Used car prices in Europe

[Zutalors]

Hi all, apologies if this has been covered lots of times;

Just back from a week in France on holiday; on the way home I was browsing the French version of Auto Trader in a motorway service area and was very surprised to see the price of used cars over there; for instance, it would be quite common to ask 6500 euros for a 2005 Clio diesel with 100,000 km on the clock, whereas over here you'd struggle to make half that...also, we have a student from the Netherlands working at our place just now; he has a 1996 petrol Astra which he tells me would easily fetch two thousand euros back home.

Here's a random selection;

http://www.lacentrale.fr/listing_auto.p ... i=9000&cp=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It seems to me that in the UK cars only lose so much value because of the dealers all using Glass's guide and for a standard car to lose anything up to 70% of its book value in three years. It's no wonder that there are so many older cars still on the road in France, if a fifteen-year old model still has a value of anything up to two grand then they will keep on repairing them.

So, are we being held to ransom by the motor trade and insurance companies? Well, if we all drove left-hand drive cars they'd soon be b*ggered because we could get a decent price for second-hand cars throughout Europe, couldn't we?

Your thoughts?

[addo]

There's a whole lot less salt used in Europe. Having bought parts from both France and the UK, I can assure you this makes a big difference to what's left!

Also UK "culture" is somewhat to blame; there is a definite belief among many that a newer car is preferable. The market has moulded around that ideal, meaning that former sources of economical prop-ups (mechanics and related trades with good breadth of experience) are lost and parts/scrap values are low due to plentiful supply of decommissioned cars.

[robert_e_smart]

I don't know about you, but I like buying cheap used cars! If we had to pay European prices, many of use wouldn't be able to have multiple cars.

[addo]

I'm a hippie of sorts, though (as jgra1 will attest ) - it's the sheer waste of energy sources which pricks my conscience.

This is worse here because we follow the UK ideal of "new is better" yet send low milage RUST-FREE cars to the crushers, all day every day. The picture below was taken last week, with 200K (kilometres) on the clock. How new does it look?

[Citroenmad]

Wow, there are cars still under warranty over here looking far worse than that!

Everyone around here seems to want new cars, I rarely see a car on the old style reg, before 2001!