On Tick

Once upon a time in Britain, people saved up their hard-earned pennies to buy a car outright. Nowadays? It's all on tick – credit cards, finance deals, and the never-ending loop of paying for something you’ll never truly own. It's our boom industry. Britain’s roads are now filled with cars that aren’t really ours. Finance companies own more vehicles than the drivers themselves. We’re not motorists anymore – we’re renters.

 

Over 90% of new cars in the UK are bought on finance. Not borrowed from a mate or paid off in instalments to a local garage – no, these are slick finance deals cooked up by firms that care more about the APR than the MOT. Leasing? PCP? HP? It’s like ordering from a dodgy café menu where you don't understand the ingredients, but you're somehow locked into a £400-a-month meal for the next four years.

Finance companies are laughing all the way to the bank. The average punter, meanwhile, is locked into a cycle of debt – lured in by shiny showrooms and the promise of a brand-new motor every three years. But let’s not pretend it’s all about choice and consumer savvy. This trend is a reflection of economic reality: wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of living, let alone the cost of a halfway decent car. Finance deals fill the gap where savings should be.

And let’s talk about those finance firms. They know full well that the average driver doesn’t read the fine print. "No deposit, low monthly payments," they say. But miss a payment, and you’ll see how quickly the veneer of customer care slips off. Repossession? It’s happening. Credit rating? In the bin. These companies wield more power over people’s lives than landlords – and that’s saying something in a nation plagued by dodgy rental agreements.

Then there’s the environmental impact. Buying a car outright and keeping it for a decade or two used to be the norm. Now? We’ve got millions of cars churning through three-year finance cycles. The constant churn of new vehicles isn’t just about shiny bonnets and better infotainment systems – it’s a major contributor to environmental damage. Yet finance companies and manufacturers are only too happy to keep the conveyor belt moving.

The long-term trend is bleak. In the last decade, car finance has skyrocketed. Even used cars – once the bastion of the thrifty – are now increasingly financed. It’s no longer about haggling with a bloke down the pub for a decent deal on an old runner. Now it’s 48-month terms on a five-year-old Vauxhall Astra, and you’ll still owe more than it’s worth at the end of it.

And who’s responsible for this mess? The government could have stepped in. They could have regulated the finance market to stop it turning into the next PPI scandal. But, as always, the government prefered to sit back and let the market do its thing – even if that means ordinary people being squeezed dry. The sting? All this credit-fuelled car ownership gives people a false sense of wealth. You see a neighbour pull up in a brand-new SUV, and you think, "Blimey, they’re doing well!" In reality, they’re probably drowning in monthly payments, with the finance company ready to swoop at the first missed instalment.

We’ve normalised debt to such an extent that owning something outright feels like an old-fashioned concept. But we need to ask – at what cost? Britain’s roads are full of cars, but very few of them are truly owned by the people driving them.

Maybe it’s time we reconsider our obsession with shiny new motors and financing deals that only serve to prop up the profits of faceless finance companies. Because, right now, we’re all on a road to nowhere – and we’re not even behind the wheel.