Used car buyers unwittingly bought ex-rental vehicles

harveybobbles

In all fairness, nothing quite accelerates like a hire car...

As for Godfrey Davis/BOS - that covers a whole host of companies... It could be anything from HBOS staff car, pool car, snatch backs, VT's.

pippy100

Mysolicitorisbetter wrote: »

This sort of article is ridicolous.

If people dont ask the question they cant expect to be told. Anyone who is stupid enough not to check the origin of their vehicle properly also doesnt have the intellect to understand the real benefits and pitfalls and are just taking the media's overzelous articles as gospel.

Plenty of trashed privately owned cars too. At least these things are well maintained and dealer backed

Thanks for this!! At least i can take comfort from the fact that i am not the only stupid car buyer!!
I think the issue for me anyway is not the fact that it is an ex rental car as yes any car irrespective of whether it was privately owned or multiple users could have been 'thrashed' it is if you do not ask the right question then you do not get the right answer, as if the seller is trying to hide the fact the car is an ex car rental. As the seller is normally quite happy to tell you if it was 'one lady owner' as if that would make a diference.I'm not saying i wouldn't have bought if i had known it was an ex rental but i now wonder what i thought was a good buy is not as good as i thought. i.e should it have been cheaper, does it make any difference to the price? It certainly doesn't have high mileage(unless it's been clocked;)) and so far no problems. So it may be the best car i have ever owned but yes i do wish i had asked the question' Is it an ex rental?' rather than assuming.

JonathanA

To be honest, an ex rental car won't be worth any less than any other car - it is condition and mileage that are the biggest factors in determining the price - along with market forces such as demand etc.

What car have you bought, what was its mileage / ownership and how old was it? As said above, I've had several ex rental cars from the Channel Islands, all low mileage and only one had a very minor problem, fixed straight away. I wouldn't worry too much if I were you.

Lemonade_Pockets

LandyAndy wrote: »

One of my clients hires a VW Passat under Europcar's 'six and go' scheme. They get a brand new Passat every 4 to 6 months. It has one driver who looks after it pretty well. I would have thought they would be sound buys (if you want a Passat:rolleyes:).

Not disputing that for a second i'm sure there are many examples like it. But for every sound buy there will be a car that has been thrashed with in a inch of its life from day one. From my personal experience i'd rather have a ex-courtesy car than a ex-demo as the demo's where always thrashed but the courtesy cars where only sometimes thrashed.

So to quantify my point. Lets say when purchasing a single user car the chance of it being abused is 50/50. Also lets say for multi user cars every other driver has abused it.

I don't think there is much difference between the two choices.

You either get a car that has been abused 50% of the time
or
You have a 50% chance of getting a car that has been driven like it was stolen since day 1.

dzug1

Well even a 'one lady owner' car could have been driven by her boy racer grandson.....

gilbert_and_sullivan

I wonder who buys the cars you see put by to one side at Heathrow rental returns...you know the the Diesel models that drag themselves coughing and spluttering (or dead on the back of a transporter) into the premises to get the 50 litres of petrol drained out?
It happens more than you think...buyer beware.

Nothing wrong with rental cars so long as you get them at the right price and are aware it will have been used hard and with little sympathy.

I personally don't want one...they're usually boring clone cars anyway.

Lemonade_Pockets

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

I wonder who buys the cars you see put by to one side at Heathrow rental returns...you know the the Diesel models that drag themselves coughing and spluttering (or dead on the back of a transporter) into the premises to get the 50 litres of petrol drained out?
.

They are usually re-purchased refurbished and sold on as *insert any mfr here* approved nearly new cars.

pippy100

JonathanA wrote: »

To be honest, an ex rental car won't be worth any less than any other car - it is condition and mileage that are the biggest factors in determining the price - along with market forces such as demand etc.

What car have you bought, what was its mileage / ownership and how old was it? As said above, I've had several ex rental cars from the Channel Islands, all low mileage and only one had a very minor problem, fixed straight away. I wouldn't worry too much if I were you.

We bought a Ford Focus 1.6 titanium tdci(i have my eyes closed waiting for the backlash on our choice of car:rolleyes:) and it had just under 5k on the clock and it was first registered in march 09.

Lorian

I don't know the actual figures, but I guess there are more ex-fleet and rental cars out there than those bought new retail?

I've bought 3 one year-old rental cars and all have been tidy, well maintained and the last one lasted 11 years....

Its like buying anything though, you need to see and test the actualy car, to make sure you haven;t got one that someone has mal-treated.

moonrakerz

vikingaero wrote: »

My last hire car from Enterprise was a less than wonderful Chevrolet Aveo 1.2. The car was 6 months old, had covered 11k and felt pretty worn and baggy.

That was the car - not the way it had been driven