When I bought my Mazda 6 TS2 estate back in 2015 it was 6 years old, had approx. 55,000 miles on the clock, was in near-new condition and cost me £6.5k. That was from a Mazda dealer so probably £500-700 more than elsewhere, but it had full Mazda warranty for 12 months, full Mazda service history records and 12 months breakdown.
Sadly, this car has now gone to the big insurer write-off yard in the sky and I'm on the look out for a new used family motor. And this is where I'm struggling. To find a similar age and mileage car now, I'll need between £11-14k. I know I bought my car 8 years ago, but how have used cars nearly doubled in price since then? I get that Covid and supply issues hardened prices because of the lack of new cars coming through, but how much of that is in the prices I'm seeing now?
For my budget of about £9,500 I'm looking at cars 8-9 years old and with 60,000-80,000 miles on the clock. And then I'm struggling to find any within a reasonable traveling distance.
I've narrowed the choices down to Mazda 3 or Honda Civic. We need a hatchback small enough that my wife feels comfortable driving it, but big enough to carry four of us. It has to be reliable but also needs to have a bit of poke and driver interaction. The Mazda and Civic both seem to fit the bill. I wanted to avoid any VAG cars because of the faff of needing cambelts changed and turbo problems, but maybe I need to rethink? The Leon looks decent but again, prices are mad for 70,000 mile, 2014 examples.
Has anyone bought a used car lately? Is there any room to haggle still or is it a total seller's market? Does anyone have any insight if there's hope on the horizon for softer prices?
Luckily we have a battered old Jazz to get us through but I really need a proper motor by the summer. I've been looking for a month or so now, on and off, and some cars are still available with no reduction. Surely they want to get rid don't they?
And if anyone has any suggestions for where to look for used cars in London and surrounding I'd be grateful. I'm relying on Autotrader, eBay and Parkers.