Makes sense, thanks for explaining.
Struggling to see how putting a larger deposit in actually increases the overall money paid for you? if you added say £3k to the deposit, would that not be £3k that you weren't paying interest on for the 48 months?
With PCP, everything is linked:
GFV (guaranteed future value, basically Audi's predicted value of your car at the end of the 36/48 months) is fixed by Audi Finance (although can be lowered if you want to pay more off)
Monthly Payments = (sale price of car - (your deposit + dealer\manufacturer contributions)*interest) - GFV / number of months
That formula looks horrendous but it's essentially the cost of the car, minus deposits, plus interest, minus predicted value, divided by number of months. If any of those factors change, it will change the outcome of the monthly payments. Variables could be:
Deposit(s) go up, monthly goes down or vice versa.
Interest goes up, monthly goes up, or vice versa
GFV goes up, monthly goes down, or vice versa
Number of months goes up, monthly goes down (but not in a linear way due to interest calculations)
Of course, sale price up/down will affect it too.
Hope i'm not preaching on here; I really blitzed my knowledge of the product before going for my last car, makes discussions with the dealer far more balanced when they realise that you know at least a bit about what you're signing for.
In your case Daggerit, what part of the setup changed to make it cost more? Take the (purely theoretical) £3k example, if you put an extra £3k down, you're actually making the total amount paid less, due to it being £3k * 4% APR * 4 years = roughly £3,500, so you'd save £500 by doing so. So unless you can leverage your £3k and get more than 4% in an interest account and avoid paying tax on the interest, i'd suggest it's better plugging as much as you can into the car.
Final caveat emptor - I work in investment banking, hence the interest in the figures bit, but am not linked to the car trade so there may be something i've missed - more than happy to learn more here