How car finance and diesel emissions could be the carmakers’ undoing

The collapse in diesel car prices and the popularity of personal contract plan car financing will combine to cause a lot of pain for the carmakers, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

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Personal contract plans now account for nine in every ten car sales
(Image credit: 2015 Getty Images)

Who should be most worried about the collapse in the price of diesel cars? For most commentators it is those who don't own their cars outright. Personal contract plans (PCPs ) now account for nine in every ten car sales and mean that pretty much anyone with a job can nip down to a car showroom and drive off in a brand new car.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.