My car's coming up to its bubble payment which it looks like I'm going to have to make for a variety of reasons.
The car has a "Guaranteed Residual Value" of £3450 which is the amount of the bubble.
However, this is only guaranteed up to 60,000 miles. I've had the car 3 years. It had 18k on it when I bought it. It has 82k on it now.
Now, I theoretically have three options
1) Hand the car back and the debt will be written off in full, however this only applies up to the 60k miles limit with a per-mile penalty applying after that. I could end up paying the total value of the bubble to hand the car back. This would be dumb.2) Pay the bubble payment and the car's mine. This is easy and is a fixed value.
3) Hand the car to the dealer I bought it from to sell on for at least the £3450 and reap any equity after that. This would be great - the dealer reckons that they could sell it for £4500-5000. But they won't sell on cars with more than 60k miles, so that one's out.I've nominally got another option which is to trade it in at the original dealers against a new car. £5k tradein against a £10k car would be fine, but here's my problem.
I really quite like driving large cars. I do a hell of a lot of motorway milage and small cars may go just as well, but I hate driving them on busy roads. To get an equivalent sized car I'd have to buy either another Rover
75 or an MG ZT from this bunch, but at the spec I really want to go to (Must have Aircon) I'm looking at £15k for a 2nd hand one with an engine I wouldn't trust (The 1.8l K Series).So, it looks like I'm going to have to buy the car from the finance and then either use it as a deposit elsewhere or sell it privately and use the proceeds to buy a replacement.
My shopping list at the moment looks a little odd. In order of preference:
Rover 75 Club or better with either the 2.0TD, 2.3V6 or V8 engines
MG ZT at the same spec as above
Ford Scorpio Ultima - a bit long in the tooth but big, comfy, all the toys and with the Cologne V6 in anything from 2.3 to 2.9l
Granada Scorpio - Earlier Ford with all the toys again and the same engine choice more or less as the Ultima
Vauxhall Senator
Vauxhall Omega
Rover 800 Coupe
Rover 800 series Sterling
Mid 80s Jaguar XJ6 or XJ-S
Late Model Rover SD1 Vitesse
Late model Mk2 Granada Ghia
Anything I've missed as a potential option?
Just for reference, I can't stand BMWs - the roof is too low for my headline and I find them uncomfortable to drive. Similar problems with Mercedes. I just plain don't like the Mondeo or Vectra. Nutterbastard motors like the Evo and Impreza are out for reasons of not wishing to kill myself.
My requirements are:
Large executive saloon Must have Air Conditioning Should have decent performance Should have decent economy Should be (reasonably) cheap to have serviced Must have decent parts availability Must cost under £4000 Must be decently comfortable to drive Must be decently comfortable as a passenger
I don't overly mind about age or manufacturer, just the above requirements
Suggestions?