The secondhand market is a strange beast, particularly so for the MR2 since there is a grey import route.
Cheaper cars from Japan have bought the residual price of the MR2 right down, but it has also set what should be regarded as a price floor at around
£2000.
This is about the cheapest
cost price of getting reasonable revision1 MR2 in from Japland when you consider all of the costs
(car cost, FOB, freight, dock
/ agent
/ handling, import duty, VAT, MOT and registration).
Even then you're typically getting a car on the basis of half a dozen photos and a scribbled spec sheet with any issues highlighted in Japanese.
Bedroom traders with no overheads and a full-time job will quite happily make a couple of hundred quid on a car, undercutting the full time dealers and bringing the value of the market down even further.
And having bought the car via t'interweb rather than a known and trusted source in Japan they're more likely to end up with the ropey ones and no resources to improve them, hence the cheap and nasty cars at the bottom end of the market
- again dragging the prices down.
There's no reason
- even given their age
- that MR2s shouldn't have a higher residual value.
It's a sports cars FFS! Have a look at the following page:
http://www.mr2gt.co.uk/
These were my own personal cars, and they sold at the end of last year within 24 hours of each other.
The
'92 revision 2 turbo sold for more than the
'94 revision 3 car.
.
.
Stop under-valuing your cars!!
Rogue
:D