A lot of people on Motability don’t need a new car every 3 years, my last car was almost 20 years old when I scrapped it.
I agree. We are leaving the scheme and only buying new because we can get the VAT off which, along with the VED exemption and the further discount I negotiated, gave me a near 40% discount. As a result, we can buy new for the same price as a used one. However, if we couldn’t get the VAT off I would buy used without hesitation, as the vast majority of private motorists do.
The cheapest car that I ever ran was a 7 year old BMW 750i Sport. Although the 4.4 litre V8 made it a bit thirsty on fuel, I kept it for just over a year and actually sold it for a few hundred pounds more than I’d paid for it. Deducting the maintenance & insurance costs, it cost me just over £1k to run the car. A base model city car with zero AP through Motability would have cost four times as much to run over that same time period, and I know which car I would have preferred to drive around in during that year 😂