Voluntary Termination with Car Faults

Rose0410

Alright folks, bare with me.

My husband and I currently have a Mazda CX3 automatic on HP finance (which ends in November 2025). It's a 65 plate, has >100000 miles on it and has been "faulty" for the last 2.5 years but is getting increasingly worse. When we took the car to the Mazda garage (as our local garage didn't have the equipment to be able to tell us exactly what the issue was), they told us there was an issue with the fuel injectors and with the engine. They quoted us £7500 to repair the car (which is more than the car is now worth). They said the price is because of importing parts to the UK now being extortionate due to brexit and that the length of time waiting for parts is almost a year. 

Anyways... This was told to us 1.5 years ago. Since then we have tried to make things work. The issue with the car amounts to the i-stop functionality coming up with a fault almost constantly and if we have to slow down at high speeds and then rev to speed up again, the car cuts into safety mode whereby we cannot accelerate at all, it cannot maintain its speed on hill, all lights on the dash flashing etc. All we need to do is come off the road, turn car off for 5 seconds, turn back on and all the lights bar the engine light disappear and we can drive as normal. 

When we took the car to see if we could trade in and the guy told us about VT which we looked into. We can afford to pay off our negative equity but our total settlement is over £7500. We are eligible for VT as we are well over 50% paid but I've read a couple posts that have said they won't let us VT if the car is faulty and then it will damage our credit and our ability to get another car on finance. 

Does anyone have any advice? Will they take the car with the fault or will they make us pay the repair fees anyway? is there any way out of this mess? 

Car_54

Rose0410 said:

They said the price is because of importing parts to the UK now being extortionate due to brexit and that the length of time waiting for parts is almost a year. 

For Brexit to be the culprit, Japan must have joined the EU without my noticing.

Iceweasel

Car_54 said:

Rose0410 said:

They said the price is because of importing parts to the UK now being extortionate due to brexit and that the length of time waiting for parts is almost a year. 

For Brexit to be the culprit, Japan must have joined the EU without my noticing.

Mazda spare parts in Europe are all coordinated and distributed from their 'Mazda Motor Logistics Europe' centre in Willebroek, Belgium.

Alderbank

Car_54 said:

Rose0410 said:

They said the price is because of importing parts to the UK now being extortionate due to brexit and that the length of time waiting for parts is almost a year. 

For Brexit to be the culprit, Japan must have joined the EU without my noticing.

Perhaps you weren't looking when Mazda built the huge MLE (Mazda Motor Logistics Europe) in Willebroek in Belgium?

Parts are all shipped from Japan to Willebroek and from there are distributed to dealerships across Europe.
Because of Brexit problems there are independent parts suppliers in the UK who import parts from Mazda's Worldwide distribution system elsewhere in the world, but Mazda dealerships only source parts from MLE.

The OP is using an official Mazda dealership. If they try independent garages they might find one which can get the (OEM) parts they need quicker and cheaper.

daveyjp

When I VT'd a car all I had to do was drop it off at the local BCA car auction site.  I did so and heard nothing more.

I can't imagine a dealer or finance house will want a 9 year old car with 100k miles so your VT could well be similar.

Car_54

Iceweasel said:

Car_54 said:

Rose0410 said:

They said the price is because of importing parts to the UK now being extortionate due to brexit and that the length of time waiting for parts is almost a year. 

For Brexit to be the culprit, Japan must have joined the EU without my noticing.

Mazda spare parts in Europe are all coordinated and distributed from their 'Mazda Motor Logistics Europe' centre in Willebroek, Belgium.

Thanks for that Yet another Brexit bonus!

Mildly_Miffed

VT, along with any other return of a car to the financier, requires the car to be in good health and condition.

Grumpy_chap

Iceweasel said:

Car_54 said:

Rose0410 said:

They said the price is because of importing parts to the UK now being extortionate due to brexit and that the length of time waiting for parts is almost a year. 

For Brexit to be the culprit, Japan must have joined the EU without my noticing.

Mazda spare parts in Europe are all coordinated and distributed from their 'Mazda Motor Logistics Europe' centre in Willebroek, Belgium.

First - how much cost impact would Brexit have imposed to make the price of the parts "extortionate"?

Second - how did Brexit result in the lead time for the parts increasing?

Third - Brexit was a number of years back and one assumes that Mazda global management will periodically review their supply chain and distribution channels and the decision could have been taken to supply UK via another distribution hub other than MLE if that afforded a more viable and more economical solution.

Whether it is Brexit or Covid or any other number of past events, they are past events and the current Management teams of businesses need to make decisions for efficient delivery today.  The continual blaming stuff on Brexit or Covid is really just laziness on the part of corporate giants and their Management teams are paid good salaries, apparently because of their abilities to react to external influences and drive the business successfully.  The way things are going, we will still have Brexit and Covid being used as an excuse for anything and everything in 2050.

Ectophile

Grumpy_chap said:

Iceweasel said:

Car_54 said:

Rose0410 said:

They said the price is because of importing parts to the UK now being extortionate due to brexit and that the length of time waiting for parts is almost a year. 

For Brexit to be the culprit, Japan must have joined the EU without my noticing.

Mazda spare parts in Europe are all coordinated and distributed from their 'Mazda Motor Logistics Europe' centre in Willebroek, Belgium.

First - how much cost impact would Brexit have imposed to make the price of the parts "extortionate"?

Second - how did Brexit result in the lead time for the parts increasing?

First - if the parts are over £135, there will be duties to pay on the inport.

Second - everything imported has to have the right paperwork to come through customs.

Grumpy_chap

Ectophile said:

First - if the parts are over £135, there will be duties to pay on the inport.

Second - everything imported has to have the right paperwork to come through customs.

The OP said they were quoted £7.5k for the job and one year lead time for the parts.

Given the job would include labour, how much of the extortionate cost is down to Brexit?  Does the actual duty increase?  Genuine question.  I assume there is duty on import to EU from Japan, then the items are shipped out of EU.  Can the import duty be reclaimed within EU when subsequently exporting?  Then the import duty to UK applies?  Or is it the import duty to EU plus import duty to UK?  

It really is time the supply chain got able to do the paperwork quicker than a year.  It might have been a challenge at the outset but should be routine by now.

Arunmor

I have bought car parts from Germany since Brexit and it is no problem.  Part in the UK was £500, in Germany it was just a shade over £100.

Backstory, it was a Nissan part that a year earlier was £97 in UK and they raised the price by x5, I called virtually every parts place in the UK and it was the same story.

OP get the part number and start searching further afield.