Used cars are getting more expensive. If you want to downsize your car, you can get good money for your compact or mid-range car and you can switch to an economical small car from VW, Opel or Toyota. FOCUS Online shows which cars are still cheap.
Two euros for a liter of petrol – that could become the new normal for motorists, even if the fuel discount in the form of heavily reduced taxes takes effect in June. However, this only applies for a few months. In the long term, driving a car could become a luxury for many people that they can no longer afford.
Since only a few can or want to do without driving a car completely, there is one possible alternative: simply reduce costs by downsizing. At least if you don’t really need the space, a VW Polo instead of a Golf or Passat, an Opel Corsa instead of an Astra, a Ford Fiesta instead of a Focus or a BMW 1 Series instead of a 3 Series might do.
According to calculations by the ADAC for FOCUS Online, the savings potential is quite considerable, both in terms of the purchase price and the running costs. Various models of the VW Golf were compared with a VW Polo:
Even if you compare the most expensive Polo with the cheapest Golf in the ADAC calculation, there is potential savings of around 100 euros a month or 1200 euros a year. Across all models, the ADAC calculates average costs of 47 cents per km for small cars (compared to 62 cents for the lower middle class, 81 cents for the middle class, 98 cents for the upper middle class and a whopping 1.56 euros for the luxury class).
But which small car should you buy if you want to downsize? Germany’s largest car market Mobile.de has determined current small car prices exclusively for FOCUS Online. Of course, the following list only represents an excerpt from the total range, although it must be noted that this is falling every year: Because more and more manufacturers are building electric cars in particular and the exhaust gas limits are becoming ever stricter, small combustion cars are becoming increasingly uninteresting for manufacturers and removed from the model programs.
According to the Mobile.de data, prices (as of April 2022) rose by 20.4 percent compared to the previous year (April 2021) for small cars (B segment) and by 17 percent for Kleist cars (A segment). .6 percent.
Small cars were once a dime a dozen, and the 2008 scrapping scheme in particular brought many of them onto the market. Now they are becoming rarer – but not all more expensive. Some examples of models for which you pay a small surcharge when you “reduce” your car wishes:
Since the used car prices are currently very high, it is easily possible to sell your “old” without a loss or even for a profit. In the best case, the profit margin alone is sufficient to buy a used small car. To stay with the VW Golf and Polo example:
If you negotiate skilfully and have not packed too many kilometers on your Golf since 2021, you could get around 5000 euros more for your car today – and with the profit margin alone you would have covered half to a third of the current average Polo price. It is even more worthwhile if you choose one of the small cars that have not increased as much in price, for example an Opel Adam or a Peugeot 108.
