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A Pre-registered New Car is one which has been registered (for various reasons) by the dealership, usually to themselves, and as such although the car is ‘new’ in the sense that it has not been used or owned by another customerthe dealership will appear in the log book as the first owner of the car, and you will be on the log book as the second owner. The warranty period may also have already started, from the date of this first registration to the dealership. But in all other respects it will be a brand new car, and the potential savings on these cars can be very substantial indeed, as the dealership has already effectively recorded the car as ’sold’ and is therefore prepared to pass the car on at the lowest possible price, rather than trying to get the highest possible price as they would do in the normal case.
However it’s is a slightly grey area and there’s a few issues with pre-reg cars. There can be different reasons why dealerships do it, some are OK but some are not so good - mainly the issue of ‘log-book retension’ - where the dealer keeps the log book for 3-6 months to show the manufacturer that the car has been sold. So one way to understand it is that a pre-registered car *with no log-book retension* is potentially better than a pre-regsitered car where the log book *is* retained for a period. So it’s important to find out exactly what the situation is with this from the supplier of the car you are interested in and to balance those conditions of sale with the price saving your would potentially be making.
For further information read this general guide from WhatCar here
Or this detailed information from at http://www.firstregisteredowner.co.uk/, which has been compiled by DealDrivers.co.uk, who specialise in supplying only brand new cars, but have an excellent explanation of the sometimes complicated scenarios of dealer pre-registration.
Whilst considering Pre-reg prices, it’s always worth looking on CarPriceChecker at the equivalent non-pre-reg, i.e. Brand New cars, as there will often be excellent discounts available for them anyway on our site from one supplier or another. Pre-registered car prices are shown in grey in our price comparison pages, whilst new car pages are shown in Blue text*:
, and are highlighted on the specific offer details page with this icon:
Equally, ‘Brand New Cars’ are indicated with this icon:
Happy Hunting!
*note: we make every endeavour to determine which cars prices are pre-registered and which are brand new, but we rely on information on the suppliers website to do so, and as such sometimes our indications may not always be 100% accurate - a click through to the suppliers site, or contacting them by email or phone will clarify any that you are not sure about.
