Whilst looking for a Z4 I found a very promising candidate just 7 miles from me at a 2nd hand car dealer. Never heard of them, but they have up to 500 cars in stock. They are pretty much in the middle of nowhere and I thought I'd take a look over the car. The place was immense, their parking lot probably bigger than the local Tesco Extra branch.
Initially the car was at the top end of the price range so would need to be impressive, and I'd need a good trade in against Rosie for it.
It's just sad when you turn up and find cars in such a poor state, when the advert pictures look so nice. It was a 2006 Individual Phoenix Yellow with yellow/black interior, 56k miles and BMW service history. The list of issues wasn't looking good for a car priced at £8,495. There were probably a few things I missed, but the salesman assured me that cars don't leave them in this condition and everything would be sorted
Alloys corroded badly on the inners. Not seen MV2's go quite that bad before.
Both rear tyres illegal
Both front tyres borderline MOT pass
Drivers door sill badly worn and needing a respray
Stone chips on the front bumper (to be expected I'd guess)
Discs corroded and getting close to minimum, I'd have said probably an MOT advisory.
Drivers seat backing was coming away
The interior was grubby, you could see it easily on the yellow leather parts
Oh, and it didn't have an MOT...
Thought I would play the numbers game with the sales guy as there was a nice car under all this, and if the price worked out then I'd definitely consider it. Usual hoo haa over trade in prices. Derisory offer on mine, so told him to try much harder. He comes back with the sales manager, and this is where it all got incredibly weird. He basically said the following to me.
Yeah, um, we don't really sell cars this old and it does need a few things doing to it which we aren't really prepared to do. How about I let you have it for trade price and you just take it - £7500.
This lead to a lively debate over the list of things it needed, and that £1000 off wouldn't have been trade value anyway. Told me I could take it or leave it, and if I didn't take it they were going to take it off sale and pass it through the trade. Now I'm really not stupid and I could guess that trade price would have been somewhere around £5.5 to £6k on this car. So he was still trying to make a couple of grand on it despite the condition.
I said no (obviously), so he said fair enough shook my hand and walked off. Even the salesman I was dealing with looked a little embarrassed and taken aback with how the sales manager was talking.
It has since gone from the website and Autotrader, so he was at least honest with that!
Initially the car was at the top end of the price range so would need to be impressive, and I'd need a good trade in against Rosie for it.
It's just sad when you turn up and find cars in such a poor state, when the advert pictures look so nice. It was a 2006 Individual Phoenix Yellow with yellow/black interior, 56k miles and BMW service history. The list of issues wasn't looking good for a car priced at £8,495. There were probably a few things I missed, but the salesman assured me that cars don't leave them in this condition and everything would be sorted
Alloys corroded badly on the inners. Not seen MV2's go quite that bad before.
Both rear tyres illegal
Both front tyres borderline MOT pass
Drivers door sill badly worn and needing a respray
Stone chips on the front bumper (to be expected I'd guess)
Discs corroded and getting close to minimum, I'd have said probably an MOT advisory.
Drivers seat backing was coming away
The interior was grubby, you could see it easily on the yellow leather parts
Oh, and it didn't have an MOT...
Thought I would play the numbers game with the sales guy as there was a nice car under all this, and if the price worked out then I'd definitely consider it. Usual hoo haa over trade in prices. Derisory offer on mine, so told him to try much harder. He comes back with the sales manager, and this is where it all got incredibly weird. He basically said the following to me.
Yeah, um, we don't really sell cars this old and it does need a few things doing to it which we aren't really prepared to do. How about I let you have it for trade price and you just take it - £7500.
This lead to a lively debate over the list of things it needed, and that £1000 off wouldn't have been trade value anyway. Told me I could take it or leave it, and if I didn't take it they were going to take it off sale and pass it through the trade. Now I'm really not stupid and I could guess that trade price would have been somewhere around £5.5 to £6k on this car. So he was still trying to make a couple of grand on it despite the condition.
I said no (obviously), so he said fair enough shook my hand and walked off. Even the salesman I was dealing with looked a little embarrassed and taken aback with how the sales manager was talking.
It has since gone from the website and Autotrader, so he was at least honest with that!
