Can Ford fight off depreciation? - RRP and transaction prices

Regular whatcar.com readers will know that there are very few cars on the market that you should pay the full recommended retail price (RRP) for.

Unless you're buying a highly desirable model in short supply – something like a Porsche Caymen – you should haggle for a discount off the RRP (otherwise known as list price) and pay the more realistic transaction price instead. What Car?'s Target Price shows the most you should pay for any new car, so provides a benchmark transaction price for you to aim for.

Ford wants to try to get these transaction prices closer to the RRP, because the bigger the difference between the two, the bigger the pressure on residual values. If the RRP is set unrealistically high, dealers will have to discount heavily to sell their cars.

If dealers have had to chop a chunk off the list price at purchase time, they'll also lop a big amount of a valuation when you come back, in three years or so, to sell it back to them.

Ovenden says that, like-for-like, the new Mondeo is around £300 cheaper than the one it replaces, so he hopes more will be sold at prices closer to the RRP.

Still, dealers are continuously under pressure to get cars out of the showroom and onto the road – valuable performance-related bonuses could be at stake. It'll be hard for them to kick their habit of discounting.