Cam, and who said BMW's hold there value, I bet you want be buying another one. I to had a 92k BM sold it 18 months later with 25,000k's on clock for 65k in mint condition. I hate dealers.

Having worked in thte trade, and also traded in plenty of cars, I have a few insights into the business of car trading.

Its a very basic supply and demand relationship. Used car values have fallen across the board over the last 5 -10 years. There are several reasons for this. One is the availbility of cheap new cars - look at what you can get under $20k these days diveaway with air etc. Even young kids with a steady job can afford a new car. Secondly, new cars have been selling furiously recently, many new brands have entered the OZ market and interest rates are low, meaning lots of trade-ins and not many people to buy them. Thirdly, dealer costs are increasing as manufacturers want more professionalism, flash premises etc. Did you know that servicing and used cars are the only parts of dealers that really make money - new cars tend to just cover costs, unless you are one of those lucky franchises with a captive, less price sensitive market eg Benz, BMw etc.

Fourthly, if you are selling plenty of new cars, you are getting lots of trades but don't really need them or have to cut margins to get turnover - so you offer only as much for trades as you need to sell the new cars you can get hold of. When you are not desperate for sales, you don't want to (and shouldn't compete hard to make) a sale - it just doesn't make good business sense.

Expensive Daewoo is also offering its dealers a range of incentives at the moment to win deals, because it can afford to and it wants to to beat Toyota. It also has the capacity - its higher volume means its cost per unit is lower, and it's ramping up production as well. Ford has neither the cash nor the reason to provide price support on new car deals.

Buying a car is just a business transaction, no matter how it feels to you - and the price is elastic in relation to demand at the time. If the new car market crashes, just watch how the dynamics will change. Don't hold your breath, though.

If you want the extra money, sell privately.

A guy at work bought a new XT e-gas wagon. He had an EB I6 Fairmont wagon (stock) with about 320 000km on the clock but was in good cond (for a vehicle with that many km). The Ford dealer didn't want to know about his EB, he went around the corner to another dealer that only sells used vehicles and they gave him $4000 on the spot! I couldn't believe it. I thought he would be battling to get $1500 - $2000 tops. I sold my EB I6 GLi sedan (180000km lowered 17s stereo etc) a month or so earlier and struggled to get $4500 privately.

hey Ross,

what was that dealer that bought the car off him??

Ours is the NA so there's $8-$10,000 difference from the Turbo but after optioning the thing up, we were paying way more than originally planned. $366 a fortnight. Better than the AU which was $408 so we were on a winner.

Anyway.....I supposed we were lucky to get what we did for the black beauty.

AU III VCT - $32,500 trade-in. 8 months old, 26,000k's on the clock. Just ran in, lol. : ) Couple of weeks later and I would have been lucky to get $27,000 for her. Who wants the AU wnen the BA is out and about the same price. "Umm, Gee whiz, I'll take the newbie". $25,000 would have been a good price at the auctions as the value of the AU became non-existant overnight.