Next time you pull up alongside a shiny new BMW 3 Series, don’t look at the driver with envy. Regard them as pitiful owners of a magnificent failing financial delusion. Around 95 per cent of new UK cars now find owners through fleet or contract purchase schemes. It’s a monetary sedative disguising how we rent a depreciating block of steel for £450 a month, blind to being taken for a colossal global ride. 

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The current mainstream narrative is comforting: cars are expensive because of inflation and supply chain problems – with a few carrots for right-leaning thinkers about eco-levies, union interference and nasty Russians. It’s a neat lie. The reality – according to figures for bodies like Germany’s Center of Automotive Management – is more spectacular.

The UK has been acting as a high-margin emergency fund for a decaying European car industry that can no longer afford its own chrome-plated overheads. When you buy a baseline Mercedes, Audi or BMW, the company in Stuttgart, Ingolstadt or Munich pockets an average profit of £3,450. That’s before the psychological warfare of the digital configurator. 

That baseline price pays for the massive overheads of Europe’s factory floors. It’s when you decide you cannot survive a winter morning school run in your BMW........

© The Spectator