Buying a used car in Ireland guide

Learner driver/ late 30s/ m

As above, I'm late to the driving game, but with a new baby I need to get on the road.

Would anyone have any advice of what type of car I should be looking at for my first? I only want to go through a dealer: what kind of things do I need to be aware of?

My main considerations are: child safety, space for prams etc and affordable insurance. My budget is 10-15k.

Thanks in advance, all.

Hi. I have a question regarding the checks on motortax.ie. I was browsing cars on Donedeal and one caught the eye. I checked motortax.ie for change of ownership which indicated no change in the last 3 months but a vehicle registration cert was issued last month. What is the likely explanation for this if there was no change in ownership? Change of address maybe? It's a private seller and the ad went up just a couple of days after the cert was issued. I would appreciate any thoughts on this.

Thanks.

Hadn't thought of that. Thanks Bazz.

Cannot see the point in importing from the North on your budget. VRT would eat into that budget so you would really want to be looking at cars in the price bracket of 4k or cheaper up there and used cars in the North are expensive these days too.

I'm looking at a 2016 Hyunday i40 estate 1.6CRDI around 125000km, anyone care to comment about them?

I know they're the main Garda car out there and have a decent name for reliability but are there any issues to be aware of for them? I've read about clutch and transmission issues but I'm not sure if that applies to ones from this year or was it earlier years....

(I'm new to Ireland)

How much would be the annual expenses for a car . E.g. https://www.adverts.ie/car/mitsubishi/colt/mitsubishi-colt-2013/27024238 (just an example of a not very old car). Taxes, registration, required service, etc excluding gas price.

Do I need to buy insurance before driving car to home? Can I do it online right after buying the car (if paid with card) so I could drive it home? Or does making insurance require several days?

Do I need to register it somewhere?

Is there any warranty by the law? E.g. if something is broken during the first few months?

I won't be able to give you a break-down on all the costs. Tax you can find out from web: https://www.motortax.ie/OMT/motortaxinforeg.do , anyway is printed on the tax disk for the car (differs depending on whether paid for 3mths, 6mths or 1 year). Shouldn't have any registration fee if you buy an Irish vehicle. Services, all depends on the car and the garage... very hard to know. You may need to pay for on-street parking? You'll probably have an annual NCT. You should price tyres for the car (can depend a lot on the type/profile of wheels/tyres fitted separate to the quality/brand), Insurance is the big one you left out.

You must be insured before driving the car, whether to home or wherever. You must have tax and NCT too, but those are (IMHO) less serious. It's definitely a very serious offence to drive the car uninsured. Having it sit on the road uninsured is probably also an offence, but much less likely to get you in serious trouble (legal, financial, etc.,) if only a matter of days. A work-around could be to get a friend to come with you who is insured to drive other cars, and ask him/her to drive it home for you. However, sometimes there's a condition on that clause that the car be insured in SOMEBODY'S name, so you could be in catch 22 (need to check friend's policy). Also you'd both be in trouble: you as the owner and him/here as the driver.

Cleanest approach is:

1) pick a couple of models you are most likely to buy. Get indicative quotes so you can do your cost calculation.

2) once you have an actual car that you may be ready to go ahead on, get a firm quote using the registration number.

3) buy the car or at least pay the deposit

4) pay for and activate the quote.

5) drive your new car home

The tricky bit is how much time you can have between steps 3 and 4. If you're buying from a garage, it's not unusual that you might conclude the deal today (either paying in full or deposit), and pick up the car in a day or two (they may anyway need to fix up a couple of small bits, clean it for you, or even do an NCT in between), which gives you time to sort out the insurance. In my experience, this is much easier if you have an insurance company/broker with whom you can interact on phone... albeit you have to do that during office hours etc., (I've done this once, where I paid for the car, and then went on phone to call insurance to advise them to activate the policy; then drove home. Other times I think I've always had a day in between)

Thank you, that describes quite well what I need to do.

Have a read of this:

https://www.insuranceireland.eu/consumer-information/general-non-life-insurance/declined-cases-agreement

If they are declinging you cover then they are supposed to provide you with a letter.

Also there is a dedicated insurance forum on boards, I suggest asking over there:

https://www.boards.ie/categories/insurance-aircraft-maritime-motor

I bought a car (valid NCT) from garage, arranged insurance, tax, brought it home (put tax, insurance labels to windsheild pocket).

Ordered eFlow tracker.

What else I should do? What else recommended to do?

Car is less that 6 years, does it still have manufacturing guarantee (just learned that it is 6 years instead of 2 years as in rest of EU)?

Is there some place in Dublin, where navigation/rear camera could be installed?

Some good app for tracking gas prices?

Anyting else I should consider during first 3 months/1year?

Please urgent advice. Our son is going to garage in wicklow this evening to buy his first car DC Autos Bray / newtownmountkennedy.

I cannot find much info on seller but car check on the car is 100%. Its a 2012 vw polo and I really don't want him to be caught with a lemon on his first car.

Any info please please

Was talking to some people recently & they commented that a lot of dealers here are sourcing cars from Japan. They were built in Europe for the market there. Apparently the Japanese really look after their cars & trade them in regularly. They have very high specs & include Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes & Volvo, virtually all are automatic.