General Is the 500 still competitive?
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General Is the 500 still competitive?
9th here at 44,000. I think these (continued) numbers give Fiat an excuse not to update the car.
That tells me the majority of buyers think the Fiesta is better value than the 500.
But is it?
Great discussion, folks - keep 'em coming
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AGH1965
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I don't know how it is in the UK, but in the Netherlands only 36% of the cars are private cars. Companies are more rational when buying cars. That's a disadvantage for cars that have cuteness as primary selling point. This will definitely influence the sales charts.
OP
OP
I don't think the 500 (aside from during the scrappage scheme, and perhaps before then) has ever been classed as a "value for money" car.
I say during/before scrappage because I seem to remember the big price rises for the 500 came in during/just after scrappage. I think the 500 launched from £7800 (1.2 Pop), with the attraction at the time being you could upgrade the trim to pop/sport for £1400, and/or the engine to 1.4/dismal for another £1400.
Mine was just over 10k before scrappage discount.
It now starts for a 1.2 pop at £10,690, and a bog standard lounge is an eye watering £12440 (although I grant you ESP, TPMS and fog lights are now standard). £1200 more than the top spec Ka (and I'd bet you'd be able to talk a Ford dealer down from there), more than I paid for the swift, or even mid range VW Polo prices
I bought my 1.2 Lounge just before the end of scrappage; it's the first of the post-2010 cars with the revised suspension. I paid £8600 for it; it seemed a reasonable deal at the time.
Six months later, with the scrappage scheme gone, I bought the 1.2 Panda for about £6600; the only thing it doesn't have over the 500 which I'd actually want enough to pay money for is Blue&Me.
Over time, I've come to adopt the Panda as the daily driver - it's simply more functional than the 500, and the 60HP Euro4 engine has more power lower down & is definitely a smoother drive than the 69HP Euro5 in the 500. It's perhaps the best value car Fiat have ever made; perhaps the best value car anyone has ever made, full stop. Sadly they're out of production now.
I'd say £12440 for a new Euro6 1.2 lounge is just plain nuts. There are far better cars out there now for that sort of money.
IMO Fiat only set 500 prices at that level to give them the headroom to offer cheap finance. They could easily sell the 1.2 lounge for 10k cash & turn a decent profit.
I'll bet most new 500's are sold privately on a pcp. These folks are mostly just looking at the monthly payment - but it's also worth remembering Fiat load main dealer service prices more than most of their competitors.
Six months later, with the scrappage scheme gone, I bought the 1.2 Panda for about £6600; the only thing it doesn't have over the 500 which I'd actually want enough to pay money for is Blue&Me.
Over time, I've come to adopt the Panda as the daily driver - it's simply more functional than the 500, and the 60HP Euro4 engine has more power lower down & is definitely a smoother drive than the 69HP Euro5 in the 500. It's perhaps the best value car Fiat have ever made; perhaps the best value car anyone has ever made, full stop. Sadly they're out of production now.
I'd say £12440 for a new Euro6 1.2 lounge is just plain nuts. There are far better cars out there now for that sort of money.
IMO Fiat only set 500 prices at that level to give them the headroom to offer cheap finance. They could easily sell the 1.2 lounge for 10k cash & turn a decent profit.
I'll bet most new 500's are sold privately on a pcp. These folks are mostly just looking at the monthly payment - but it's also worth remembering Fiat load main dealer service prices more than most of their competitors.
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OP
OP
In fairness, it does seem to come round to the old "FIAT can clearly sell them without too much trouble for that", so why shouldn't they?
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Like I say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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I think the list price of all cars, has gone insane, which i put down to the car manufacture's
desire to have everyone on pay monthly schemes, like mobile phones are.
desire to have everyone on pay monthly schemes, like mobile phones are.
I've always had a bee in my bonnet about car costs during the scrappage scheme. It was effectively a £2,000 minimum trade in on a new car, part-funded by the UK government and the motor trade. So your 500 was £10,600 from new - as mine was because I didn't have a qualifying "scrappage" car to exchange.
Is the current list price of £12,440 a massive increase during the intervening years? Probably not when you consider 5 years of inflation.
Does this mean the 500 is still competitive? Your comparison with the Panda shows that the 500 has always carried a premium price tag over other city cars. Despite the protests in this thread about the Mini, I still think the 500 is pitched at a similar target market and this is why it sells.
Fiat list prices, like those of many mainstream manufacturers, are set to leave headroom for generous p/x allowances & attractive finance deals. Most other Fiat models sold for cash usually left the showroom with discounts of up to 25% off list, but the 500's popularity at launch meant the car was almost never discounted and at one point, low mileage used cars actually sold for a premium over the new list price.
Cars bought under the scrappage scheme were generally sold at list to cash buyers & low cost finance was usually not offered. One criticism of the scheme was that most, if not all, of the £2k on offer could otherwise have been negotiated by a canny buyer & the scheme effectively did nothing to reduce the price of new cars. It made things difficult for cash buyers, because there were generally far fewer discounts available when the scheme was running.
Scrappage was all or nothing - manufacturers had to offer it on the same terms across the range or not at all. Fiat wouldn't otherwise have offered the 500 under scrappage. Indeed, I had to go to four dealers before I found one which would actually sell me one - the first three said they could sell their entire allocation to non-scrappage customers and wouldn't accept my order. I had to wait four months for it, and pay an extra 2 1/2% VAT in consequence; but I did get the 2010 model (with S/S & revised suspension) for the 2009 price.
When the scrappage scheme was running, choosing the 500 was a no-brainer - it was just about the only small car you could buy where the £2k discount couldn't have been got by any other means. For the first couple of years, depreciation was practically zero and five years on, I'd easily get half of what I paid for it back. You won't do that with a new 500 bought today.
If you've got £12,440 cash, IMO you can buy a better new car than a 1.2 500 lounge.
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ahmett
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i calculcated buying the iphone 6 cash and having a sim only montly deal will save you 20% over the life of the phone vs getting it for 'free' on a 24 month contract.
And if you keep it for more than 24 months you will save more.
Or you could buy a new unlocked phone in a sealed box on fleabay and save even more still.
My current phone is an S2 bought that way in July 2011 for about £375; it's still working great and does everything I need.
ahmett
Prominent member
haha i am in with the times i have the iphone6 which i bought cash when it came out. i hope it to last me 2 years. my phone bill is 10 euros a month = )
ahmett
Prominent member
wow thats impressive! my main problem is extreme data usage (around 2 gb a month)I never thought I'd actually be pleased to say this, but mine is smaller than yours
2GB of mobile data for €10 seems reasonable.
I generally keep mobile data switched off. I pay a flat rate of £1 per day for each day I turn it on, but then there's no cap on how much data I use that day.
My tariff exactly suits my needs and costs me in the order of £10 every 3 months.
The only problem I have with it is my network provider calls me about twice a week to try to persuade me to move to a different tariff :bang:.
AGH1965
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Better, but not as cute!
In my case buying a 500, which I did twice, wasn't a rational decision. I just like the looks so much that accept that it's a ridiculous amount of money for a car that doesn't have the quality that it pretends to have.
Maybe buying my next car will be a rational decision again. It might be a car with much more space and still a decent price. Who knows, maybe something ugly like a Skoda Fabia...
I don't disagree. My point was that, excepting for the blip of the UK scrappage scheme, I don't believe the 500 has ever really been competitively priced. It's a bit like the iphones mentioned above, priced at a level that the market can sustain.
My 500 was bought in 2009, 18 months after my panda. The 500 was £3.5k more expensive so the economics aren't lost on me. I got itchy feet and replaced the panda with an Audi A1 in 2012, got fed up with Audi build quality issues and now have a BMW 1 series. Despite dabbling in "premium" German brands, I'm still more than happy with the 500.
If you shop around you can currently get a 2015 15 plate fiat 500 lounge with delivery mileage for as little as £9500 when you compare that to where else is out there it represents pretty good value, however most of this has been driven by the launch of the more updated model (with touch screen dash) so dealers are selling off cheap anything they have left in stock.
