Bought our L&K Octy for £14500, wrote it off 3.5 years later with 114000 on the clock & the Insurance co offered us £6400. That sounds pretty good depreciation to me

We finally settled for £4700 & the remains. Should be back on the road next week & a few squids left in the bank.

Trick on depreciation is to buy really cheaply to start off

Hows 80% depreciation over 3 years sound? thats the truth of Skoda I'm afraid.

My Mk1 cost

The point is I can get one direct from a guy my uncle knows at Avis for

That's absolute crap.

No it isn't. It's a fact.

Yours was an ex-taxi with over 120k miles so it's no wonder that it lost more.

Try trading in a 3 year old 120k mile mondeo taxi and see what you get offered - I bet it will be very similar.

Twas a taxi, true, but whoever buys it from the auction will never know unless they saw it with the stickers on before I sold it.

It was just on 117k and was imaculate, and I mean imaculate, not so much as a scratch on the alloys, nor even a pin dent or stonechip, not even a single stain or mark on the interior, and certainly no holes on the dashboard anywhere. Full and complete service history, never missed a service, and never went over the 10k intervals by so much as a mile.

I paid a lot less for the Mondeo than the Superb so I probably would be happy with a similar amount at trade in tide.

I buy and sell cars all the time for the cab fleet, so I know what I can get for what sort of money, and Skodas simply do not hold there value.

All cars depreciate like mad when purchased new, most of the people on this site think Skoda has really good residual values, but unfortunately they are in for a big shock when they sell their Skodas.

Hows 80% depreciation over 3 years sound? thats the truth of Skoda I'm afraid.

Personaly I at anyone buying a Skoda over a Ford after my experience with Skoda's and the dealers.

I disagree. This skoda I have is one of the best for depreciation I've ever had, and I change cars every two years, so follow the costs carefully.

and as for your last statement, when I worked for the AA I went through 3 new ford focus, in three months. kept the third one, first two broke. I hated the unreliability, last thing you want is to fill up with

I disagree. This skoda I have is one of the best for depreciation I've ever had, and I change cars every two years, so follow the costs carefully.

and as for your last statement, when I worked for the AA I went through 3 new ford focus, in three months. kept the third one, first two broke. I hated the unreliability, last thing you want is to fill up with

Obviously my experience with Skoda's (many of them) is completely different to yours then, likewise my experience of Ford has also been the complete opposite of yours:rolleyes:

I made the 'At anyone buying a Skoda' comment as a tounge in cheek reply to the previous 'At anyone buying a Ford'!

As for your last comment, No it's much more fun slating Skoda's on here, no-one would bite on a Ford Forum, all I'd get is 'what do they expect with that badge on the front' etc etc:rolleyes:

Anyway, I still frequent Briskoda since I got rid of mine because I think It's one of the best forums on the internet, irrespective of it's main purpose, plus it's helps to have a balance too, imagine how boring it'd be if we were all licking our Skodas clean and no one ever had anything bad to say about them!

Most of the people on here are quite nice too, and there isn't much arrogance, plus you get some decent well informed arguments out of people on here as oposed to the usual internet cut and paste experts:thumbup:

:thumbup: guess it would be boring without an opposite opinion

Think of it this way....

How do you drive hire cars?

Having had a lot of rental cars both for work and privately, I agree with these sentiments completely.

Nothing worse than someone else paying the fuel (ie a business rental) and a near-zero mileage hire car...the temptation to 'break them in the hard way' is just too great

If you buy a car from a car supermarket it's likely to have been a hire car anyway, at least you'd know the cars history this way, and cutting out the middle man will save you more than enough to not worry about it!

The vast majority of car hirers are not like us anyway, i'm sure the majority of hire cars are just driven normaly (i.e. not by people like us!!)

Think of it this way....

How do you drive hire cars?

Think that answers that one

On the depreciation front; I bought my RS for 13900 new. Sold it at 138,000 miles, 2.5 years old, more chips than Shifty for 6000.

Thats not bad depreciation in my book.

I've had two ex-rental Focuses and not had a problem with either and had no problems selling them on.

A friend of mine bought a TDCi mondeo from Hertz a couple of years ago and has had no problems.

Like you say, they make better value for money than buying from a dealer.

IME, rental cars aren't always driven that hard. As they're mainly used by company car drivers, it depends on the company's car policy & it's effectiveness as to what driver's behaviour is like behind the wheel.

Also I think the lower capacity cars (like a Corsa 1.2 say) are more likely to get ragged, as they're more likely to be hired by the general public. Wouldnt worry too much about 2.0 diesels.

IME, rental cars aren't always driven that hard. As they're mainly used by company car drivers, it depends on the company's car policy & it's effectiveness as to what driver's behaviour is like behind the wheel.

Also I think the lower capacity cars (like a Corsa 1.2 say) are more likely to get ragged, as they're more likely to be hired by the general public. Wouldnt worry too much about 2.0 diesels.

Ok so here we have a difference, are we talking buying an ex leased car? or an ex rental car?

an ex lease car may be a good buy because the owner may have had a little pride in it

an ex rental car will have had it's tits ragged from the time it first turned a wheel, so imho something to steer clear of.

I mean short term rental cars. Habits are hard to kill off. If a company has a good company car policy then the drivers are much less likely to rag it, and these are likely to be the ones in 2 litre diesel engines. Not saying they'll all be like that (some people will always rag a car pretty much), but you've got a much better chance of finding a 'less-ragged' car in that class than in other classes (like a small petrol) due to the driver training and normal policies they have to follow eventually working their way through to their everyday driving habits, in my opinion.

And I would say ex-Contract Hire cars' condition is just as dependent on how well a company's policies are planned & implemented. We've returned some wrecks (sometimes early as the engine couldnt last!), whilst other drivers take great care of their cars and some of the 100,000+ mileage cars we have are still sounding fantastic.

But anyways - basically I would always consider a bigger diesel car if it's been ex-rental as I think they're still very sound bets. A lot of these cars end up on official dealer garages' showcourts, so they must be pretty reliable, or they'd be inundated with warranty claims.

UPDATE.

Been to see it. It's a 2.2 TDCi Titanium X with the full ST Bodykit (black), and it looks like new. Had it up on a ramp (father in law insisted on this) and the underside is very good too. Mileage is 14,940, car is an 06 plate registered in July.

Half leather heated seats, 6 cd indash changer, tints, xenons, auto wipers/rear view mirror, 1 service & PDI for me

I have until Monday next week to state whether I want it, cost to me is £8650 if I want it.

What do you guys reckon?

If the mechanic has given it the thumbs up, it drove ok (and it has the balance of Ford's warranty with it) then I'd go for it. Proper bargain

In fact for that price, I might be tempted to trade mine in

Chris

If they have an estate, I'll have one too.

UPDATE.

Been to see it. It's a 2.2 TDCi Titanium X with the full ST Bodykit (black), and it looks like new. Had it up on a ramp (father in law insisted on this) and the underside is very good too. Mileage is 14,940, car is an 06 plate registered in July.

Half leather heated seats, 6 cd indash changer, tints, xenons, auto wipers/rear view mirror, 1 service & PDI for me

I have until Monday next week to state whether I want it, cost to me is

Do it for that price you could shop it in 2 years down the line and still be doing really well.

As previously asked do they have any TDCI estates or hatches in a similar price range?

UPDATE.

Been to see it. It's a 2.2 TDCi Titanium X with the full ST Bodykit (black), and it looks like new. Had it up on a ramp (father in law insisted on this) and the underside is very good too. Mileage is 14,940, car is an 06 plate registered in July.

Half leather heated seats, 6 cd indash changer, tints, xenons, auto wipers/rear view mirror, 1 service & PDI for me

I have until Monday next week to state whether I want it, cost to me is

The seats are also cooling seats I think.

We have two outside from Enterprise at the moment. Lovely cars.

The seats are also cooling seats I think.

Yep the seats are climate controlled Full leather is a cost option I believe ....

Ford :: Mondeo models :: Mondeo Titanium X

Chris

That's a great deal of car for the money.:eek:

yea, they have 16 cars left now. 4 hatch and the rest estate, I think 5 of them are only zetec's though and are up for grabs for £7,995.