My Car Experiments

AdrianC

motorguy wrote: »

It would be, but back to the original point, theres no way dealers are buying cars @ £500 and selling them for £4K.

Oh, indeed. The "mickey-take" comment still applies.

fred246

Motor traders as with other traders buy low and sell high. There is no limit on how low they will go if they think they can get a deal and no limit on how high they will go if they get a deal. How can you tell if a motor trader is telling lies? His lips are moving! The problem is that some people trust motor traders. They are used to people having to tell the truth. Most areas of life are now regulated. A professional has to tell the truth or they lose their jobs. People in the motor trade pretend to be professionals. They aren't.

Mercdriver

Traders will always try to get the lowest costs in order to make a profit, but if they are serious about buying, then they will make a reasonable offer minus a little bit, just like many customers will do. I suspect the salesman figured you weren't really going to trade in the car and so made a flippant offer since he knew he wouldn't be able to match the 4k you reckoned you could get.

You've made more generalisations. Not all car sales people are lying just to get a sale. They won't get commission unless the sale sticks. You'll find unprofessional people in all walks of life and in all lines of work. Some get caught out, some don't. But that doesn't mean that everyone is at it. Believe it or not many sales people want repeat custom or referrals. Some years ago I was one of them.

I would tell people if a product was something they didn't need. So I lost the custom from that person, but got several people on referral. I don't think that I am especially philanthropic. I just have common sense. And a returned product means that I have wasted effort.

fred246

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

You are buying new and losing a lot of money in depreciation. Instead use your skills to buy a good 7 to 10 year old car and keep it going for another 10 years like I do. That's real money saving.

I know you are right. The whole point of what I am doing is to keep it away from garages so you know it is always in factory condition. I remember the 17 year old car that I had needed a new exhaust. I was checking the website for the part numbers and a colleague looked over my shoulder. "Fitting your own exhaust. Don't be daft just take it to a fast fit place." I knew it was a 3 section exhaust with 6 mountings. I took it to the fast fit place. The fitter walked past me with the exhaust mumbling "I get all the great jobs". I watched him as he blowtorched round it and bent it in 3 places. He then hammered it a bit. After a while he told me to pay. I asked to take a look. He had removed a massive exhaust and silencer and the new one was tiny. Narrow pipe with tiny silencer. The whole thing hung on one mounting. One of the fitters said "you're thinking of the diesel mate!". One of those stupid lies that really doesn't work on me. After a big fight in the managers office they removed everything and I drove off with no exhaust. The manager admitted the exhaust was not for my car but they thought they could 'modify' it to work. I then fitted the correct one and the car was back to factory condition.
The fast fit exhaust would have rattled as I drove. Surely it must affect the cars performance narrowing the exhaust pipe?
What would have happened to my car long term? The fast fit place would never have admitted what they had done and fit the correct one. Would another garage tell me I needed a new exhaust because the last one had botched the whole job? One visit to a garage can do a lot of damage to a car.