This morning I popped into Oxford SAAB to order a new dashboard speaker for my car as the left-hand one has stopped working (and it’s easy to replace). Anyway, this particular weekend they happen to be having a sale of newly pre-registered last year’s model cars with delivery milage and 20% off.

Now, my plan was to keep my current car for another 3.5 years (i.e. 10 years in total) and write off the car in terms of resale value. However, I’m now in a quandry. Do I buy one of these “new” cars at the heavily discounted price now, sell my current car privately for around £5000 (the current second hand retail price) and hence have to stump up £14500 but pay that back into my savings over 2.5 years *OR* wait for another 3.5 years, hope for another deal similar to this one and that the prices haven’t gone up a great deal and have to stump up the whole amount then and there. (There’s no point trying to trade my car in as they’re only offering £2700 when I checked this morning.)

I’m leaning towards the buying the new car at the moment as the extra interest I may gain from holding on to my savings now will be far less than the combined depreciation of my current car plus the inflation of prices of new cars. Still, the down sides are that the only cars on offer which I’d consider are 9-3 AERO Sports Saloons, hence the insurance will be a lot more, and the specifications are very basic, i.e. no sat.nav or any other toys and they’re the old model.

See, I told you it wasn’t a simple decision!