What Car?‘s latest data reveals that a third of its featured manufacturers have increased average cash Target Price discounts, another third have reduced discounts and the final third remain broadly unchanged.
This represents a turbulent market state where dealers are trying to maintain the seller’s advantage that grew out of the Covid-19 pandemic and semiconductor supply crisis.
This is despite market factors, such as demand, the cost-of-living crisis, vehicle supply and electric car sales targets moving slowly, but inexorably, towards restoring the buyers’ advantage.
Salespeople will continue to resist discounting, because they, and consumers, have become accustomed to this over the past couple of years. However, car buyers need to be encouraged to push for better deals, and be prepared to shop elsewhere if a salesperson won’t budge.
This report is an extract from What Car?’s monthly Insight PDF. Click here for access to the latest issue, exclusive to Autocar Business.
The all-segment average cash Target Price discount is marginally up on last month, at 3.9% or £1778 per car. This figure reduces to £1481 per car after allowing for dealer contributions towards manufacturer finance offers.
An additional average of £897 per car is then available as a finance deposit contribution when consumers buy using a manufacturer’s PCP deal at an average 7.1% APR bringing the total (cash and finance) average Target Price saving to £2378 per car.
Although the average PCP APR has increased from 6.5% to 7.1%, manufacturers have tried to cushion the effect of this with a 14.4% increase in the average finance deposit contribution (up from £784 per car to £897).
Peugeot dealers are the most generous when offering an average cash Target Price discount across a model range at 7.4%, followed by Smart at 7.2% and Renault at 6.2%.
DS has the biggest increase in the typically achievable cash Target Price discount, with a 1% increase across the range, up from 3.9% to 4.9%.
Target Price market watch
Small SUVs