The truth about optional extras: these choices could cost you dearly
We ask the experts which options you should specify when you’re buying your next brand-new car
New-car options lists are lengthy and potentially costly affairs; it’s easy to get carried away ticking boxes, ending up a long way above the model’s base price – and sometimes even in another road-tax bracket altogether.
The question is: are you likely to see money you spend on car options again? If you’re buying outright or financing on a PCP, will the options you’re picking add any value to the car when you come to sell it? Or do you have to just accept that the extras are a little luxurious present to yourself?
The answer isn’t quite as straightforward as you might have hoped. Very few optional extras will pay back all of what you spent when you sell the car, but that doesn;t mean you can’t choose your car options wisely. We’ve done some digging and spoken to a range of experts to come up with some key car options advice, it will help you dodge unnecessary car options while remembering to choose the ones that make sense.
Are car options worth it?
Today, SUVs are by far the most popular type of car and one option box you should definitely tick when buying one (or any familycar, for that matter) is a panoramic sunroof. Generally, this will set you back around £1,000 extra – or even more for the fancier kind that can become opaque at the press of a button. When you come to sell the car on, analytics firm Percayso Vehicle Intelligence (PVI), says that fixed glass roofs could be worth up to £500, while the opening variety can increase the value of a family SUV by up to £1,000, effectively making you your money back.
The panoramic roof is very much an anomaly, though, because although many options will indeed make your car easier to sell and potentially even boost its value on the used market, you’ll almost always spend more to specify them in the first place than you will earn back at the end of the day.
How to choose the best car options
Among the raft of potential upgrades, the best way to get your money's worth when reselling, or perhaps even find yourself in positive equity at the end of a finance deal, is to focus on those that affect the way a car looks.
Craig Bridgman, senior valuations officer at vehicle valuation firm Cap HPI, dubs the UK “a nation of appearance-based vehicles”. Unlike mainland Europe, where customers value… well, value for money, we Brits perceive cars as a status symbol and are attracted to those that exude a more premium appearance.
Specifically, Bridgman says optional extras such as larger alloy wheels “that fit the car’s overall specification”, leather seats and tinted windows are all items that add value to a car.
Having said this, it’s important not to forget the potential cost implications of certain options over and above the price to specify them in the first place. For instance, while PVI says upgraded alloy wheels are usually worth around £150-250 on a typical used SUV, Bridgman points out that “if you take the total cost of ownership, the higher the wheel size you go, the more expensive it is to replace tyres”. Replacing a full set of tyres on a Ford Puma (Britain’s best-selling car) with upgraded 19-inch wheels can be £120 more expensive (we used Goodyear Vector 4Seasons for this example) than a like-for-like replacement on a car with 17-inch rims. That’s not even taking into account how specifying bigger wheels can cost you a couple of miles per gallon, and the extra fuel bills will certainly add up over the typical three-year ownership period.
“But then I always say: ‘the wheels make the car’,” Bridgman continues. “If they look right and fit the specification, they will add value.”
Of course, car manufacturers are keen for you to tick as many boxes as possible; firms make a lot of money from options – a set of wheels priced at £1,000 won’t cost the manufacturer anything like that. What it does do, though, is increase the complexity of production and homologation; manufacturers have to test the efficiency of every specification combination, which becomes expensive when there are hundreds of different options to choose from.
That’s why options are increasingly grouped into packs these days. Not only does combining them into bundles or trim levels save on the cost of homologation, but it also nudges consumers to pay more for a collection of features that they might not have selected individually.
So-called ‘soft sports’ trim levels, such as AMG-Line with Mercedes, BMW’s M Sport, and R-Line from Volkswagen, have exploded in popularity in recent years and typically include many of these upgrades within their standard specification. Thus, they should, in theory, be worth more later in life, and the figures back this up: those visually appealing but pricier top-end trim levels tend to hold more of their value than the basic ones lower down the price list.
Also playing into our British fascination with flash is any option labelled with an aspirational brand. “We really like premium sound systems, provided they have a name attached to them,” points out Bridgman. BMW, for example, offers its own so-called ‘Loudspeaker’ upgrade, as well as even more premium Harman Kardon and Bowers & Wilkins systems. Although they're more costly to buy, Bridgman says it could be worth forking out extra for the branded options, which carry more kudos on the used market; PVI points out that a high-end B&W system, for example, could be worth more than twice as much as a standard upgrade when you sell your car.
EVs will also sell better with certain options fitted. Given that heated seats, heated steering wheels and heat pumps all improve efficiency during the colder months, they’re regarded as incredibly important; in fact, many brands now include these features as standard in their electric models. That said, Volkswagen, for example, charges £1,150 for a heat pump even on its top-of-the-line GTX version of the ID.4 family SUV. However, Bridgman says, “if you haven't got it and it was an option from the manufacturer, that could actually detract from the value of the vehicle.”
This leads us onto the danger of over-speccing your car; it’s pretty easy to get carried away with the options list and given that every car has a price ceiling, you could be pouring money down the drain. As one of PVI’s experts, Derren Martin, explains: “Buyers will generally only pay [around] 15 per cent extra over a car with no options. So, for a £15,000 car, buyers would only pay £2,000 extra for options, even if they may [in total] be worth more.”
Nevertheless, if you are concerned about selling your car afterwards, Bridgman’s “sweet spot” is to choose a mid-specification car with all of the basics, such as the aforementioned heated seats and eye-catching wheels. You should also avoid polarising colour choices and not be too tempted by pricey option packs that only contain a handful of desirable features.
What about subscriptions?
Complicating things further is how some manufacturers are beginning to tie certain features to subscription services. BMW, for
one, hides the high beam assistant feature for its LED headlights behind a subscription service; Volkswagen even gives entry-level ID.3 owners the option of boosting their car’s power for either a monthly fee, or a lifetime lump sum.
This then cracks open a bulging can of worms; it’s easy to foresee a scenario when one could purchase a car with heated seats, only to find out that the feature had previously been paid for on an annual basis, thus losing it a few months down the line. Then again, the prospect of being able to retrospectively add options to a used car without heavily modifying it is a game changer, meaning cars not specified with certain features can no longer be discounted on the second-hand market.
Ultimately, by this point you’ve probably noticed that choosing the right optional extras largely comes down to people's expectations. Ask yourself: what are the features that the next buyer would hope to find in a car of this type and in this segment? Just bear in mind that a more distinctive specification might not bring the same deals as something more run-of-the-mill; dealers sometimes have several models in stock with a standard specification that can be had at a bargain price.
In short: pick the car you want to live with and spend the money you can afford to make it the car you want. While sensible and liberal dabbling in the options list will make the car more valuable and desirable at the point of resale, you won’t get back all of what you’ve put in.
Auto Express’s perfect spec
Here’s how we would option up four of the country’s most popular new models.
Renault 5
- Final price: £25,945
- Trim level: Iconic Five+
- Powertrain: 148bhp 52kWh battery, single-speed auto
- Optional extras: None
The modern Renault 5 is a classic example of a car that offers very few individual optional extras. Instead, you generally add extra kit as you move up through the various trim levels.
Although every version comes with a heat pump as standard, we recommend stepping up to the mid-spec Iconic Five+ because this brings a heated steering wheel, plus heated front seats – which are indispensable for a car with a rather small battery pack. As much as we love the ‘pop yellow!’ paintwork, not everyone will, so we’d advise sticking with the mid-range car's base 'diamond black' or upgrading to ‘midnight blue’ for £650.
Ford Puma
- Final price: £32,280
- Trim level: ST-Line X
- Powertrain: 123bhp 1.0-litre petrol MHEV, seven-speed auto
- Optional extras: Winter Pack (£350), Panorama sunroof (£1,100)
Britain's top-selling car, the Ford Puma, comes in a variety of specifications. Opting for the 1.0-litre petrol engine with the seven-speed automatic should future-proof your purchase as buyers’ tastes turn away from manuals, while the ST-Line X adds more aggressive styling, larger wheels and part-leather seats, all helping your Puma stand out from the thousands of others.
ST-Line X models are well equipped, so the £350 Winter Pack is the only additional box we’d tick. But if you’re feeling more extravagant, you could also opt for the £1,100 panoramic sunroof, which is a solid option for an SUV such as this and makes the Puma’s rather restricted interior feel more open.
BMW 5 Series
- Final price: £56,710
- Trim level: 520i M Sport
- Powertrain: 205bhp 2.0-litre petrol MHEV, seven-speed auto
- Optional extras: Sophisto Grey paint (£900), 20-inch alloys (£1,000), Perforated and Quilted Veganza in Black (£0), Sun Protection Glass (£470), Bowers & Wilkins sound system (£1,250)
More premium cars require a more premium specification, as the BMW 5 Series shows. The base white paint, for example, isn’t really becoming of a posh executive car, so we’ve opted for the UK’s favourite shade: grey.
Vegan leather upholstery should make the car more appealing to buyers, while the upgraded alloys will certainly turn heads. We’ve also opted for the pricey premium audio option; big saloons are typically driven long miles and prospective buyers will be attracted by the kudos of the B&W name.
Volkswagen Golf
- Final price: £34,945
- Trim level: R-Line
- Powertrain: 148bhp 1.5-litre petrol MHEV, seven-speed auto
- Optional extras: Winter Pack (£500), Harman Kardon sound system (£630)
The Volkswagen Golf looks smart, but base versions aren’t the most exciting visually. With this in mind, we recommend stepping up to the 'soft-sport' R-Line model to get the greatest return when you sell it.
Diamond-cut alloys and tinted windows should help make the car look more premium; you can make it even more striking with LED Performance headlights complete with an illuminated VW logo, although these could be a tad divisive. Less polarising is the excellent Harman Kardon sound system, which will definitely be a selling point when you trade in the car.
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