North vs South: which really is cheaper? - Introduction

As long as used cars have been on sale in the UK, it has been cheaper to buy them up north than down south.

However, we wondered if that still holds true in today's world of instant access to nationwide sales through the internet.

To find out, we went shopping for six used cars, including the BMW 3 Series, Ford Focus and Vauxhall Corsa, all with similar ages and mileages.

We not only considered cars at franchised dealers, but supermarkets and private sellers as well.