Second Hand Car Question, needs new engine.

eightpints

Hi all,
A question for you all on here for a friend who has been experiencing car trouble.

He purchased a car through a dealer around a year ago, it was only 6 months out of it's VW warranty (so 3 and a half years old) and was sold with a 3rd party warranty for 6 months.
After a couple of months it broke down, and after alot of hassle trying to get anything under warranty or from the dealer, it cost nearly £1500(of his own money) to fix as the dealer or the warranty did not want to know.

Now about 9 months later the car has broke down again and it has been diagnosed that the engine is no good and needs to be replaced at a cost of 7K! by VW (the car is now probably only worth 6K), it is not high mileage and has full VW service history.

So my question is thus, does the dealer have an obligation under SOGA as the car must have been faulty at sale as surely an 8k car should be suitably durable to last more than a year.
If not is there any way to claim something as surely it can't be right that anyone could buy a high value item, and potentially 'lose it' to bad luck.

thanks

xocbc

Not sure on the SOGA status, however he has had the car a year and the obvious question that will be asked is how has it been driven and has it been serviced properly, both of which would have a major bearing on the engine problem.

eightpints

Thanks, I know it came with full main dealer service history which has been maintained but had never considered the 'way it has been driven' as an argument.

I personally think this is worth a punt through the small claims court as if you are already looking at a huge loss on this, why not speculate at to what a judge may think?

gordikin

Are 'small claims' not for amounts up to 5k?

pendulum

Have a look at http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2110177&page=2 - something I bookmarked and interesting re: second hand car buys.

I think that really after a year the judge's view may be that due to its second hand nature it was expected that there was a risk of the car developing expensive faults and its just down to luck

I think you would have had a better chance when it went wrong the first time whilst still in warranty

bap98189

£7k for a new engine. Take it to a local garage, they will be able to do it for a fraction of that price.

Dick_Van_Dyke

You may have a case.
It would be very hard to win though.
It would be for you to prove the car was in breach of the SOGA in that it was inherently faulty.

Now durability is part of that however Cars do develop faults and need repairs; this doesnt make them non durable automatically.

What has caused the fault? This is what I think would be vital for your case

The other point to make is if the car has a full service history hassle the dealer to hassle VW for a contribution to the repair.