Buying a new Car Next year?

On the 4^th January 2011 the UK's standard rate of VAT will rise from 17.5% to 20%. While this will not have a major affect on the price of most used cars the rise will add several hundred pounds to all new cars. However you can avoid paying the extra 2.5% for a new car if you intend on buying it within the first 6 months of 2011.

Business can create a 'tax point' before Jan 4^th 2011 but deliver the service / product after the date VAT is increased. All they need do is raise an invoice or accept a payment, so long as you are not paying for the car using a finance package – personal loans can make use of the tax point.

Disappointingly What Car has discovered that of the 30 Dealers it called posing as a customer only 3 where aware of the tax point system, the remainder simply told What Car that the car would have to be paid in full or registered before the 4^th

What Car speculate that many dealers may be put off as they may have to pay the VAT due before accepting payment from the customer or simply may not know how the system works.

Regardless, if you do intend on buying a new car then you should attempt to make arrangements before the 4^th

Winter Arrives

Snow and ice is expected by the latter part of this week in Britain with overnight temperatures dropping below well below freezing. In Scotland heavy snow is expected and temperatures of -6 Centigrade for the East of England.
As we all know driving in this weather, especially in the mornings before ice on the road has melted, is particularly dangerous and something we only face for a two to three months a year. So here are some reminders and tips for this winter:

• Always carry deicer
  Its not recommended that you scrape snow and ice off your windscreen and is comparatively expensive to melt the ice using your car's heating. A cheap can of deicer will quickly melt any ice on your windscreen without damaging it or using up your fuel. Some cars have Bottle holders in the boot which a can of deicer fits into snugly
• Top up your Screenwash with Antifreeze
  Not only does this stop the Screenwash freezing in the reservoir it also helps preventing your jets freezing making clearing ice from the windscreen easier. While heat from the engine usually melts the ice jets quickly the jets themselves can be damaged when they freeze and will not melt until your engine is up to its running temperature.
• Take your mobile with you and keep plenty of fuel in the car
  While many organizations would advise taking enough equipment to camp in the Arctic we all know in the real world that unless we're driving long distance we're unlikely to get stuck anywhere long enough or remote enough to put our lives in danger and in the worst case you can park the car and use alternative means to get to your destination. However it is a good idea to keep your phone with you so that you can get in contact with people should you need to and use the camera in your phone should there be an accident. Keeping an ample supply of fuel in the car is also advisable as journey times are unpredictable and should you get stuck you can at least use the engine to stay warm.
• Avoid Minor Roads where possible
  Unless this is your first winter behind the wheel you'll know all to well that any time after the car starts moving you can become a passenger. Gritted roads are often no different from driving on wet roads however the minor roads which are often left to freeze over can leave you with almost no grip at all.
• Be Wary of your ABS and Corner Break Assist
  If possible turn off electronic driving aids while driving in snow or icy conditions unless they've been designed to work correctly under such conditions. Most ABS systems will activate quickly on ice and reduce your control over the car while extending your stopping distances. Corner Break Assists also have the same effect but may activate during a turn without you pressing the break. Official advice tells us not to use the break when on ice, a tip everyone instinctively ignores when sliding across the road, but is technically correct and will give you more control over the car.
• Drive Slowly
  Ok, so this message is repeated so often we're all bored of it but if you are turning off a gritted road to a frozen road even at 5 mph you can expect to slide 5-10 meters before you come to a stop or get some control back should things go wrong. So when entering a road which hasn't been gritted expect to loose traction, try to get the car point and traveling in the direction you want to go in before the tyres meet the ice and set the speed you want to turn the corner at before you turn into the road

If you're lucky enough to be escaping the British Isles for a while and plan to be driving overseas remember the winter can be harder and more prolonged on mainland Europe. This article on driving abroad may also be useful.

What Car? Reader Awards 2010

What Car? recently published their annual car awards as voted for by their readers. This year they took into account over 30,000 reader reviews from their website and only covers car available to buy as new now but is a good indicator of which cars will be popular in the nearly new and used markets in the future.

The clear winner this year was Skoda, who claimed both Manufacturer of the year and Best Small Family Car of the year for their Octavia. Alfa Romeo claimed best Superminis, the Lotus Elise best Open-tops and the Volkswagen Passat as the best Family cars and compact executive.

The BMW 1 Series claimed the best overall car and the the best Coupes, Ford C-Max being the favoured MPV, The Landrover defender taking the best Crossovers and 4x4s and finally Mercedes-Benz CLS taking the best Luxury and executive cars.

Skoda's cars also ranked in the top 5 for every category they where eligible for. The Superb and Fabia received impressive reviews but did not reach the number of reviews needed to qualify for their category.

Vauxhall, however, will not be as pleased with the results as Skoda. Both the Insigna ranked the worst car of its class, the Zafira coming 3^rd worst overall and the 2^nd worst manufacturer. Nor will Ford who saw the Focus CC come in as worst overall car and worst Open-top cars.

Both Vauxhall and Ford however where both beaten to the bottom slot though by Saab who rated overall as the worst manufacturer of 2010.

It would seem from this years results that Skoda's and the BMW 1 Series may be highly desirable in the used / Nearly New car market in 2011/12. So if you're considering buying a new car today it may be worth considering these cars if you intend on selling your car while it is still relatively new.

UK Car production rises 6% in October

The SMMT published their monthly report on car production in the UK yesterday and found that Car Production grew by 6% in October 2010 but new car registrations are down by over 20%! Most of the Cars produced in the UK are exported, over 70% this year but there has been a recent explosion in production of Commercial Vehicles.
Earlier in the year the UK's scrappage scheme is believed to have bolstered the new car market but when it ended in March new car registrations fell heavily and have continued to do so for the rest of this year. Overall it is expected that new car registrations will still be 1.5% better than 2009 but without the scrappage scheme 2010 would have been on par with 2009.
Anyone who has recently bought a new car and though I'll sell my car in 2011 or 2012 is most likely to be pleased with the value of their car as the nearly new car market is expected to be thirsty for these cars. More information can be found here

New Features: Marking up a car as sold

Car Arena has been updated with a new set of tools that allow dealers and car owners to being the process of marking up a car as sold.
For dealers: if you have agreed to buy a vehicle via Car Arena you can now request that the owner of the vehicle set the vehicle's status to sold by clicking on the "I have bought this vehicle" button on the Valuation detail page.
This will then send an email to the vehicle owner asking them to confirm that he/she has agreed to sell the vehicle to you.
If the owner then confirms the sale Car Arena will mark the car as sold and only you will be able to view the vehicle. Also you will receive an email confirming the transaction and the customers details for your reference.

For car owners you can mark your vehicle as sold by clicking on the link on your log in page.

Also we have also added a new car review section to our site with some information and background on manufacturers.

New Features

A series of new features are being added to the website over the next few weeks which will afford car owners more control over how their car is advertised to our dealers.
We've just improved the valuation control pages for car owners which will now allow you to modify your contact details and upload / delete images of your car by logging in into car arena with your Email, Registration and the password you where sent when you submitted the car to our system.

Click on the "I've already done this. Check my offers" link on the homepage to log in or click here

Development of the UK used car market since 2008

One of the tools at our disposal for Car Arena is a database containing car valuation data from people generally interested in selling their car. The Database starts in May 2008 and contains over 470,000 valuations in total and so is a good sample of the used car market.

Recently we crunched some numbers on this database so we had some material for off page SEO and came up with some predictable but rather surprising results. The average age of a vehicle has increased, as you would expect, from about 4.5 years in 2008 and jumped to 6 years old in 2010. We also found the number of previous owners for a vehicle as reported by the DVLA (with the exception of cars with no previous owners as the data is unreliable) has only decreased by 2% for cars with just 1 or 2 previous owners. However enquiries are up by 10% for vehicles with 3 or more previous owners.

Additionally the Standard Deviation of the vehicle age only grows marginally over the sampled period so the data would suggest that people with new or nearly new cars are holding onto them for longer in 2010 whereas people who own older vehicles are more likely to sell.

The results of our report can be found below along with a graph of the data series

Month / Year	Age
05/2008	4.91
06/2008	4.37
07/2008	4.42
08/2008	4.53
09/2008	4.55
10/2008	4.62
11/2008	4.78
12/2008	4.79
01/2009	5
02/2009	5.2
03/2009	5.57
04/2009	5.77
05/2009	5.79
06/2009	5.69
07/2009	5.64
08/2009	5.61
09/2009	5.56
10/2009	5.52
11/2009	5.49
12/2009	5.41
01/2010	5.41
02/2010	5.58
03/2010	5.6
04/2010	6.24
05/2010	5.97
06/2010	5.71
07/2010	6.13
08/2010	6.22
09/2010	5.97
10/2010	5.86

Graph of the above data