From fake bestsellers to the trade-in trap: how dealers really make their money

When a friend has a new baby, you never say: "He's really ugly". And you know the answer when your plus one asks: "Do these jeans make me look fat?"

It's the same in the car caper as no one tells you the truth. So here are five things nobody ever tells you about buying and selling a car:

Market value vs. agreed value insurance

Market value is cheaper but pays what your car is worth at the time of the claim – based on age, condition, kilometres and comparable sales. The payout is only known once you crash or it's stolen.

The minute you drive out the showroom your car is worth 15 per cent less. Twelve months later it's dropped 30 per cent. By year three you'll be lucky to get half. Agreed value pays a specific dollar amount that you and the insurer lock in at renewal – more certainty, usually a higher payout, but a higher premium. The catch is insurers often reduce it annually in line with depreciation unless you push back. Tip: Check your agreed value at every renewal. Don't assume it's kept pace with replacement cost.

2. European spare parts live in Singapore

They take two weeks to reach Australia and another week to attach themselves to your Beemer or Audister.

Tip: Ask specifically for airfreight options. Get the part number and ring local Euro specialists – if they have stock, ask your insurer or repairer to use that source even if it's not the factory channel.

3. Bestsellers aren't always bestsellers

You've seen the photos – thousands of new cars resting in paddocks. They call them paddock queens. Manufacturers register cars to make the monthly hit parade, then sell them as "demonstrators". The trap is they're often six months old or last year's model. You think you're saving but you're losing.

Tip: Check the build date, compliance date and first registration date. Price it off the oldest of those, which is how the market will view it when you sell. If the demo isn't several thousand below a genuine new car, it's not a deal.

4. The sticker price is not the price

The dealer's biggest money-spinner isn't the car, it's the finance and add-ons bolted on after you've mentally bought it. Great headline rates get clawed back through balloons and overpriced extras.

Tip: Arrange finance pre-approval before hitting the dealership. Negotiate as a cash buyer. Say no to paint protection, fabric protection, VIN etching and gap insurance unless you have independently checked the price; the same cover is usually far cheaper outside.

5. The trade-in shell game

Overstate the discount on the new car, lowball the trade-in and the changeover looks okay while the dealer wins at both ends.

Tip: Focus on changeover, not headline discount. Run your own sum across two or three dealers. If they start "adjusting" the trade the moment you push on price, call it out once – and if it continues, stand up and leave. Nothing resets a negotiation faster than proving you'll walk.

Melbourne gets something new for a change

Albert Park (March 5 to 8) isn't just back as the season-opener – it's the first proper exam of F1's new rule book. Street-ish surface, sketchy grip, walls close enough to read your sponsors backwards, and everyone arriving with cars that might be rockets … or expensive shopping trolleys with Wi-Fi.

The 50-50 hybrid reset

The big shift for 2026: roughly half petrol, half electric, with much bigger reliance on electrical deployment and harvesting. That sounds clean and modern until you remember this is F1, where "clean and modern" usually means someone's car will randomly forget how to accelerate out of turn three.

Then there's active aero (movable wings replacing DRS) plus overtake mode, which only unlocks when you're close enough to smell the tyre marbles ahead. It's designed to make racing tighter – but in the opening rounds it'll expose who's nailed energy management and who's doing battery maths at 300km/h.

Two new kids: Audi and Cadillac

Audi's debut as a full works outfit (ex-Sauber) adds manufacturer spice from session one. They're talking a title push by 2030 – the kind of promise that sounds great in Berlin and gets stress-tested brutally in Melbourne. The drivers are Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto.

Cadillac – the 11th team, backed by GM – arrives with big American confidence and a practical Plan A, which is don't embarrass ourselves in year one. Boss Graeme Lowdon has said nobody truly knows who'll be competitive under these rules. Translation: don't @ me when the timing screens look insane. They've got experience in Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez, with Ferrari power.

The local headline: Piastri as a threat

Oscar Piastri isn't the plucky Aussie trying to jag a podium anymore. He's coming off a 2025 campaign at the pointy end of the standings and arrives as a genuine title player rather than a warm local story.

Our tip: Mad Max, then Leaping Lando, then Georgie, then Oscar. But Albert Park 2026 will be unpredictable – new rules, new teams, new power-unit headaches, and one Oscar who'll have half the country treating turn one like a national referendum.

White knight, minor blemish but $61m not a bad price

A Ferrari 250 GTO sold for $61m at Mecum's Kissimmee auction – the only GTO to leave Maranello in Bianco white, built for British racing team owner John Coombs and campaigned by Roy Salvadori and Richie Ginther.

It had everything collectors want – racing provenance, preservation-class originality, period details like hood louvres and cockpit air hose. Everything except the original engine. The Colombo V12 under the bonnet is Ferrari Classiche-certified, it's just not the one that was there when it was new. That historical hiccup – plus right-hand drive – may explain why $61m counts as "low" in GTO world.

For context: the record is $111m, paid privately in 2018 for a 1963 GTO that won the Tour de France and finished fourth at Le Mans.

And this just in on our favourite cars

Uber has abandoned its 2030 net-zero pledge as its chief executive signalled that drivers and governments were turning their backs on electric cars. Then best-selling thriller author John Green told me yesterday that hundreds of state-of-the-art electric buses in SDL can be remotely switched off by the commies in China. Uber goes back to petrol. The commies switch off vehicles. A coincidence? You decide.