Want to sell a car I've only had for 6 months

BargainGalore

You loose a lot as soon as you take the car out of the showroom, you done a lot of mileage considering its only 5 months old. I agree with other 4k loose maybe more if your unlucky

forgotmyname

Getting a remap wont lower the revs for a set speed, Only a change in gearing will affect that.

What it will do though is allow you to use less throttle for that given speed. Depends where the
noise is actually coming from. Less throttle may mean a quieter journey.

Tyre/road noise or engine noise?

NeverAgain_2

Focuses are known to be a bit noisy on the motorway.

Tyre noise is the most likely cause, but there's no sure way of knowing if a new set would be better, worse or the same.

Worth a google to see if someone does an aftermarket sound insulation kit, you are driving the most popular car on the road, so there's a chance.

Changing the seats is not really an option, the space they occupy is very tight, and there may be airbags and sensors to consider.

Seats from the next model up - Titanium, I think - may fit, but the cost might be prohibitive.

No point in chipping or remapping unless you want to go faster.

Tucker

Don't love it?? It's not the women you are committing the rest of your life to... it's a car!

I can safely say in 20 years, I've never owned a car I love. I buy one to get me where I'm going, that's fit for the job and doesn't break the bank.

You are going to spend some serious cash and go through a load of cars very fast if that's your only methodology! I hope you have cash to burn?

chloo

well if you keep paying for the car ill swap and you can drive my boyfriends beautiful r reg citrone saxo you would love the noise that makes!!

bigjl

pgilc1 wrote: »

I would say this soon into the agreement, you probably owe about £10,500 or so.

I would also say that on a trade in you're probably going to get offers around £8500, or if a dealer will buy it direct, then maybe £8000.

Therefore you will have to stump of £2000+ to get out of this. So include your £1000 deposit and the payments you've made you're going to be down around £4000 on the experience.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suspect that you probably bought the Focus as its a decent drive, economical and you wanted something of that size. Have your needs of a car changed in these six months? If not, chances are you're going to end up in some other mid sized eco hatch or similar, very few of which (if any) are actually better than a focus.

I wouldn't be surprised if they actually owed more than the car cost, 12k, I have spoken to a few mates about similar situations and finance companies don't seem to be as generous when it comes to knocking money off when the finance is settled early.


The garages that advertise to settle the finance are only interested in offering bottom book as they hope the seller is leveraged to the hilt and needs a get out strategy.

Then the person selling the car will still owe the balance.

A similar situation to those advertisning in the paper "we buy your car for cash", well yes they will but they will offer 30% less than it is worth. This idea started in the early 90's and a bloke used to come by out Garage to sell the cars with a small markup, his business model was, mention figure X on the phone, subject to inspection, where X was a lot less than the value, if the person bit then he knew they where desperate.

When he turned up he bid X-Y=Z, then sell the car on the same day in the trade for Z plus a nice earner. I couldn't stitch foke up like that but each to his own and all that.

petrolhead111

I can't thank you all enough for your help

I've been speaking to a garage today who have agreed that the lazy lag issue is easy to deal with on a remap and will also improve the fuel economy.

I will have to change my insurance company though as swiftcover don't cover any modifications.

they suggested Adrian Fluxwho I'll call on monday.

I'll also look into an aftermarket sound insulation kit (didn't know you could get these).

as for the seats I'll live.

problem is that I had a Mondeo before which was a bit big around town and in country lanes, but it did raise my expectations of how a car should drive and feel, and on that score the Focus just isn't in the same class despite what the dealerships may tell you.

NeverAgain_2

A Mondeo is a much nicer car on the motorway than a Focus.

Pity the garage didn't tell you that and flog you another Mondeo.

Good luck with the mods, not changing the seats is probably the best idea because it would lead to questions come trade-in time.

Do post on how the sound insulation hunt goes - plenty of us have noisy Focuses just like yours.

skiddlydiddly

spiro wrote: »

And probably a similar cost to cover the increase in insurance premiums.

If you are insured with a mainstream company they probably won't like it, but with many companies it doesn't actually increase it that much anymore.
Going back a few years if you wanted a company to cover any mods you couldn't get a quote online and had to call, but now you can even get quotes with mods on the price comparison sites.

Regarding the sound issues, you can buy dynomat and fit it yourself but you'd need to be confident in removing trim, carpets etc to do it.A lot of sound insulation is just sheets of tar-like stuff thats warmed up and pushed into shape.

rsvtoddy

If you cancel your insurance and move to another company don't expect ANY refund on the remainder of the policy.

Best to wait till renewal time, declare it as remapped, get the new policy then get it remapped. I cancelled a policy that was 5 months old and got nothing back for the other 7 months.

HTH