RateSetter funds 40,000 car purchases

Buying a car is the number one reason for taking out a RateSetter personal loan. RateSetter investors have helped to fund more than 40,000 car purchases around the UK, worth a total of £250m. In addition, they’ve provided over £100m of car finance via car dealerships and brokers.

On average, car buyers borrow between £6,000 and £7,000 through RateSetter, and as we saw earlier this year, you’d be surprised at what that could buy you (Rolls Royce anyone?)

Of course, £350m is easily enough to buy any car you’d care to mention. For example, the most expensive car ever sold at auction is a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, which would have set you back $38.2m when it last changed hands at Bonhams in 2014.

In fact, with £350m, you could buy the 10 most valuable cars ever sold at auction, and, depending on exchange rates at the time, you’d still have around £100m left over to build a ten-car garage and a few racetracks.

As far as we know though, no-one’s yet used a RateSetter loan to buy a classic Ferrari. While Teslas, self-driving cars and electric vehicles might be making headlines, we’re still waiting for them to become truly mainstream and the most popular cars in the UK haven’t changed much over time: in 2010, our first year of business, the top-selling car in the UK was the Ford Fiesta, with 103,000 models sold. In 2016, the best-selling car to date is, amazingly, still the Ford Fiesta.

However, with tens of thousands of people choosing to use peer-to-peer platforms to finance cars purchases, the way we think about buying a new car is changing, and we’re proud to be part of that change.

If you’ve used a RateSetter loan to buy a car, let us know what you bought in the comments section below!