2nd Hand Car buying advice required.

nobile

I am looking for a cheap, first car for daughter who has just passed her test, for local driving.

There seem to be so many different kinds of sellers.

I understand PRIVATE SELLERS but am getting very confused about Dealers / Trade sellers / Dealers selling Part-ex cars / guys setting up a garage selling cars but saying 'not my problem' if something goes wrong!!

I dont want to buy a car whose engine blows up on way home whereI dont have any rights whatsoever.

I understand I have no rights buying from a Private seller but what about the other catagories.

Finances are very tight once factoring in insurance, so I need to get it right. first time.

Thanks

s_b

what do you call cheap?
i get lots of dads asking me for safe reliable transport for their daughters but then i find they want to spend £500,you cant even get a decent telly for that
more information needed

nobile

I'm budgeting for about £1000

My main issue is the type of sellers that exist - there seem to be so many catagories within 'Trade'.

Trade appears not to be what I thought it meant!

forgotmyname

What you need to be thinking is can you afford to fix it or buy another if it turns out to be totally crap.

Spend £1000 on a car. It may need a £600 service to make it reliable.

Brakes and tyres cost the same whether its a few years old and cost £10k or 10+ years old a a few hundred £.

Dont travel 200 miles for a car thats an everyday run of the mill. Buy locally.

Make sure the last owner had it for at least 5 years and serviced yearly ideally with receipts.

BeenThroughItAll

s_b wrote: »

what do you call cheap?
i get lots of dads asking me for safe reliable transport for their daughters but then i find they want to spend £500,you cant even get a decent telly for that
more information needed

With respect, that's rubbish. You can get a very decent television set for £500, like the 55" 4K one in my living room. Ok, so it's not thousands of pounds worth, but I can watch TV on it, surf the Internet, use Netflix at 4K. What's so awful about it? Nothing.

And to the OP, you CAN get a perfectly good car for £1000, but it would be wise not to look at all the typical cars driven by young people; a cheap Fiesta, Corsa, Clio, Punto, etc is orders of magnitude more likely to have been abused/run on a shoestring/neglected than a cheap Kia Picanto, for example. Or better still, a cheap Volvo, or a cheap Mondeo.

jblessing

Buying a £1,000 car from a dealer is probably the same car you could have bought for £500 (or less) from a private seller. In theory you have more rights, but in practice you would find that enforcing those rights is costly and a major hassle. Some good advice here http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/car-buyers-guide/cbg_usedtips.html

[Deleted User]

Excellent advice NOT to buy any car from a kid ! they will thrash it to hell in every gear and not understand the concept of an oil change. Look at the owner more than the car ! I made a living back in the Thatcher dark days of mass unemployment buying up Mk 1 Fiestas and getting them through MOTs.. Try and buy from an OAP if poss, they also run the little runabouts. I think sticking to cars like a Toyota Yaris might be a good option. Reliable cars and a favourite of the grandads and grannies

forgotmyname

Except the OAP may have abused the clutch, Sisters ex. MIL who killed a brand new clutch in less than 8000 miles.

And the OAPs at my FILs old place, where during a snowy morning went out and started the engines and left them running with the heaters going until all the snow had melted off the cars.

Both types of vehicles to be avoided.

foxy-stoat

Buy from a private seller who has owned it for a few years and looked after it well, take it for a long test drive....or if like me I totalled my first car, MK2 Astra Merit, into a tree 3 months after I passed my test so age/condition/previous servicing didnt account for anything !!! 1990, the good old days when petrol was 75p per litre!

Good lucks !

macman

£1K seems a ratherly miserly budget when the insurance for her will cost more than that every year?

shaun_from_Africa

forgotmyname wrote: »

Except the OAP may have abused the clutch, Sisters ex. MIL who killed a brand new clutch in less than 8000 miles.

An although I know it's a bit of a generalisation, there is a higher than average chance that the OPS's car will only have been taken on shortish runs with the engine never really getting up to a good temperature and too much of this can knacker an engine and exhaust system in no time.