New Cars Deals

A pre-registered car is a car that has been registered in the name of the supplying dealer or possibly a finance company prior to you purchasing the car.  It is in effect the exact same vehicle as if you were the first registered owner, but technically it is a used car as it has already been registered, making you the second registered keeper.  There can be some great deals on pre-registered cars, but it is important to fully understand the term before making a decision on purchasing a pre-registered car.

Depending upon the circumstances of the pre-registration the vehicle may be registered the day before you buy, or 6 months before.

There are 2 main circumstances in which a car may be pre-registered.  The first is so a new car dealer can meet specific sales volume related targets, for example, Ford may say to its dealers that if they register 30 Fiestas in one month then they will receive a bonus of £200 per vehicle.  If it is approaching the end of the month and a dealer is just short of this target then they may register some of the cars they have in stock to themselves to reach the target and get the bonus, therefore they will have a number of Fiestas that are brand new but registered to the dealer.  They will often sell these cars with big savings as they don’t need to make a profit on them because the profit has been made by achieving the target for the bonus.  They will also try to sell these cars quickly as they are now not new cars and the longer they sit on the forecourt the more they will devalue, despite only having the same mileage as a brand new car.

The second main reason a car may be sold as pre-registered is that the manufacturers place restrictions on the terms that they offer the discounts to suppliers.  This is usually the case with new car brokers.  They will be offered a discount structure from a particular manufacturer and under the terms of receiving the discounts they may be required to register all cars to either themselves or a finance company.  In these situations they may sometimes be a holding period on the V5 logbook.  The broker may have to hold onto the logbook for a certain period (usually between 3 and 12 months – 6 is normal) to stop their customer from selling the car during that period and breaking the terms of the discounts from the manufacturer.  With this method of pre-registration, the car is usually registered at most a couple of days before you take delivery.