I hope you're right. We don't need any more economic pain and ultimately we all suffer - we are all consumers buying stuff, and also selling stuff in our professional lives. Not just cars of course, across the board. If car prices continue to fall, this is an indicator that everything is still going down, and is bad news all round.

The point I made about the car in the OP is that it was new to the market in January and presumably priced to sell then, and it has dropped twice, by substantial amounts, in the last six weeks.

Another thing I've noticed recently is that the number of big petrol cars for sale that I've been watching has dropped a lot. While the cars around are priced lower than say November, there are less of them around. Pre Xmas, I'd type in basic search criteria into various websites and tons of cars would spill out. You could be really picky about spec and colour etc, and still have a choice of really clean low mileage cars. Now there are maybe 30% less in total, and it seems even fewer cars that really read well in the ads.

New car production has been cut massively, so slowly but surely the glut of over-supply which was driving prices down at an even faster rate than pure recessionary forces is soon going to impact on the used market and will help to steady prices.

The other thing is the road tax break you mention, which is 23rd March 2006 to be precise. Before this date, high CO2 cars are around £200pa, and after that date they go up to over £400pa. Significantly, that date is three years ago next month - the time when lease cars will be turned out on to the market. So after March 2009, a lot more of the nice used cars around will be at the higher tax rate. And ironically, the S4 I referred to in the OP was registered on 29th March 2006, on the wrong side by six days!

 

On Autotrader the number of cars for sale had fallen by around 50,000 between the beginning of December and now. This week is the first time in ages the number of cars for sale has gone up.

Price falls seem to have slowed.

I was talking to Marcus Fothergill today (Google him if you love exotic cars) he has knocked £30k of a Lambo and £3k of a 911 Turbo that was already in the 20s.

He also said that good quality stock had dried up. He said he was with the local Range Rover dealer who has been unable to shift new cars, but has had a bonanza time with second hand cars and has now run out of stock. And there are none to be had in the auctions.

As the stock stops flowing prices will harden.

Also my local VW dealer 'claims' that this January was inexplicably their best ever sales month, although Feburuary has been quiet.

Finally I get a hint that 911 GT3 MkIIs have edged up a little, about £2k over the past six months for similar quality cars!

Spooky 'Internet Tyre Kicker' Mulder

 

Quite a few of the Independant Porsche dealers are also saying they have sold most of the stock they had and are finding it very difficult to get good, new stock in.