DEALER finance is most likely to be used by males in the 35-44 age bracket, says MainDealerOffers.co.uk.
New research from the firm reveals some 19 per cent of drivers in this age group said they would use dealer finance, compared to the overall average of 13 per cent, in a study which sought to discover the consumer’s most popular route to a new car.
This contrasts with the older generation who are most likely to buy a car using cash, with more than half (52 per cent) of car buyers aged 65+ preferring to acquire their next car this way.
Overall, 44 per cent of motorists said they would buy a car using cash, while 13 per cent said they would use some form of dealer finance, nine per cent said they would use other forms of finance such as a bank loan, and three per cent said they would buy their next car with financial help from friends or family.
Unfortunately for the car industry, the remaining 37 per cent said they had no plans to buy another car at the moment. Regionally, this lack of interest in a new car rises to 50 per cent of people in the congested city of London, compared to just 29 per cent in car-dependent Scotland.
The Scottish and the Welsh (both polling 19 per cent) are also the most likely to use car finance to get their next car compared to just eight per cent in London and nine per cent in the south west.
Women showed a greater reluctance to use dealer finance than men with 40 per cent compared to 47 per cent of men expressing an interest in using this method to get their next car-perhaps hinting that women still feel less comfortable in a dealer environment.
MainDealerOffers.co.uk’s Richard Lawton, said: ‘Men in their middle years appreciate that a good car can make life so much easier. Likely to be heavily dependent on their cars to get to work, they don’t want to deal with an old banger and realise that dealer finance is a great way to secure their next car.
‘The time when borrowing money to buy something new was frowned upon has very much past and with such historically low interest rates, dealer finance has never been so appealing.’
