Bought a dodgy car from garage

I can usually make similar savings without resorting to such techniques.

Anyone who came to buy a car off me and proceeded to do such things would get told where to go pretty sharpish.

Presumably they would then tell you where to stick your car. Italian 'cars'? Ah, that explains it.

Doesn't matter much where you stand (legally or otherwise), it's going to be down to how helpful or resistent the dealer is and how much you're going to have to fight for them to sort it, if you see what I mean.

e.g. I bought a car from a dealer about 10 years ago for £2000. Not a big dealership; just a guy with a small warehouse and forecourt, and a bunch of old cars for sale. Test drive was great! Bought it, drove it home the next day and then went out for drive and about 10 miles from home the thing lost all oil pressure. RAC took me home...

Contacted the dealer the next day; they collected the car, put it all right and delivered it back to me. It ran without fault for two years after that (apart from a dodgy wheelbearing).

Yes. I did test drive it.

Do you check every bulb and every item when you test drive a car ?

For what it's worth - next car I buy the one bulb that I will check is the engine management on the console - last dealer caught me with that (bulb removed)

-- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 2353 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Try

for free now!

=A33500, is a lot of money for a car with no proper warranty. Certainly if the car hasn't got a warranty I would give it quite a thorough test, and would expect to find some problems.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com ( snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

How briefly?

No, but I'd *certainly* test everything major. Like the remote locking, aircon, elec windows.

What is it? It'd help a lot to know if that price was bloody good, or a bit over the top. If high, you'd certainly expect everything to work plus a warranty. If cheap, then there's a lot more "caveat emptor"

I'd say this is a difficult area of law, and it probably depends on whether you were paying less than the going rate for a vehicle of that age and type and whether they actually misled you. In my own view (no expert on cars) if a car is advertised as having AC it does not necessarily imply that the refrigerant has been topped up but it does imply that if the refrigerant were to be topped up the AC would work okay.

If it is advertised as having central locking, that implies that the central locking is working correctly.

If the engine is not running smoothly you're probably stuck with that.

You probably have the right to demand that they put right some of the defects or alternatively you could pay someone to repair the car, then sue for what you paid him, limiting the claim to some but not all of the defects that were rectified.

Here's a bit of law, but you might need to check the latest SoGA terminology at

Business Application Specialists Ltd v Nationwide Credit Corp Ltd Sub nom.: Marn Garage (Camberley) (third party) In considering whether a car complied with implied conditions in the Sale of Goods Act 1979 s.14(6), the court had to consider not only its fitness to be driven, but also appropriate degrees of comfort, ease of handling and pride in appearance. A second-hand Mercedes motor car was let to B Co. by N Co. under a hire-purchase agreement. The vehicle was two years old, had a recorded mileage of 37,000 and was priced at GBP 14,850. After being driven for 800 miles, the vehicle broke down and required repairs costing GBP 635. B Co. sued N Co. alleging breaches of condition implied by s.14 of the 1979 Act. The judge dismissed the action on the basis that the vehicle was roadworthy. Held, dismissing the appeal, that the wrong test had been applied but the judge was still entitled to conclude that the vehicle complied with the implied conditions. The proper test, even for second-hand goods, is that laid down in the Act which includes all the relevant circumstances (Rogers v Parish (Scarborough) [1987] C.L.Y. 3333 , Bartlett v Marcus (Sidney) [1965] C.L.Y. 3516 considered). Court: (CA) Court of Appeal Reference: Times, April 27, 1988

See also

And if you got upset by me trying to look under a car you were selling me, I'd tell you where to stick the car, pretty sharpish.

Look underneath, and jacking the thing up, are two completely different things.

I've never had anyone turn up and ask to jack any of mine up, and I've not done the same to anyone else - a glance underneath, with a quick prod at anything that looks a bit grotty, coupled with a test drive, is normally enough to show up anything that should be of concern.

-- JackH

+0000:

techniques.

selling me,

I suppose it depends what kind of car you're buying. If you're looking at a car which costs =A3100 then you'll except a few faults, maybe a faulty bulb, or faulty electric windows, but you'll want to price up any major repairs before you buy. If it's only a year or two year old car, with just a few miles on it, you can probably assume that most things are OK, and just check for major problems eg. crashes.

JackH ( snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I'll always take a trolley-jack with me when buying something cheap - but for a £3,500 car, I wouldn't see a need. But then, I'd walk away from anything with that many obvious electrical problems at that money, unless it was around a grand cheaper than it should have been - priced to reflect the probs.

OP - What car is it?

By all means get down on your hands and knees and have a prod around, but a jack is a different matter all together. A test drive will show up

90% of problems - and I will have priced my car taking into account any known faults like bushes and bearings.

Anyone who tried to knock me down on that kind of thing would also be politely shown the door.

If it's got a dud bulb and it hasn't been replaced 'cos it's rusted into it's socket it could be an expensive and/or tiresome repair.

DG

What recent legislation ?

warranty

circumstances

Car was actually a 1999 Renault Scenic costing me =A33650 which is prety muc the right price to pay for that model.

In which case I would say its fair to expect everything to be working, especially as it has been advertised with these features. I would give them a few days to get them sorted or ask for your money back.

What's the problem with jacking it up, other than the fact that if they're spanner they might put the jack through the floor?

Personally, I'd rather learn that the jack / jacking point goes into the passenger compartment before buying the car, rather than on the hard shoulder of the M4 in the wet just short of Bristol in the middle of winter with the inlaws in the car.

Mind you, I've seen Fiat 127s on the forecourt sagging due to the rusty floor.

The message from snipped-for-privacy@quickwatchsales.com contains these words:

I had one of them! I tried to jack it up one night to change the front pads and nothing happened. At that point a passer-by offered to buy it - so I flogged it for £50 and considered myself lucky.