A car will be one of the most expensive purchases you ever make in your life time, second only to a house. Whether they are used for getting to work, running the family around or simply for pleasure, cars have become vital to the majority of households around the UK. Unfortunately, they are also one of the fastest depreciating items that we will ever buy too. If you’ve been shocked at how much your car’s worth and thinking ‘how can you value my car at that?’ then there are lots of things you need to consider.
Depreciation impacts all vehicles and CAP Automotive suggest this will cost you three times as much as you spend on fuel. Essentially, depreciation is the difference between the value of the car when it was bought, to when it was sold. The depreciation rate varies depending on the model and make of your vehicle, but as a rough guide you can expect value to drop 15% to 35% in the first year and 50% over three years. As such, it’s often recommended to keep an eye out for vehicles that hold their value well, rather than focusing on factors such as fuel economy.
As you’d imagine some manufacturers hold their value well compared to the rest of the market:
These are the top brands for staving off depreciation, but here are five models that hold their value particularly well:
Volkswagen Golf
The Volkswagen Golf is one of the most popular vehicles on the market, with great levels of efficiency, practicality and reliability. The German manufacturer has turned this car into one of the best-selling around the world and its depreciation value is pretty impressive too. After three years a Golf would still be worth 66% of its original value.
Fiat 500
The Fiat 500 is hugely-popular in the UK, as a stylish and fun to drive vehicle packing a punch. It handles well and is a great city car. To make things even better for the 500, this Fiat model holds 67.6% of its original value after three years.
Volvo XC60
The Volvo XC60 is stylish, comfortable and an up and coming rival to the popular Range Rovers and BMW X3. Plus, this SUV is one of the best on the market for holding value; after three years it would have retained 68.1% of the original price.
Audi Q5
Audi has built themselves up as a premium brand and the Q5 builds on this success, with a stylish appeal on the inside and out. This is another SUV to make our list of cars holding their value and the Audi Q5 would still be worth 71.2% after the first three years.
Ford Kuga
You’ll probably be surprised to see the Ford Kuga near the top of the list for depreciation value and this mid-sized SUV is competitively priced right from the start. There’s loads of space with the Kuga and plenty of great tech in recent models. According to the Telegraph, the Ford Kuga retains 71.6% of its value over three years.
There are a number of factors causing depreciation and whilst you won’t be able to impact some, you can minimise the effect others have:
If you want to understand the value of your car let our experts price it up and bid for it to learn how much your car is valued at immediately.