Car buyers miss £3bn savings

CAR buyers could save £3bn a year - an average of £1,200 on every vehicle - by haggling hard and shopping around, according to a survey.

As the market becomes more competitive, the size of discounts available in showrooms is growing. But most buyers are missing out because they are too timid to drive a hard bargain.

The biggest potential savings are from Citroen, with average discounts of almost 17%, or £2,300.

The French giant is followed by Suzuki, Proton and Fiat - all of which give average discounts well above 10%, according to the survey by What Car? magazine and Sainsbury's Bank.

The companies produce league tables of what they call their 'target price' - the achievable discount for every model on sale. It is arrived at by sending teams into showrooms to haggle down the officially published 'list' price.

The least room for manoeuvre is in a Honda showroom. The biggest saving squeezed out of sales staff is less than 4%, around £580. Lexus and BMW also offer much smaller discounts than the average.

The biggest percentage saving is 25% on the Suzuki Swift (£1,711), followed by 22% on the Citroen Picasso (£3,740) and 19% on the Mazda 323 and Proton Impian (£2,659).

The total figure of £3bn was arrived at by calculating how much consumers would have saved over the past year if every car had been bought at the 'target price'.

This year's average saving of £1,200 compares with £997 last year, showing that the consumer is in the driving seat in the present market.

What Car? editor Rob Aherne said: 'These findings show dealers are prepared to negotiate big savings on new cars. By checking the 'target price' before heading for the showroom, buyers know exactly how much discount to expect.'

Steven Baillie, of Sainsbury's, said big savings can also be made by shopping around for the best loan and insurance deals. 'Many motorists will throw away their savings by failing to research how to best finance the purchase,' he added.

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