Picanto News: Pricewatch: Picanto vs Ka

Never mind the advertised price: just tell me how much my new car will have cost by the time i drive it out of the showroom? And how much will it be worth in a couple of years when i come to sell it?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself when it comes to buying a new car. And just like our readers, these are the sort of questions we also like to know the answers to.

So with curiosity getting the better of us, we took a quick glance at December's CAP used car data value's to see how our little Picanto faired against the UK's best selling super-mini...the mighty Ford Ka.

The CAP guide, a reference to used car prices retained at UK auctions, listed the Ka at £6,607*, excluding costs and road fund licence, although according to Ford UK's official website the car was listed at £7,095 on the road.

The Picanto 1.0 GS was listed at £4,932* again excluding delivery and road fund licence and retails at £5,495 on the road. We'll use the CAP data guide prices for this test to keep things even.

In our test we took a 2004 04 registration basic 1.3 Ka and pitched it against the same year base model Picanto 1.0 GS. The logic behind our thinking was that in 2004, the Picanto came into the UK and would therefor be appearing on the second hand market, both are the least expensive models in the range and likely to be the most popular buys.

Before we publish our findings, lets have a quick re-cap.

1) Our aim was to look at the two year buying cycle based on 24,000 miles (12,000 miles per annum).
2) Due to the Picanto's relative newness in the second hand UK market, we needed to make comparisons on a two year old/2004 04 registration model in clean condition and match this with a similar model Ford Ka.

The results:

• 2004 04 - Ford Ka 1.3i - CAP cost when new £6,607* - CAP clean value with 24,000 miles = £3,100 - retained value 46.9 per cent.
• 2004 04 - Kia Picanto 1.0 GS - CAP cost when new £4,932* - CAP clean value with 24,000 miles = £3,250 - retained value 65.9 per cent.

Suprised by the results? To be honest we were a little. Although we expected the Picanto to be close in value, we were suprised at the wide margin. Not only is the Ka £1,675* more expensive to buy, it's also worth £150* less than the Picanto after approx 24mths/24,000miles according to CAP. Add to that the Picanto's 3 year manufacturer backed warranty and superior specification to the Ka, it looks a bit of a no-brainer to us. But then of course we are bound to say that aren't we?

Naturally factors such as over saturation don't help the Ford Ka but it has proved itself to be popular amongst young car buyers. But it is starting to look a bit long in the tooth and perhaps Kia can eat into their market and with results like this, will only go a long way to helping that.

So the facts are there to be seen and Picanto's are proving to be popular amonst the car buying public. With Kia sales rising in the UK at an extraordinary pace it will be interesting to see how these tests pan out in the future.

Source: CAP December 2005 release: calculations are based on CAP clean value for 2004 04 plate vehicle's, based on 24 mths/24,000 miles.

*Prices are quoted by CAP and exclude manufacturers delivery and road fund licence fee's.