Why I avoid PCP, I buy the bike I want and then do the miles I want and then see what it is worth when I come to move it on.
Even if Bike A will be worth 5% more than Bike B 3 years later you are still only looking at £250 a year - or £5 a week - I would not buy a bike I did not want over one I did to save £5 a week.
If looking at GS Vs KTM there is also the servicing costs, my local BMW dealer is a whopping £40 and hour more for servicing - and the GS needs more regular servicing - that would probably claw back 50% of the future value loss.
The GFV is only the minimum anyway, I suspect when you go to chop in / sell a bike with a good GFV you are less likely to beat that guaranteed value.
The cheapest 1190 adventure on Bike Trader is up at £7,000 with 30k on the clock - about 50% of its new price four years ago.
The three cheapest 2014 models on Bike trader with 12k - 27k on the clock (i.e. around the end of a 3 year PCP) are all up at £8,995 so I would guess a trade in value for the previous owner of about £8,000 equates @ 55% of new value - about the same as the BMW GFV (which I doubt will return much above the GFV as it was generous to begin with)
If minimising the cost of your bike is your main concern then just buy a 650 V-Strom, it can be bought outright for about the same as the 3 year loss on a top of the range KTM and BMW.
These purchases are nothing to do with being shrewd with money, adding up a few pence here and there when you have one life on this planet seems ridiculous to me, personally I am not prepared to lose anywhere near 50% of £14,000+ every 3 years which is why I jumped at the chance of an 1190 with a £3k discount - I will almost certainly retain well over 60% of what I paid for my bike if I keep it 3 years even at my current 6,000 miles per year.
So where Moose has signed up to lose £7159 in depreciation (plus interest I assume) I will lose less than £4,500 in the same period (and pay no interest) assuming I do relatively high miles and the trade in I get on a 3 year old bike is about £1,000 lower than 3 year old ones currently trade at. The difference is nobody made me a promise of a GFV, I just did the maths by looking at what used KTM's sold for and taking into account the £3k discount I was offered.
And if I don't find a great deal to replace it at that time I do not have to give it back or come up with the bikes value in cash to keep it, I just hang onto it until a deal I do like comes along.
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