3 door auto.

Looks almost perfect ……not a lover of the front nudge bar, to me it just complicates the clean lines of the vehicle.
leather trim is a nice extra but will never wear as well as the bullet proof grey cloth 👍🏻
Purchase cost seems horrendous yet I’m sure it will be gone within a few days .

Another nice low mileage one HERE on ebay.

Wants new headlamps as they’ve faded 🤔

And I'd tend to agree - an 18 year old car can't really be worth that.

I've always worked on the assumption that a car looses about half its value through depreciation over three year. That's broadly equivalent to loosing 20% each year - retaining 80% of its value at the start of that year.

According to Parkers, the car in question was worth £18,085 when first registered on 30 Apr 2004. Applying my 20% per year depreciation rule it would now be worth £326 (18 years later).


Then I looked up a car depreciation calculator: www.themoneycalculator.com/vehicle-finance/calculators/car-depreciation-by-make-and-model/

Putting in the details from Parkers, together with the mileage from the ad it comes back with a retained value of £9,277 - which is more than the £8,995 they are asking for the car! (And that's with declaring a mileage of 2,000 miles pa or current mileage of 36,000 miles rather than the 28,000 stated in the ad). Which is hard to believe but that's what it comes back with.

Upping the mileage to 12,000 miles pa it comes back with a retained value of £317 - which is remarkably close to my rule of thumb and what I'd have expected ...

So I'm just very surprised, and it would appear that a truly low mileage car may well retain far more of its value than might be expected from its age.

I still wouldn't pay that sort of money for an 18 year old car though ...

Browsing 3 door RAV4s, (got that itch again and the tablets aren't working) I've been looking at several 3 door cars - manual and auto. Then check the mOT history. From experience, I now look at any mention of corrosion in the rear end, cos thats what killed mine.
I now wonder about the feasibility of getting a 4.1 (seen a black one at £1300 on Autotrader with mention its been undersealed, and a previous MOT mentioned rust on structure supporting back bumper lol)..anyway...getting one and replacing the rear body panels that stick to the rear ?subframe. Sure someone posted up amlink to one which had been refurbd.
So
if I don't win a Subaru this weekend on one of those competition websites, then will start to look more seriously for a 3 door. As said above, some of the auto prices are ridiculous...they are subject to the same rot.

I think much of it depends on where the car was ...vs loads of salt on roads etc.  I found the cars I bought from south of London were generally much better.  That means having to try to track where the car has been !  A good few I have seen had advisories on the rusty fuel tank.  I changed the tank on one of mine and treated the rust on the other.  Then of course there's the fuel filler pipe which was simply a bad design fault, that never got addressed for years.