Car History report reveals problem-help needed please!

littlebean

Hi all,

I went to view a 2005 Focus today. It has 150,000km on the clock, timing belt done at 107,000km, 2 new front tyres, a recent service and just passed the NCT. The focus badge is missing from the back of the car. The exterior and interior look very well maintained.
The car is 2 hours away from home and I didn't have a mechanic with me today.

I just did a mywheels.ie report and it has a shown a red light warning:

-Warning Level - red due to the following alerts being raised on this vehicle:

-Large number of owners for vehicle age (4 previous owners)

-Tax expired more than 120 days (dealer purchased the car in June)

-The vehicle has tax gap(s) between 30/11/2010-31/03/2012 (3 month(s) or more) and 31/08/2005-31/08/2007 (11 month(s) or more


I'm looking for some advice. What reasons could there be for the long tax gaps and should I be worried about this?

Should the large number of owners plus tax gaps be a concern for potential new owners?

Any information/advice/opinion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a million.

George Dalton

None of those issues would necessarily be anything to worry about IMO.

bazz26

It's not unusual for a 10 year old car to have 4 owners, that's still on average one owner just over every 2 years. I tend to change cars myself every 2 or 3 years and alot of other people do the same.

Regarding tax, some people for whatever reason may not tax their car for periods of time. It's not something to worry about for a new owner as you are only liable for tax from the beginning of the month that you become the owner.

George Dalton

bazz26 wrote: »

Regarding tax, some people for whatever reason may not tax their car for periods of time. It's not something to worry about for a new owner as you are only liable for tax from the beginning of the month that you become the owner.

Some people assume the worst though. They see a gap in the motor tax and must think that the car was off the road during that period being repaired after a major accident or similar. Of course in the vast majority of cases the explanation is far more innocent...

bazz26

Yep, sometimes too much information is not a good thing.

mickmmc

I would give weight to the number of previous owners when purchasing a car.
The least no of previous owners would be my preference.

My concern about the road tax gaps is: if the person could not afford to tax the car, have they serviced the car at the due dates?

You have to extra cautious about purchasing the car for the reasons above. Get a mechanic to check the car over.

bazz26

When it comes to older cars some information from online reports only creates unnecessary uncertainty. In a perfect world we would all like them to have only had 1 or 2 previous owners, that isn't the case in reality especially nowadays when people transfer ownership to avoid paying motor tax arrears.

Also an online report should not be used as a substitute for having a car inspected by a mechanic or someone who is knows their way around them.

littlebean

bazz26 wrote: »

When it comes to older cars some information from online reports only creates unnecessary uncertainty. In a perfect world we would all like them to have only had 1 or 2 previous owners, that isn't the case in reality especially nowadays when people transfer ownership to avoid paying motor tax arrears.

Also an online report should not be used as a substitute for having a car inspected by a mechanic or someone who is knows their way around them.

It was always my intention to get a mechanic to look at the car before buying, where I'm caught is that the car dealer is 2 hours away from home so I will have to try find a mechanic in the local area to look at it for me. I wanted to my homework first before trying to find someone.