CAP predicts that an increase in cars being sold to rental companies along with aggressive price cuts to private buyers will cause faster depreciation by increasing the number of cars available under one year old.
Pressure on late plate used car values is a “shadow hanging over the market” according to Black Book Live – the independent real time guide to used car price trends, published by CAP.
CAP, the car valuation experts, reckons every third new car is actually being pre-registered by a dealer rather than being sold to a genuine customer.
That is the highest figure ever claimed, but CAP says it knows of one dealer group offered £500,000 to put more discounted cars on the road this summer, another manufacturer subsidising discounts of up to 40% in return for self-registering cars and a dealer group who reported an increase in new cars registered which masked an underlying 6% fall in actual new car sales. CAP also identified 80,000 tactical registrations by just 2 dealers in July.
