Repmobile
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The Repmobile is a semi-derogatory British term used to describe cars that are popular on the fleets of sales representatives (or reps).
Most commonly this term is applied to medium sized cars produced by large manufacturers and sold cheap to fleets, e.g. Ford Mondeo and Vauxhall Vectra.
These cars are typically bought for high mileage motorway use and passed on to auctions with 100,000 or more miles at three to four years old.
The fact that these cars are very common, suffer from this negative image and are sold cheap to fleets ensure that depreciation is steep.
This sector is now in decline, with many buyers preferring to downsize to smaller cars such as the Ford Focus or Vauxhall / Opel Astra. There is also a tendency for buyers to snub the so-called mainstream brands and head for more expensive vehicles by BMW or Volkswagen. Ironically, the large number of people seeking cars with a better image is slowly worsening the image of prestige brands as they become less exclusive.
For their part, mainstream manufacturers as trying to push their image up market by removing hatchback options, upping equipment and quality levels and boosting prices on mid size cars. Quite why a hatchback is seen as down market is not clear. One idea is that the less practical a car gets the more the owner can claim they do not need practicality as they can pay someone to garden / build / tidy / shop for them. The lack of a BMW 7 series estate or hatchback or small saloons in the UK could be seen as evidence of this.