to take the options though, once you know the total cost and reckon the enhanced pleasure of use (nearly said 'ownership') is worth it.
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Another thing about options is they obviously increase the BIK cost. Which I took into account. But going for a car in a lower BIK bracket (petrol and okay emissions) then the total cost per month was lower.
I know I'll fund the cost of the options over the length of lease (fixed at 3 years unless you do really high mileage and i do low mileage) but these were options I wanted. I didn't need them. And overall I'll be better off by about £50pm compared to the previous care (depends on average mpg though).
And I did price up the same car (A3 saloon) as a Sport instead of S-Line. But adding Xenons, leather, etc. would cost more per month for rental. As these were 'extras' funded by me and not included in base spec.
I also calculated the price to me (ignoring mpg) for exactly the same car apart from it being a manual 150PS TDI. Cost was quite a bit more. Partly because the BIK cost for extras at a higher rate of taxation.
I'm happy with my choice. The ones I might have not gone for simply for the sake of a few £s per month were the upgraded stereo and ambient lighting.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sun 30 Nov 14 at 18:06
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Audi A3 Sportback - short sighted extras - mikeyb
