Deals on wheels
Alex James
Being driven is one of the great luxuries. It’s right up there with breakfast in bed, silence, sunshine, new socks and vast expanses of marble. It’s elevating. It’s relaxing. It’s addictive. How lovely it is to fall into the back of a waiting car to be expertly magic carpeted off to, well, even to places one would rather not be going.
My car expired at the start of summer, and, despite my best efforts, until this week I hadn’t replaced it. I seemed to be coming out ahead, more by sloppiness than by design. I needed a car, or thought I did, but the cost of second-hand cars was falling by more each month than what I was spending on a chauffeur each month, and it’s fair to say that I’ve been using the local chauffeur company a lot. I even had to book them to take the cat for its operation in Solihull. They did me a very competitive price on that job, but then, when you look into it, it’s all very competitively priced, is chauffeuring.
Perhaps one of the reasons for my delaying buying a car is that having a car, any car, is nowhere near as nice as having a driver. Over the course of the summer David, my driver, and I have naturally had lengthy discussions as to exactly what car I should buy. The last car I bought, I actually bought from him, a people carrier that he’d taken us all to the airport in a couple of times. I love that car as I have loved no other, but it’s constantly booked out, ferrying four small children around.
So I needed a car and it didn’t take Dave and I many weeks to work out that I needed a car exactly the same as the one he has been driving me around in. So it was that he drove me up to Nottinghamshire on Wednesday with his good friend Bob, to look at one that had taken our fancy. When compared with the cost of a new kitchen, a new patio or especially something really boring like a new roof, brand-new cars look pretty good value at the moment. They just don’t make bad ones any more, either. No one makes a bad car. The man who delivers the post is cruising around in greater comfort than Elvis ever knew. A small consolation for the fact that it’s the 21st century and we should all be floating around on jetpacks is that falling markets, combined with the ‘line ’em all up in a row and take your pick’ power of the internet, mean, as you may well have heard, that big-ass, second-hand cars are an all-time bargain at the moment.
Well, this one was still under manufacturer’s warranty, and cost a quarter of what it would have done two years ago. It was all shiny, as new. ‘Ay it’s a beauteh,’ said the salesman, a doe-eyed, spikey-haired, likeable boy. I’d decided to buy it before I’d seen it, but Bob had already knocked 1,500 quid off the price and was now hard at it kicking the tyres.
‘New tyres,’ said the boy hopefully, as he diligently polished a smear off the front passenger headrest. Bob frowned: ‘I just don’t understand,’ he said, and then went very quiet. Wow, the guy was a master. Dave said he was good. He was a joy to watch. ‘It’s like putting an MFI kitchen in Buckingham Palace,’ said Bob. I had to suppress a snigger, but the poor boy was on the ropes. Bob got a hundred off for the appalling new tyres and another hundred off for the nasty scratch on the rear bumper I hadn’t noticed.
It was only a fair bit of bartering and, in the end, the boy was more than happy to make the sale. The thing was under warranty, so there was no chance of it being a lemon, anyway, but I was very glad to have Dave, who knew the model, and Bob, who knew the ropes, with me.
Everyone felt good all of a sudden. I felt good about getting the car for the right price. Bob felt good for negotiating. Dave felt good because he didn’t have to drive me any more. The lad felt good for making the sale. Hey, it was a second-generation family business. Hey, it was all good.
Then came the crunch. The only way to pay for the crate was with a credit card and the credit card company applies a two-anda-half per cent surcharge to the total. It was only a few hundred quid, and getting the car collected once a BACS transfer had been organised would have cost that much, so it wasn’t worth messing around. It was somehow deflating, though, after all that Googling and tyre-kicking trying to get the best deal going, to be a-hustled and a-hoodl’ed by the doggone moneylenders. I bit the bullet, paid the extra and drove away with more faith, trust and respect in second-hand car dealers than I have in banks. No wonder we’re in such a mess. Bloody cowboys. ❑
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