I had a couple of previous cars on PCP and it worked very well. I'd put in a deposit of about £2.5k and at the end of the deal I was able to trade in/sell for about £2.5k more than I still owed in the final balloon payment, giving me the deposit on the next car. It was effectively like a private lease for me but I owned the car and, like others have said, allowed me to own a new car at a time when I could not have afforded one on regular HP or normal loan payments.
The cars felt like mine because they were. Only downside for someone who gets bored easily like me as that it was prohibitively expensive to get out of the deal until you got towards the end of the term.
Alliance & Leicester used to do a loan which was very similar in that there was a large balloon payment at the end to keep the monthly payments down but as it was just a loan you could chop and change cars as much as you liked.