Competitive pricing is a two-way street

HELPDESK:Answering all your motoring queries

From A Casey: While I welcome the recent price cuts by distributors, what impact is it going to have on used car prices? Everyone is cutting their prices but there are people out there who bought cars at the full price in the last 12 months.

Bargains would never be better, we were told, but now car prices are plummeting. What’s that going to do to the price of our cars when we go to sell them?

The simple truth is that used car prices have been falling long before the discounts now on offer.

The recent fall in the value of sterling, and the recession that has hit the UK, meant that prices there fell to a level where it became attractive for Irish buyers to buy in the North and even as far afield as Newcastle and London.

The net effect has been that the Irish market has had to adjust prices to come into line with those of our neighbour.

That’s good news for new car buyers, who have watched as discounts have been introduced to make our car prices more competitive. The downside, however, is that everyone who happens to own a car and needs to turn it into cash is starting to feel the pinch. Competition from the UK is a two-way street and, just as we can now buy abroad, so too can the potential buyers of our cars, including the dealer with whom we want to do a trade-in deal.

The discounting is simply a symptom of the changing market structure. Effectively, car prices are so strongly influenced by what’s on offer in Britain that dealers need to come into line. Unfortunately for you, so do Irish car owners.

From S Glennon: I bought a BMW coupé two years ago and it’s fantastic to drive. However, it comes with runflat tyres. Last September I got a puncture between Carrick-on-Shannon and Sligo town on a Thursday evening – a simple nail in the flat of the tyre.

To cut a very long story short, I had to abandon my car. They could not get me a replacement and I did not get my car back until the following Saturday week. I have two friends who experienced similar problems but they were close to home.

Is there a problem after hours, away from the major centres? Is there a remedy?

We contacted BMW and their aftersales director, Paul Murray e-mailed us to say that, under the recommendations from BMW, a runflat tyre is designed to be able to be driven up to 240km at a maximum speed of 80km/h.

With moderate loads of two people with full luggage, or four adults with no luggage, the range drops to 145km, but you would still be in driving distance to Sligo.

The idea is that you should not have to abandon your car, but instead drive it to the nearest town.

“The location that your reader mentioned, Carrick-on-Shannon, is 30 miles from Martin Reilly, our Sligo dealer,” according to Murray.

From E Egan: Excuse my ignorance but what’s the relationship between a car’s engine and its cubic capacity and its fuel consumption? How can a car be a 2-litre engine but consume 5.3 litres per 100km?

There’s no direct relationship between engine size and fuel consumption. There is a better correlation between power output and fuel consumption.

The 2-litre reference on an engine refers to the volume of the cylinders, and not the amount of fuel consumption.