The best and worst… discounts

How big a discount can you get off your next new car? Thanks to the What Car? Target Price, you don't have to worry about missing out on savings.

Our mystery shoppers track down the best deals every month, so you can look up the saving online, or in the back of the magazine – to reveal exactly how much you should be paying.

Find out the models with the biggest discounts, how much can you get off the list price, and reveal the cars that have the smallest savings, too.

The biggest new car discounts of them all In monetary terms, you can get the biggest lump sum off the long-wheelbase Mercedes S65 AMG. The £11,461 saving is just 4% of the list price, though, so there's still up to £142,929 to pay.

This car also has the dubious honour of losing the most value over three years, so that £11,500 doesn't look so impressive next to a huge loss of £103,715.

In percentage terms, the Vauxhall Zafira leads the way with 16.75% readily available off the list price, which is between £2987 and £4314 depending on the model you go for.

The smallest new car discounts of them all There are a few cars where demand outstrips supply and you'd be lucky to get anything off the list price.

We set the What Car? Target Price to zero on these cars – such as the Fiat 500 or Porsche 911.

Besides those, the smallest discount to aim for is on a new Mini where savings range from £121 on a Mini One to £233 on a John Cooper Works convertible.

Citroen's discounts for its quirky new DS3 are also low at 1.25%.

Next-smallest percentage savings come on the new Mercedes E-Class Cabriolet at 2%, although the higher list price does mean slightly bigger monetary savings of between £663 and £739.

Can I get a better deal? Almost certainly. The What Car? Target Price shows the most you should pay for any new car – in many cases you should be able to do much better if you shop around, haggle hard and look online.

Check out some of the deals our mystery shoppers have unearthed.

Did we mention residual values? A big discount off the list price could well mean poor resale values after three years. Use our depreciation calculator to check that the big savings at the dealership don't have a string in the tail when you come to sell.

You can find out which car retains the most of its value after three years, and which loses the most, with our run down of the best and worst residual values.

Source: Indiacar.com Source : http://www.whatcar.com (4/19/2010)