A small word of warning when buying a car

Bodhan

Hi guys,
over the last few months I have been in loads of car dealers, most of them are main dealers. In the last few weeks I've noticed a good few english imports turning up for sale with Irish plates on, this isn't a problem, on the whole English cars are fine.
There was a couple of dealers, and I mean main dealers asking me test cars that were crashed at some point in their lives, touches of overspray and bad shut lines, some of these cars are from 2009.
I'm only telling you this because I can't say how important it is that you get proper checks done on cars that you are about to buy, get a motorcheck report and get a mechanic to have a look.
Needless to say I won't be going back to the dealers with the crashed models, big arguments about the cars not being crash repairs, but maybe the dealer didn't know either.
Lets be careful out there

PS this is not the place for name and shame as I have no proof of how bad the crashes were, I'm used to looking for the tell tale signs.

djimi

Big arguments? Slightest hint of a car not being what they claim it is and you should be out of there; no need to waste energy having an argument!

kildare.17hmr

Always good advise to look out for things like this but, just because you see a bit of overspray doen not mean a car has bee crashed. Lots of cars and i mean lots, have had bumpers or doors sprayed because of scratches or parking dings, i even had a 05 corolla that i had to get a full respray on because it was covered front to back in scratches from cats!

Alot of the time dealers do not no if bumpers or what not have been sprayed by previous owners as its no big deal and nothing to worry about, but if the dealer is the one who had the work done he should tell the customer. I take pictures of every car i get any sort of bodywork done on for this reason and show the pics to customers when they are looking at the car.

If a dealer seems shady walk away but dont always dismiss a car thats been painted

EPM

My car has had the hack bumper sprayed because of someone scratching it putting a box in the boot. I also had my passenger side door sprayed because of a 1 inch scratch that went down to bare metal to avoid rusting. Cars get knocks and a lick of paint. Doesn not mean it's been crashed. I've even seen poorly aligned panels as factory fit!

You dont know for sure until you get a proper inspection done alright, and it is worth it for the piece of mind IMO.

jimmycrackcorm

The other side of the coin is that such signs of damage are an opportunity to haggle more on price.