That is all true, I've had the wool pulled from my eyes a few years ago - to be precise, when I started to have to pay for my own car instead of the luxury of having the company pay for it.

It was a blinding flash of inspiration when I realised that none, absolutely NONE of the car mechanics I have known over the years have ever owned a brand new car, not even the mechanis I've known who OWNED the bloody garages have ever had a new car, they all buy them at 3+ years and just maintain them for ever.

I have two cars in the family that I pay for myself, one is an Aug 06 with only 36k miles, its needed a new battery in all of that time and three regular service visits, the other is an Aug 05 with 65k miles and it just reaching the point where what you'd call "major" things are going wrong, I replaced the clutch & had the gearbox reconditioned last year and have had a new starter motor fitted none of which will need doing again in its lifetime, total cost last year around £800 for maintenance, sounds a lot but if I'd been running a company lease car still then that would have been between two and three months non-maintained lease cost.

As regards early years "depreciation" a big chunk is the 20% VAT you incur at t=o. That is the biggest argument against buying a new car. Not sure how it works for Motability but they presumably recover the VAT on the cars they acquire by way of their business? So, their early "depreciation" costs are that much less.