I highly recommend www.carbuyingguide.org.uk to anyone who’s planning on buying a car. We travelled a long way yesterday to buy a car and found that guide absolutely invaluable.

Nigel had seen a car that was exactly what he wanted but unfortunately it was £1000 over our budget and 170 miles away in Hitchin. After doing a fair bit of research we decided that it was probably worth the risk of the trip in that if we handled things correctly we would be able to get the dealer to sell us that car for a price within our budget. We were reasonably sure before we got to the dealership that we would buy the car if we could get the deal but equally, accepted we would cut our losses and definitely not buy the car if we couldn’t.

So we made the trip. We spent a long time at the dealership; we took the car for a long test drive, listened to the sales patter, stood around drinking coffee and pontificating (like you do), and after about two hours we finally managed to get the conversation around to money. We got the salesman down a little bit on the screen price but he said there was absolutely no way he could sell the car for as low a price as we were asking. We said ‘okay, well thanks very much, we’ll have to keep looking then’ and after being there a good few hours we walked out in a disappointed mannner and got in our car ready to leave. After reading the car buying guide we were fairly certain that wouldn’t be the end of it, so our plan was to go find a pub down the road and sit and wait for a phone call. However, we didn’t actually make it that far as just as when we were about to drive off, low and behold, the sales guy came running out and says ‘come back in as, actually, he might be able to do something’. So in the end, we did get the car within our budget with the proviso we settle the invoice before this month ends, which was fine for us.

Whether or not we could have got more discount if we’d have pushed harder or played things a bit differently I guess we’ll never know. Unfortunately we don’t buy cars as often as these salesmen sell them, and the guy that dealt with us was very experienced. So it was a pretty exhausting day; a long drive, high pressure sales, and large amounts of money, but I think the outcome was fairly good all round since Nigel got the car he wanted, I was happy as we didn’t go over budget, and the salesman sold a car and obviously made some money in doing so.

The moral of the story is had we started off looking at a car that was already within our budget we never have pushed so hard for a discount and therefore, in theory, not got as good a car for our money. It was only because of reading the car buying guide that we knew we could consider pushing it that far.

So next weekend we can go collect our handsome Audi A4 2.0 TDI (140 PS) S-line Avant. It’s just a bit of a shame that it’s quite a long way to go again.