At the end of the day it's whatever your comfortable with, you buy a car outright from the second you pay for it it's losing money and it costs you money all the time in maintenance and running, you get a car on finance and you own it at the end but it's lost money as well as cost you in interest and running/repairs, PCP you pay to hire a car, pure and simple with no hassle, change or hand it back.
I bet the costs and losses involved probably aren't that different in all the scenarios. At the end of the day if PCP's were that bad people just wouldn't do it. I never ever said I would by a brand new car but looking at pcp deals you can get now especially on the Gti it's really got me thinking, I worked out that my Mk5 cost me nearly £9k for 2.5yrs ownership by the time you add up finance payments, cost/loss on purchase price at trade in and repairs/maintenance, approx £300-330 per month that I never saw again. I could get a brand new Mk7 with that money for quite a small deposit.