I would feed the kids I thought would bring in the best return financially, strong lads t’ send down ‘pit and the more amiable young ladies to pass on in some sort of arranged marriage involving a dowry.

I would have thought brighter minds than those of us who inhabit the Sin Bin would have thought of this before and so for reasons beyond us decided the new car route was the way to go. Just a theory. EDIT - just been explained by BG.

However that isn't the issue. Under the new PIP rules about 500,000 people will no longer qualify for the equivalent higher rate of DLA which is the point at which you qualify for access to the Motability scheme.

So it doesn't really matter if Motability qualified them for a heap of junk or brand new motor. They aren't going to get either when it comes in. [iThat is the issue[/i.

You never bothered reading my response to Sal Paradise then?

Interestingly I was reading an article in MT which was explaining the benefits of extending car lease contracts to five years and how the reliability of correctly maintained vehicles shows little deteriation over the extended period. Now they were mainly talking about high value vehicles.

I accept your explanation of why they use new cars but it doesn't take a huge leap of faith to suggest significant saving could be made with little impact on reliability given the 'clinical nature' of modern cars. If we accept servicing cost will remain reasonably static and 'blown engines etc' could easily be insured against that leaves that pesky residual values. Even you would accept that straight line depreciation is not appropriate for cars then the hit to residual value in years 0-3 is significantly greater than years 4-6 i.e. reducing balance. Based on that the saving even with the 'Car Care' could be significant.

That is all true, I've had the wool pulled from my eyes a few years ago - to be precise, when I started to have to pay for my own car instead of the luxury of having the company pay for it.

It was a blinding flash of inspiration when I realised that none, absolutely NONE of the car mechanics I have known over the years have ever owned a brand new car, not even the mechanis I've known who OWNED the bloody garages have ever had a new car, they all buy them at 3+ years and just maintain them for ever.

I have two cars in the family that I pay for myself, one is an Aug 06 with only 36k miles, its needed a new battery in all of that time and three regular service visits, the other is an Aug 05 with 65k miles and it just reaching the point where what you'd call "major" things are going wrong, I replaced the clutch & had the gearbox reconditioned last year and have had a new starter motor fitted none of which will need doing again in its lifetime, total cost last year around £800 for maintenance, sounds a lot but if I'd been running a company lease car still then that would have been between two and three months non-maintained lease cost.

As regards early years "depreciation" a big chunk is the 20% VAT you incur at t=o. That is the biggest argument against buying a new car. Not sure how it works for Motability but they presumably recover the VAT on the cars they acquire by way of their business? So, their early "depreciation" costs are that much less.