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For many car buyers, the path to financing their new car leads to exactly the same place they buy it from – their dealer. Offering finance options is an enormous sector of the motor trade and essential to the bottom lines of car showrooms.

Finance lowdown

Most popular car finance options

And what’s more, dealer finance is currently booming – and it’s all down to the credit crunch. As traditional money lenders, like banks, become more difficult to borrow from, dealers remain very keen to offer finance deals for the simple reason that they want to sell cars in a tough market.

Finance remains a more palatable proposition to a dealer than an unsecured loan does to a bank or building society, simply because they can secure the money on something tangible – the car. If you don’t keep up your payments, the car can be taken back, and with a deposit having been handed over too, the dealer has far more security on his outlay than a traditional moneylender.

And you might be surprised to learn many dealers actually prefer a customer buying a car on finance. Why? Well that’s because the dealer earns commission on each finance package they sell.

This gives customers serious negotiating power, and you will find dealers can be rather more flexible than traditional money lenders.

So once you have decided to finance your car through a dealer, you simply choose your desired model and wait for them to come up with the figures, right? Wrong. It's not quite as simple as that - there are a range of finance options to choose from first, and this can be just as confusing. We've explained the most popular in this gallery to help you decide which is for you.