(Mon 14 Jan 08)

The MINI has taken the number one spot in the Parker's Car Guides list of top ten lowest-depreciating cars on the UK market. Parker's reckons that an average MINI bought at the start of 2007 would have lost just £1388 by the end of year - that's less than £27 per week.

Small cars dominate this year's list. The Honda Jazz, which has never been out of the top ten since it was launched in 2002, is second, while the Citroen C1, Peugeot 107 and Toyota Aygo trio are in fourth, seventh and eighth places respectively. Peroduas are third (Kelisa) and fifth (Myvi), while the Suzuki Swift, Proton Satria Neo and Hyundai Amica complete the placings.

Second to tenth are all in the range from £2017 to £2423, so the MINI is well ahead; and the fact that MINIs are far more expensive to buy in the first place than all the others makes the performance even more remarkable.

The other end of the scale is worth looking at. If you bought a Maybach a year ago, you would now be £77,651 out of pocket (though if you did buy a Maybach you probably spent more than that on wine and DVDs in the same period). The Rolls-Royce Phantom will have cost you £53,919, and depreciation on an Aston Martin Vanquish was £50,612.

Among the slightly less rarified models you can buy in the UK, the BMW M6, Jaguar XJR, Volkswagen Phaeton, BMW 7-Series and Audi A8 all racked up depreciation scores in the £25-£30,000 range.

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