Specialist luxury car finance on the marques that hold value

What luxury car finance covers

Luxury car finance covers the flagship end of the market: the limousines, the large luxury SUVs and the grand tourers, where the vehicle is bought for the way it travels rather than for the way it corners. Bentley Continental GT and Flying Spur, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Ghost and Cullinan, Bentley Bentayga, Aston Martin DBX and Mercedes-Maybach S-Class are the cars that define it, and classic Bentley and classic Rolls-Royce cars sit behind them on the same panel.

That is a deliberate split from prestige car finance, which leans to the performance saloons and sports cars. The difference matters in underwriting, because specification carries far more of the valuation here. A Phantom with a Starlight headliner and a full Bespoke list can leave the factory a long way above base, and a finance house has to decide how much of that it will lend against. Our advice on that point is the single most useful thing we do on this tier.

The luxury cars we fund most often

Bentley from Crewe supplies the Continental GT, Flying Spur and Bentayga alongside the limited-build Mulliner Batur. Rolls-Royce from Goodwood supplies the Phantom, Ghost and Cullinan, plus the Spectre, which is the first fully electric car the marque has built and the first to raise a residual question nobody has forty years of data on.

Aston Martin supplies the DBX 707 and DB12, Mercedes-Maybach supplies the S-Class, and Porsche supplies the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid alongside the Cayenne and the Taycan. Porsche sits at the edge of this tier and the middle of the prestige one, which is why a Porsche enquiry often gets advice to read both pages. Where a vehicle is a classic Bentley or Rolls-Royce rather than a current one, our classic car finance page covers agreed valuations and auction purchases instead.

How the structures compare on a luxury car

Hire Purchase repays the whole balance across the term and passes title with the final payment. Lease Purchase defers an agreed sum and keeps the monthly figure lower. Personal contract purchase sets that deferred figure as a guarantee from the lender, so handing the car back becomes an option. Equity release advances cash against a car already in your name.

Which one suits is decided by how long you intend to keep the vehicle. Three years and a change means personal contract purchase or Lease Purchase. Ten years and a family means Hire Purchase, because deferring capital on a car you will never sell only adds interest. That is the whole of the advice, and the car finance calculator will show you the difference in a minute.

What a luxury car costs to fund each month

The monthly cost is set by four inputs and nothing else: price, deposit, term and the deferred sum at the end. On the rows above the deposit is held at 20 per cent so the effect of structure and term is visible on its own, which is the comparison most buyers actually want and rarely get.

Options are the variable that catches people out. A car specified £60,000 above base is financed on the invoice, not on the list price, and recovers only part of that specification at resale. That is why the Rolls-Royce and Bentley rows above use base list prices and why a real quote starts from your build sheet.

Getting a quote and what we need from you

A quote takes one call. We need the vehicle and its specification, the deposit you intend to put down, the term you have in mind, and whether the car finance agreement is going into a company or a personal name. From that we go to the finance houses most active in this sector and come back with indicative terms and a view on which one to take.

Nothing at that stage touches your credit file and there is no charge for the request. A formal application follows only once you have seen the numbers and told us to proceed. Company borrowers should expect the finance house to ask for filed accounts or management figures, and tax treatment on a company purchase is a question for your accountant or financial adviser rather than for us.

One person handles the file from first call to payout, which is the whole of our customer service model: no queue, and no customer repeating the story to a second desk.

Used and pre-owned luxury cars

The strongest value in this sector sits at two to three years old, and the reason is the option list. A flagship saloon or SUV leaves the showroom carrying tens of thousands of pounds of specification that the second-hand market pays only a fraction for. The first owner buys the veneer, the rear seat entertainment and the extended paint; the second owner gets them and funds a much smaller capital sum.

That makes used luxury car finance straightforward to arrange. The residual is a known quantity rather than a forecast, so a finance house will write a realistic balloon on Lease Purchase and will often still guarantee a future value on personal contract purchase. What it will not overlook is history: these are complex cars with expensive service schedules, and an incomplete service file is treated as a direct risk to the valuation.

Classic car finance overlaps with this tier more than any other. A Bentley R-Type Continental or a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud is a luxury car and a classic car at once, and the finance on a classic car of that kind is valuation-led rather than book-led. Many of our clients hold one alongside a current car and finance both through the same panel, which is why the two pages sit next to each other.