Record uk new car sales in 2013

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grober

MB Master
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Jun 22, 2003
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Perth, Scotland
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W204 ESTATE
Yes the UK car sales figures for 2013 puts us second only to Germany in Europe for new car sales overtaking France. Industry analysts say that attractive financing deals have tempted buyers, with three-quarters of sales to private buyers now involving some kind of financing package.

BBC News - UK new car sales highest since 2007, SMMT says
 
It's definitely reflected on this forum.
It seems as though the majority of users are now in brand new MBs on finance.

Can't blame them with some of the attractive offers splashed about!
 
The economic recovery is finally here!

(If by 'recovery' you mean people buying goods on debt, that is.... now where did I see this before?)
 
Thing I can never understand is this somewhat schizophrenic attitude that some economists have towards debt. Evidently government debt is a bad thing because borrowing money to buy things such as houses roads hospitals schools defence and employ people is spending beyond our means.:eek: Whereas thousands of individuals borrowing money to purchase rapidly depreciating imported products or purchasing property and inflating house prices at the same time is a good thing to stimulate the economy:thumb: I'm not sure if the Gnomes of Zurich or the IMF make that distinction when assessing a countries total levels of indebtedness and the strength of their currency. :dk:
 
Does this mean that there will be a glut of good quality used cars at reasonable prices coming into the market?
Or - Have people been holding on to their cars longer than they normally would and running them on a reduced servicing budget, therefore now flooding the market with poor value used cars?
 
It ought to, but doing a quick look at secondhand BMWs just now, you can lease the same car new for £200 a month less than doing the same secondhand, which would rather put me off!
 
Ha!
In Finland last year was 7% less than 2012, actually only worse years lately have been 2009 and 1996.

I think Finnish people are now waiting tax changes, because Finland (with Denmark) have had special permission to collect much higher selling taxes than in EU average. This will change in the end of 2014. Mileage based taxes are proposed, which would require gps devices in ALL vehicles etc.
 
Thing I can never understand is this somewhat schizophrenic attitude that some economists have towards debt.

There is a very simple explanation and it is:
some economists are right and some economists are wrong.
And the reason for this IM(everso H)O is that economics is quite good at providing a description of how things work. It's less good than it thinks at providing a true understanding of how things work.

I seem to recollect that that the term 'received wisdom' is derived from something an economist said or wrote.
 
Psychologists talk about 'Reaction Formation', which means that in a given situation there are only a small number of well-defined possible behaviours.

E.g. when threatened, the possibilitie reactions are either fight or flight, etc.

In this sense psychology is a descriptive science rather than a predictive one - great at explaining behaviour in hindsight, but not that great in predicting it.

I find economists very similar - they can explain everything in hindsight, but predict nothing in advance....
 
If we are buying more new cars I wonder has the vehicle population risen or are more vehicles being scrapped? As someone who can't afford to buy new at the moment I've been enjoying buying cars at £1500 or less and I wonder will my choice of vehicles increase as a result of this boom? On the radio yesterday the SMMT CEO was saying that folks getting PPI cheques were using them to buy or as deposits on new cars.
 

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