Car showroom using pre-reg car

librarian83

Hi there
New to car buying, so might be a silly question - is it usual for car salespeople to use the cars they are selling? I got told that a pre-reg car I am interested is being used by the showroom manager currently on furlough and will be back next week.

tonyh66

Yes...... (other letters are available to fill the minimum post size)

Penguin_

Yes it is usual. The staff usually use it as their car for going to & from work. The garage I used to work in were very strict on them being clean so they usually got cleaned every other day or so by the in house valets. 

librarian83

Thank you, thought I’d better check..just a bit nervous about the car buying process!

daveyjp

Dealers have cars for test drives, customer courtesy cars, staff cars etc.  A pre reg is likely to have been used as all three and is now at an age where it can be sold.

Usually 6-12 months less than 10,000 miles.

JJ_Egan

Yes they are demonstrators and often best value .

Can be 3 months or older . Sometimes batches can be pre registered to meet bonus sales targets .

As demonstrators problems are fixed asap .

Car_54

Cars used as demonstrators, management cars, etc. are normally sold as such, used or "nearly new", not pre-reg.

Pre-reg cars are normally not used, and are sold with delivery mileage

BOWFER

As mentioned above, people here seem to be getting mixed up with demonstrators and pre-reg.
Dealers will pre-reg a car because they get incentives from the manufacturer to 'sell' X amounts of car before a certain date.
If they're a few cars short of target, just pre-register them and they go down as the first owner.
I've bought a few pre-reg cars as I don't care that I'm not the first owner on the V5, and I will be putting private plates on anyway.
I've never bought a demonstrator.

AdrianC

It's a car.
It's taxed.
It's registered in the dealer's name (probably).
Why wouldn't they use it?
Does it matter what they call it, demo, pre-reg, nearly-new...?

Supersonos

We bought a pre-reg car a few years ago.  Had 13 miles on the clock, so definitely hadn't been used by staff.

neilmcl

I agree, there seems to be some confusion between a pre-reg vehicle for sale and a demonstrator. Pre-reg vehicles will have delivery mileage and won't usually be driven by staff. Demo cars on the other hand are given out to salesman as their company car so to speak so that can knock a few miles onto them and have experience of the car when they take customer's out in them.

There are some dealerships that will take their allocation of demonstrators and try and sell them on as a pre-reg, this is usually frowned upon by the manufacturer and is why you'll sometimes see cars being sold with the dealer holding onto the V5 for 3 to 6 months, in an effort to dupe the manufacturer into thinking they still have the car in their possession. Walk away from any shenanigans like this.