Fastest-depreciating cars for less than £50,000

If you've ever bought a car, new or used, then you'll have experienced depreciation – even if you weren't quite sure of what it was. Put simply, depreciation is the effect that driving, using or simply owning your car has on its value. And that's because with every minute and mile, almost every car loses a portion of its value.

That rate of depreciation affects how much of your money you'll be able to get back when you sell it on – so it's in your best interest to choose a model which keeps as much of its value as possible. If you've read our lists of the fastest and slowest-depreciating new cars, you'll see that there are some very expensive models at both ends of the depreciation scale, which is why in this story we're limiting our budget to £50,000.

We've used our resale data to reveal the models which lose the biggest percentage of their original value over a typical ownership period of three years and 36,000 miles. You'll see plenty of electric cars on this list, but also some combustion-engined cars. There's also a mix of premium and mass-market brands, and body styles.

While the cars listed here are the worst offenders for depreciation, we've also noted the slowest-depreciating cars for less than £50,000 in a separate story.

In each case we've highlighted the model which performs best in terms of depreciation, and you can find out more about the specific version we've noted, or the car's range as a whole, by following the links through to our in-depth reviews. You can also see how much you can expect to pay using our New Car Deals service.

*All prices correct at the time of writing

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