Nobody (except the exceptionally wealthy perhaps) buys expensive cars with cash, for a number of reasons. Mine include:
1: Using cash to invest in things that make money, not almost definitely lose money (in some rare cases you can make money on a car, I once sold an M3 CSL for a couple of grand more than I paid for it after ragging it for six months, crazy).
2: Some people want a new car every year or two. This is very easy to arrange with finance as you can often port the finance to another vehicle without much hassle, and don’t need to put up with idiots coming to test drive the car you’re selling; the dealer or finance firm will come and pick the car up.
3: Liquidity. If I suddenly need money, I can hand the car back and stop paying for it. Sure there is likely to be a penalty and a credit score hit, but I won’t have an expensive lump of metal sitting on my drive that I can’t afford.
If the rate I’m paying on the finance is greater than the rate that my savings are attracting, for sure I’m losing out, but financing makes “owning” a car pretty much stress free, and you can get some really great deals. I currently drive a Merc S65,you could argue that this sort of car wouldn’t exist without financing, as nobody in their right mind would pay that sort of money up front on a car. The monthly payments are surprisingly low and the interest rate on the finance is just 1.8%, while my investments are earning more than this.
Oh and just to add some more fuel to the fire of this thread 🙂 I’ve owned loads of BMWs over the years and they are absolutely fantastic cars to drive. The engineering is massively superior to the junk that VAG (excepting the skunkworks AUDIs) or the frenchies churn out. RWD makes for a better driving experience.
BUT THEY ARE RUBBISH IS THE SNOW AHAHAAHAHA? When it snows stick winter tires on if you really need to get out and about for the three days a year there’s actually snow on the ground, for the other 362 days of the year enjoy the brilliant driving experience RWD gives you 🙂
BMW envy (well any nice car really but BMW seem to suffer from it the most) is a curious thing in this country; back home in the states on more than one occasion I have had strangers come over and start a conversation about a car I’m driving, and the attitude is almost always “Wow I love your car, tell me about it”, whereas here in the UK I’ve had no end of small minded plebs driving aggressively and looking at me with hate in their eyes. Hey it could have been someone from this thread, reading some of these green eyed posts!