In fairness, it should be acceptable to assume that a brand new vehicle will be checked over before being handed over, and that it should be safe enough to drive at least a reasonable distance before checking everything - certainly at least a couple of thousand miles.
"John"
When picking up a GPX600 from a bike shop (new to me, not new though) the chap was telling me about someone who had bought a 350LC from him and got to the end of the road... failed to make the left hand turning and just piled into the wall at the end. 200m or so.
I did a little better. Managed around 30 miles on the bike before I wrote it off. How I laughed (all the way to hospital).
If there was no oil from new, it wouldn't have made 200 miles, and the oil light would have been on all the time.
More likely turbo failure, chucking all the oil down the exhaust.
The message from "John"
contains these words:
Went to pick up my car from service[1] and saw a transporter wipe a bridge with the Astra on the top. Squashed flat and never even got off the lorry.
[1] Back in the days when I had a company car. Wouldn't dream of going to a garage now.The message from snipped-for-privacy@spamcop.net (Andy Hewitt) contains these words:
Just think of all the grief he was saved by not having to own the narsty thing.
Did the insurance pay out the pull purchase cost of the car? I expect not as new cars are usually 'worth' a bit less than what you've just paid for them.
Oooh, bitch! ;-)
Exactly. Otherwise it's akin to Bin Laden blaming the American's lack of security for the Sept 11 attack.
Rob Graham
Well within 3 days of my Fiesta TDI giving symptoms to a blown head gasket (turned out to be a crack across the ports in the oil cooler), I overfilled the oil in the 2.5TD Omega Elite I had at the time and completely destroyed the engine in that. A lesson learned there - never trust the dipstick reading on an engine that's been running all day. I just had to laugh in the end - especially as on both occasions the same mate with his £90 2.6 Carlton towed me home!
Peter
-- "The truth is working in television is not very glamorous at all. I just go home on my own at night and sit alone and eat crisps."
There's usually a "new for old" clause when the vehicle is reasonably new.
Which is why most have a clause that says they pay out the new value of the car if you've owned it from new and it's within the first year (sometimes 2 years).
Peter
-- "The truth is working in television is not very glamorous at all. I just go home on my own at night and sit alone and eat crisps."
Rather extreme analogy there, but yes.
An interesting point ...
In fact you have no idea how the car was driven out of the factory, into the compound, in and out of compounds and on and off transporters, into the garage and across the car park etc. before you even bought it .
: Picked up Dads brand spanking new Granada 2.8i Ghie at 12 noon ish. : : At lights 200 yards away, a large merc van drove straigh in the back. Was : written off. Was in papaers and everything.
My family used to have an annual spot-the-crash competition on August
1st. First one to spot a dented new-reg car won the prize. Oh the joy when we saw a written-off BMW at 10am.Ian
He got a new car. Something to do with less then a year old or something Was kind of funny as he asked me to drive it home as he had a headache. Within minutes he had a bigger one.
My record was for a BMW330 cabrio stuffed into a road sign on first day of reg - on a straight road, roof down... made it well off the road!
The message from "Ian Johnston" contains these words:
My brother had an Austin 1300 which died on the first of August. When he rang the AA a great cheer went up - the bod who'd answered the phone had scooped the pool on the annual competition for who was going to get the first of that year.
This was "L" reg.
When was this? Was it a blue cabriolet? If so, it may have been mine!
Working at Ford the best one was someone rolling a Scorpio off the delivery transporter right into the path of a delivery van as the upper management recipient was watching.
00:25 on Aug 1st I recall. It was P-reg year whatever that is (1996?)
The Limo company I worked for had the somewhat unfortunate experience of a brand new 160" stretched Lincoln Towncar falling off a transporter. Don't think it was August the oneth though.
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