Motoring
Caveat emptor
Alan Judd
This is a story about a man who went to buy a car. He wanted a small, economical hatchback about three years old, and he walked into a local dealership which repre- sents a very well-known multinational car company. He found what he wanted at what seemed like a bargain price and, accompanied by the salesman, set off for a test drive.
Our buyer is a meticulous non-smoker and the first thing he does on entering any prospective purchase is to run his finger around the rims of the ashtrays to see if the car has been used by a smoker (most sellers aren't very thorough about cleaning ash- trays). The ashtrays in this car felt curiously slimy. During the test drive he was enter- tained by the salesman's chatter, which had the usual effect of distracting him from points he wanted to notice. The salesman, like many of his breed, was really rather bored with his own car-talk, which he has to repeat every day, and soon got on to his family holiday plans. Our buyer found that maintaining the semblance of social inter- course lessened his concentration on seating position, transmission noise, braking, idling, cornering and so on, so he asked to extend the normal round-the-block test drive.
After a while the interior of the car began steaming up. 'All this wet weather,' said the salesman. 'They all do this if they have been on the forecourt not used during the bad weather. Goes off after a while.'
Our buyer was unconvinced. At the end of the drive he asked to see the car's service history. The salesman took it from the glove compartment, swiftly turned the pages while reading extracts aloud and put it back, pronouncing himself satisfied. Our buyer wasn't; he had asked to see it, not hear about it. With the book in his hand, he read slowly, ignoring the chatter. The first thing he noticed was that the car appeared to have done fewer miles at its second ser- vice than at its first. Next he noticed that every entry appeared to be in the same ink and the same hand. He interrupted a com- parison between Spanish and Portuguese resorts to point this out. The salesman took the book, frowned briefly, then his brow cleared: obviously, the 'technician' who ser- viced it (at another branch of the same dealership) had simply mis-transcribed the second mileage figure and the reason it was all in the same hand was that the same `technician' had serviced this car through- out. Quite a coincidence, really, in a big main dealership. Noting in passing the apparent newness of the service book, our buyer said he would like to talk to the 'tech- nician'. Could they go inside and ring him?
They never got that far. Our buyer lives in a county recently much affected by flooding and it turned out that the main dealership from which this car came had been flooded a month or so before. This car was one of several that had floated around on its forecourt. Afterwards they had dried it out, more or less, got it going, replaced the sodden service book with a new one and transcribed — more or less the original entries. Sensibly, our buyer walked away. A bargain is not a bargain when it ought to be cheap anyway.
So if you're tempted to enliven your post-Christmas doldrums with a new four- wheeled friend, watch out for apparent bargains that come from flooded areas. Water, oil and sewerage don't do much for any car and they do even less for modern ones than for old. If water gets into an older, pre-electronic car you can bale it out, brake hard a few times, put plugs and HIT leads into the Aga (bottom oven) and an old sack on the seat squab to keep your bottom dry, and off you go. But modern cars with their black-box engine manage- ment systems, computerised sensors, ABS, central locking, sophisticated alarms and so on are much more vulnerable to expensive water damage. Even if they seem all right at the time, there can be major problems a little way down the road.
Normally you'd expect better behaviour from a main dealership than our buyer dis- covered. One that I know, in a flood town, auctioned off all 60 of its cars openly as flood-damaged. They went cheaply and some buyers may be well pleased but oth- ers, less scrupulous, bought at bargain- basement prices in order to sell on. Some of those cars are now appearing in the small-ads, where their provenance will not be volunteered. If in doubt, ask how long the seller has had the car, where he got it and who had it before. Get details of the previous owner from the registration docu- ment and ring him or her. Ring HPI or the AA to check whether it's been an insurance write-off. If you're not confident, don't buy alone — take someone with you, if only to absorb the sales chatter while you concen- trate on the car. And, if you're in any doubt, walk away. There're plenty more cars in the sea.
Previous page
