iwb100

But I think you are mistaking premium for quality. The Mercedes GLS is an absolutely beautiful and quality 7 seater SUV. It’s amazing. It’s starts at £74K. The GLB is a stretched GLA, built in Mexico. When you consider that it costs £35K at starting point or thereabouts and obviously that includes the Mercedes badge premium, what quality do you think they are really using for a seven seater SUV costing well under half their actual premium one? It looks nice inside but there are definite corners cut and is the build quality as good as the Kodiaq? No. Nor is the practicality. Or the space. The thing with premium badge cars is if they introduce a model at an equivalent price to less premium badge cars it means they’ve cut costs to get it out. They don’t give them away.

In this case specifically I disagree. The GLB is not a better car than the Kodiaq. Not in any way other than interior finish quality. Obviously it is better in that regard. But it’s smaller. Has a significantly smaller boot and much less storage space in the cabin. To my eyes it looks silly like a stretched hatch which is more or less what it is. If you need a 7 seater then I would not go GLB. If you want a merc badge there are much better options.

I just mean that the PCP deals themselves are rarely inherently good or bad. Obviously lower APR is better. But the difference maker is price of your exchange and price of the new one. Those are where the best value lies. And that’s the same whether buying with cash or via PCP.

Is that if you ordered the sleep package? Heard the same but I don’t have it on my order. Still wouldn’t buy a GLB like…but I do think they are vaguely ridiculous. Jamming a 7 seater into a small car platform is a bit silly.

With PCP the variables are: Price of the car (or discount you can get off list price) APR Guaranteed future value Part Exchange Value (if part exing) The only two variables that a dealer can work with are any discount they offer which eats into their commission and the part ex valuation which they have little room on beyond market price. The GFV and APR are set by the manufacturer and finance company (the days of the big German dealers bumping residuals up to silly amounts to hit targets are long gone). So in reality they only two things that matter are the price of the car and the APR. In terms of the quality of a PCP deal. Right now neither price or APR are good. So there are no good PCP deals. The reason people can get much lower monthly payments now is purely because the second hand market is so insanely high that people have way more equity to roll into a new deal than normal. In my PCP history I started off with a Toyota Yaris went to a golf then a Karoq Edition 4x4 and now (eventually) a Sportline Kodiaq. Since the golf I have considerably reduced my payments each time. This is due to a deal on the Karoq I got. The Kodiaq is lower purely because I had so much equity in the Karoq to roll in. My wife had a T Roc and that was valued by seat at basically the price we bought it for over 2 years ago. Absolutely insane. So the new arona is costing very little. Neither car was on a 0% deal or competitively priced and the discounts were just the usual ones I guess (though seat were very generous with their discounting) but the market is such that you can just lower payments with your equity. Next time round in braced for very high monthly’s as we will no doubt not have the equity and I guess will be looking for something that plugs in….

Yeah I mean I get you can pay the balloon and sell and then pocket the cash. But then what…you still need a car. Ive never put a single penny of my own money down on a pcp deposit. Always rolled equity or had a fully owned second hand car that I used to part exchange. And I treat it like a lease. And the end any equity is a bonus to reduce the next deal. Because of the situation I can go from my Karoq into a new sportline kodiaq for a lower monthly payment. Can’t complain with that.

Why is it better to buy outright? It would depend on your situation. If you want a new car then it makes sense to roll the equity in and save your monthly costs. You have that equity in the new car. Are you potentially going to ‘lost it’ at the end - yep. But what it’s doing is giving you a better car for less money. If you view PCP as an asset then it’s not a good idea. If you view it as a lease with options then the benefit is positive equity lets you roll on. You get the equity back in reduced payments or a better car for the next three or four years. But of course it will potentially go the opposite way next time but that’s the PCP game. Whether you clear the finance and keep the car or buy new the net gain for you is the same unless you now don’t need a car and want to realise the cash value….

Yeah I get that. It’s not manufacturers. And as you say VED can change anyway. But the price you pay should be what is reflected somehow rather than a long build process leading to inadvertently tripping over the threshold due to price rises. As for your suggestion it’s a very good one. A perfect one in fact. Far too sensible for the current mob in charge but there we go…

I bet he borrows a Kia Rio for his VED calculation….

I blame the government more than manufacturers…

Average cost of new cars actually purchased is upper mid 30’s I believe which does seem to make £40K seem ridiculous. However I still sort of get it, in that a lot of people have no choice and buy a polo or a Leon or a bog standard golf and whilst those cars are absolutely fine the kodiaq is substantially bigger and better. I guess that we are paying a premium based on a cost choice rather than some weird definition of luxury. I still think you can find just about every type of car under £40K it’s just a choice to go above it. I do think though that otr price should be locked in at order. It’s a nonsense that it is done at registration as if someone has picked options below 40 why should they be penalised if prices go up in the year it takes Skoda to build their car.

The Ateca and Tarraco are not built in Spain and seem to have very long waits. Whereas they were confident an Arona would be a quick, that is made in Spain. The Cupras made in Spain have a huge wait though. Seems to be down to logistics of parts and supply chains rather than anything else.

Ordered a Seat Arona for my wife in mid March. Has a build week assigned for 18th April. Crazy how some cars are so quick….

Awaiting update on mine but was in build week still last week…..

New ICE cars will be banned. Not second hand ones. PHEV are worse for the carbon emissions than Ice cars if not charged due to battery production and extra weight. EU are about to crack down on them and we will probably follow. By 2030 doubt PHEV will still exist in new cars.

They are stopping selling petrol and diesel new cars in 2030 in U.K. When I get Kodiak it will last a till close enough to the point where I’d not want to get another fossil fuel car given by then residual values will be very uncertain to say the least. Might change my mind but feel that by 2026/7 it will be too risky to take on another petrol and we are all going to be pushed into EVs like it or not. By then many of the infrastructure issues should be ironed out and hopefully more choice and lower prices.

Side assist being pulled off all VAG cars last time I heard. So yeah could be a wait. Uses a lot of precious chips apparently. Couldn’t order anything with it I don’t think now. Or at least blind spot monitoring - which apparently is chip hungry. Will be my last petrol too. Also down for provisional June build.

Yeah I always ended with stock cars or pre reg. Apart from one factory order with VW in the past. Just wondered how it was historically. My old Golf order was about 6-7 weeks iirc. My dad ordered an Audi once and was bang on 6 weeks. But Kodiaq is a bigger car so just wondered what that looked like normally. Cheers.

Having never ordered a new Skoda before I’m curious as to what the wait time is in normal circumstances - pre chip shortage and war…if you factory ordered a kodiaq in say 2018 what sort of wait time would you expect?

That’s the same update they’ve been sending to people for a month.

I mean I doubt it. Because chips. But who knows the full situation. The factory in Ukraine started to remake the harnesses too this week. But the problem is all the correspondence they send is completely generic. My wife has a seat arona new build order in and we were told by the dealer that the arona is built in Spain and not affected at all by Ukraine. But still we got the letter saying it was. Communication and customer management needs to be better.

Skoda have said in their previous press releases that the cars supplied with wiring harnesses from the Ukraine are the Kamiq, Scala and Enyaq. Whilst obviously it’s going to add more disruption on top of the semiconductor I’m not sure a dealer should be so flippant. Yes the war is awful. And a delay to a car delivery pales into insignificance in that respect. But I doubt Skoda would be so ‘understanding’ in reverse if our payments were months late due to ‘a war’ and we couldn’t tell them when we’d next pay them. Not that you know the world situation isn’t a good reason for delay. It is. It’s just that Skoda should really be able to give some proper timeframes to people. Even if they are realistic and it’s an awful situation and they have to tell people it will be a year then at least they’d be communicating. But the real problem is not the delay but the fact they have no real systems in place to manage their customers. I remember a few years back my dad ordered a car, can’t remember which and he could watch it being built via online video etc. Now it’s just a shambolic mess of relying on your dealer to update and relying on Skoda UK to tell them the score. That for me is the failing. As customers we should be able to log in and track our orders. That’s a basic. It’s 2022. You’ve been able to track orders online for 20 odd years. And that doesn’t have anything to do with the chip shortage or a war!

Yeah these are just standard comms that have been going out for months now. Everyone gets one. Sorry we don’t know when your car will be built. People got the letter and picked up their new car the next day. It’s just generic stuff.

October to March isn’t too bad. I really wish I’d added the family pack to my order. What a foolish thing not to do. Roller blinds would make such a difference. Ah well.

Looks mint. Love race blue. Every day I question whether I should have gone for that over black. But that’s what happens. And in the months of further waiting I will change my mind at least 30 more times. When did you order?