After weeks and weeks of deliberation we finally went and ordered a new car last night. What an ordeal that was. Two hours we were there! Not sure why we took the kids, as Karen had to bail with them half way through. Not before she'd stipulated the colour though, naturally.

So, we went with the Nissan Qashqai+2 2.0 litre petrol, manual, 2wd in the Acenta grade and in "urban silver" or something like that.

Why buy new and why Nissan? Well, purely because we "know" somebody who works at the Sunderland plant who managed to get us a staff discount code. Originally we were led to believe this gave us 20% off the list price, which made it enough of a viable option that buying a second hand 7-seater with 60,000+ miles on the clock would have cost just as much if not more. The discount code made it a new Nissan the only real option.

Nothing's ever simple though is it. As it turned out this magical discount code turned out to be a mixed blessing, which it turned out we didn't even use. Having the staff code meant that no other offers or avenues of bargaining were open. You just got what you got and all the dealership got out of it was another sale toward their target.

What amazed me was that when we first approached a Nissan dealership without mentioning the code they made it clear there was no room for movement. The "courtesy call" a week after the test drive went something like this:

Him: "So, Mr Howlett, what can I do tempt you to order one today?"

Me: "Knock a load of money off"

Him: "What were you thinking of?"

Me: "A few thousand"

Him: [laughs] "I can't do that. There's literally no margin in these cars. All I can do is fill it with petrol or give you some free mats".

Me: [laughs] "Well that's not going to convince me to buy one"

I thought he'd call back a week later with a more realistic offer, but never did. It made me feel a bit like I was being naive to even think they could knock that much off. Turned out they could though.

So, we went back with our code, which the same dealership told us was worth 20% (~4,000 GBP). Then it all just got very confusing. Mainly as they suddenly stopped taking new orders for the +2, as a "facelift" is due in February. We then decided it would be foolish to buy the old-style car only for it to be out-dated within a month, so thought we'd wait. Then we were warned that buying with a discount code might put us at the bottom of the pile of orders for the new version and could be waiting for months and months. Then it turned out it wasn't really a new version (not like when they release a new Golf or something) but was just a nip and tuck here and there, which you'd be hard pushed to notice. Combined with the fact they won't take an order until January and the VAT rate goes back up on 1/1 it just made it daft not to order an "old" one, which is what we ended up doing.

The dealership we went to last night were much more helpful than the first and pointed out, quite rightly, that our voucher was in fact only worth 16% off. This made it start being a bit less of an attractive offer. Then, out of the blue, the sales manager offered to match the offer. Apparently he could match the 16% discount and that would somehow make it more worth his while than us using the code, which also saved us having to give our friend in the North a cut of the saving for getting us the code in the first place. I'm guessing it was something to do with the car we're trading in being worth more than what they offered us and we accepted. Whatever though. I'm just glad it's now ordered and Karen's off my back. All I've heard for the past month is "new car this" and "new car that".

So, there you go, even a "cheap" new car can have it's list price drastically reduced. We've got a 19.5k car for 15k all in. Although we didn't use the voucher we did in fact need it as I have no doubt that the discount we got was only offered because we had the voucher at our disposal. Had we walked in there with no voucher there's no way we'd have got that deal. It's a crazy world.

But was spending 15k on a new car a better option than the 2nd hand market? For us I think (hope) it was. For a start we have three years of warranty and no MOTs to worry about. Then there's the fact that Karen flat refused to be "seen dead" in a people carrier. It had to be something she liked the look of. Luckily I talked her out of wanting an Audi Q7 early on! Other alternatives she liked were the Volvos and Hondas which had 7 seats. However, for 15k all you could get was a car 3 or more years old that's about to go "round the clock".

It just made sense to buy new. At least that's what I've convinced myself of. Plus we get the snobbery factor of having the newest car on our road ;o)