Yes indeed - God knows what'll happen to the 2nd hand market for those, in 18 months to 2yrs!

I may be laying in wait for one about then....

Iirc the original deal on the Golf R was

6+23 x 245

10,000 miles 3 door basic R.

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/311972-my-new-golf-r/#

BMW's model range is mind-bogglingly complicated though. I don't know how many versions of diesel 1 series DtD lists, but it's between 100 and 200!!

Have to say I lost the will to live, just trying to choose which 1 series I'd like!

Maybe hypnotism is the only way to buy a BMW. Walk into dealer, get hypnotised, walk out with empty wallet and a shiny new car, repeat every three years :think:

Also, just noticed on DtD that discounts on 120d's and GTD's is the same at 12%. BMW has 4.9% finance vs 7.2% on Golf. Better residuals on the Golf probably make it currently a bit cheaper on PCP, but then again if you hit the options list both get expensive, but there are a lot more options to choose from on the BMW (think the GTD is a bit better equipped as standard).

I think dtd make the model lists seem more complicated than they are as they do things like listing models with different options as separate models. For example, they will list a 118d nav and a 118d non nav ... Which seems an odd way of doing it when you can add options to your quote anyway. They were doing the same with Mercedes when I was looking.

I believe dtd are dropping their bmw discounts at the moment, but when I purchased bmw dealers were actually fairly routinely discounting the 1 Series more than what was offered on dtd. I think at the time Drive the Deal were saying £3k discount on the 120d whereas I got just under £4k.

The actual dealers' attitudes towards discounting the cars was the make or break though. My local VW dealer wanted to pretend the brokers were all fraudsters and that the cars didn't exist etc. on the other hand, I spoke to a bmw dealer / sales manager who from the outset said that he sells cars by offering his best discounted price from the outset with no bluffing. Luckily another dealer I spoke to was prepared to undercut his price to secure the business.

So if you couple the really positive attitude towArds doing a deal with all the perks of visiting one of the premium dealerships, eg flashy welcomes and being force fed coffee out of branded cups n saucers ... It certainly is easy to get hypnotised.

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I see that the Golf R offers seem to be back - £322 per month (inc VAT) + £1936 deposit, 10K miles / year inc. maintenance over 2 years. (it does say business finance, but I'm sure they'd be available on private contract hire).

That's cheaper than a vRS!!

If you're a personal lease customer isn't it the case that you have to add vat onto the business prices?

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I think dtd make the model lists seem more complicated than they are as they do things like listing models with different options as separate models. For example, they will list a 118d nav and a 118d non nav ... Which seems an odd way of doing it when you can add options to your quote anyway. They were doing the same with Mercedes when I was looking.

I believe dtd are dropping their bmw discounts at the moment, but when I purchased bmw dealers were actually fairly routinely discounting the 1 Series more than what was offered on dtd. I think at the time Drive the Deal were saying £3k discount on the 120d whereas I got just under £4k.

The actual dealers' attitudes towards discounting the cars was the make or break though. My local VW dealer wanted to pretend the brokers were all fraudsters and that the cars didn't exist etc. on the other hand, I spoke to a bmw dealer / sales manager who from the outset said that he sells cars by offering his best discounted price from the outset with no bluffing. Luckily another dealer I spoke to was prepared to undercut his price to secure the business.

So if you couple the really positive attitude towArds doing a deal with all the perks of visiting one of the premium dealerships, eg flashy welcomes and being force fed coffee out of branded cups n saucers ... It certainly is easy to get hypnotised.

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DtD have a fairly sporadic offering from BMW, but I have no idea why they list so many variants. The number listed for Audi or VW is much, much smaller, so it may well be the way the BMW dealers provide the data to DtD.

 

Your experience with BMW dealerships is certainly refreshing and you're right that other dealerships do rubbish DtD. I've had the line that they only sell cars dealers can't shift! At that point I tend to walk out.

 

If you're a personal lease customer isn't it the case that you have to add vat onto the business prices?

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  That's why the prices I quoted had the vat added, so £322 per month is after vat has been added.

DtD have a fairly sporadic offering from BMW, but I have no idea why they list so many variants. The number listed for Audi or VW is much, much smaller, so it may well be the way the BMW dealers provide the data to DtD.

Your experience with BMW dealerships is certainly refreshing and you're right that other dealerships do rubbish DtD. I've had the line that they only sell cars dealers can't shift! At that point I tend to walk out.

That's why the prices I quoted had the vat added, so £322 per month is after vat has been added.

I've had all sorts of stories about brokers from dealers. To be fair though, I don't really want to have to use a broker, as I don't like the facelessness of it, and in reality I do expect that you could be facing problems with the supplying dealer having exceeded their allocation, leaving you ending up waiting for an excessively long time for the car. When ordering new cars before, I was always looking for dealers to get within a few hundred quid of the average dealer price, and then I would bite.

Seeing that bmw were undercutting the brokers was crazy tbh. I'd read that bmw were setting some pretty high targets for their dealers to meet as part of their offensive against Audi. Perhaps, for a while at least, bmw were prioritising volume of sales over the profit margins on their cars?

It still varies model by model though; I think the 1 Series has always failed to outsell the A3, so the big discounts contained a fair chunk funded by bmw themself. The same was / is true of the 3 Series - that has a lot of money off it direct from bmw - although I thought that was always their biggest selling model so I don't know why they are promoting it so heavily. At the other end of the scale, newer models like the 4 Series or 2 Series don't contain such silly discounts, although I know that the first dealer I spoke to is still happy to churn out the 2 Series with a 10% or so discount.

I guess the biggest lesson is to get on the broker sites and owners forums for any marque first and make sure you get a good idea of how much the cars are going for, before you starting listening to what the dealer is saying is the 'best price'.

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