BHM

Some are leased and some (usually the early ones that were sold at big money) are owned. I’ve never got involved but I’d GUESS a Nissan Dealer would point you in the right direction.

True. Very true. The engines are often choked-up and low mileage punters usually don’t like spending on maintenance.

Hard work, generally bought by the usual potless small car punter who wants finance and expects the Earth. Very fickle to get spec/miles/colour/price right, not for the likes of me.

I agree with everything EXCEPT your last paragraph - steer away from the leggy German dross if you want a quiet life. I used to be scared of the miles but if it’s low owners, historied & relatively tidy then high miles are good bets with real profit on them. 4x4s, Galaxies etc. (that would retail at £8Kish with low miles) that trade at £2-2.5K and retail at £4-4.5K are a no brainer but forget anything smaller. I use my stock for transport but the family car is a fully historied Honda, 160K, super condition, drives like brand new and being a Honda doesn’t give any surprises. Compare that to a fellow trader’s BMW - he gets a bill every month & it still isn’t 100%. As for buying a low miler & watching the ££££s fall away every month in depreciation, well sorry, but in my opinion that’s a mug punter’s game.

Very very interesting. How refreshing that a member of this industry is prepared to back-up what they’ve stated & can clearly be seen to be correct. A round of applause for Arthur thicken!! Sorry but you must of opted for the shittest deal ever, although I’m not on AT a fellow trader is on a 15 car deal and before Christmas the invoice was just under £1200 (I can’t remember if that was before or after VAT) which I thought was bad enough! Perhaps I’m just cheap

Very sad for those concerned if true but I guess as the retail landscape has changed drastically then there are always going to be casualties along the way. Cars are no longer a luxury good, they’re a disposable consumable so expect more & more changes over the next decade as how they’re retailed alters - one thing’s for sure, it’s only going to get harder.

Amend f.a. - the price is the price. These cheeky chancers boil my piss - a deal’s a deal and that’s the end of it. Years & years ago I remember a fellow trader who did a cash deal with a private buyer over a VAT registered van. Over two years later, said customer phoned out of the blue “Remember me? I bought XXXXXXX, I now want a VAT invoice cos I’m now VAT registered and I now want to slip it into my books & reclaim the VAT”!!! He was told to sod off but even the fact that he only became VAT registered 2 years later didn’t sink in - he seemed to think every penny of VAT he’d paid since leaving school could be reclaimed. F***ing idiot. The only reason anyone ever phones up after driving away is for THEIR benefit - not yours.

You can always tell an “auction friend” - they always want a favour from you to stand aside but it’s never reciprocated.

French dross, I hate it. Somehow I’ve ended up with a 1.6 16v engined Shitron. All seemed too good to be true. It was, “Ping!” EML makes an appearance and it’s Code P0011. That’s tomorrow’s job I suppose it could be worse - it could be one of VAG’s finest acting up

Yes but the parents are clearly also arseholes for letting the little prick conduct himself like that in public. Justina3 must be nicer than me cos at that point I’d of told the little turd to piss off & told the parents exactly what I thought of their jumped-up spawning.

Physical. There’s no way they’ll get me to buy online. Funnily enough Manheim phoned last week asking was I interested in bidding online farther afield. ”No way” I cried, “your appraisals are crap”. Rep: “Perhaps you aren’t aware but the appraisals used online are exactly the same as a physical auction”. ”I am & as I said, your appraisals are crap”. At this point I should say my stock profile is £1000-4000, so I’m more interested in the mechanicals rather than how pretty they look. Anyhow the next day I’m at the block looking at a low mileage shitty 2006/2007 Zafira on a silver assured. The assessment stated all tyres where at decent tread (of course no mention of the bald edges - to my eyes they were 4 that wouldn’t pass an mot) The car started on 3 pots, the fourth eventually spluttered into life, the exhaust was blowing loudly at the manifold which resulted in blue smoke from the half-knackered engine billowing out of both ends of the car! Quite an achievement for a car that scored 37 out of 37. Oh yes, and the clutch pedal was up by my ear! So gone on, if you’re buying year old stock it’s probably worth a punt but if you’re buying cheaper stock, good luck- you’ll bloody well need it!! Sorry but in my opinion the assessors couldn’t describe a lump of coal.

Some of the punters are absolutely stark staring mad, and you’ve got one of them! These arseholes will say absolutely anything to attempt to muddy the waters - f*** knows why cos you’ve offered them their money back. Best of luck!

Fufu valve or the thingamajig. F*** me, it’s bad enough diagnosing faults with the car & code reader in front of you.

Haha, I know what you mean but the rozzers have much better things to do nowadays than pull over cars that are clearly taxed & insured on the MID - the days of Dixon of Dock Green are long gone

Funny, I thought that too but I chucked in my two penneth worth anyway.

I just use my trade plates. That’s what they’re for & in my opinion I pay for them so I like to get my shillings worth.

In my experience when DPFs are full they either need unfilling or replacing. No amount of “£10 magic in a bottle” will clear out a load of bunged up carbon.

Why lie? Tell them straight & chase them off the premises

Too true! If a punter starts pulling the car to bits it doesn’t take me long to say “It’s a secondhand car so if you’re here to crab it to death just leave it” and my favourite “Increase your budget or lower your expectations”. After I’ve given them a 30 second lecture they either stop their bullshit or they start whinging & whining again which results in me terminating the viewing. I stopped taking too much flannel from punters a long time ago. I refuse to listen to pisspoor negotiations centring on non-existent faults and alleged defects on secondhand cars. I find it annoying when a chancer is telling me my car is defective (when it clearly isn’t) just to attempt to get a discount - “Leave it, it’s clearly not for you”, remove the key from the ignition, shut the door and they get the message.

Sorry, I disagree with asking for pictures. Once you start asking for pictures & get drawn into discussion you are getting involved. That’s not what you want, it’s a straight forward “it’s your responsibility, you are on your own” and a swift end to it.

That’s karma for saying in another thread that camper punters are no bother Believe me, get used to it - you’re dealing with VW men. Anyhow as far as I’d be concerned it’s his problem, he’s accepted the vehicle so it’s clearly been damaged whilst he’s had it. Stand your ground, sack him off.

+1 noacross, that’s about the best summary I’ve read. I also agree exactly with what you’ve written regarding WAVs, although having any car for a couple of months nowadays isn’t necessarily the disaster it used to be - I think it’s a sign of the times.

By “CUSTOMERS” do you mean customers in the truest sense (meaning they’ve bought) or punters (anyone who makes contact)? In the first case I’d say over 95% are fine cos I weed out the shit (the 5% are usually the parasites buying a ‘long termer’ that I’ve cut the balls off the price to move on - and those people are usually greedy to the core & rotten with it). However if you’re referring to punters, and as such the general public, I honestly feel over 60-70% are f***ing idiots and/or chancers and/or dishonest and/or unrealistic with their expectations. Very true, although you can’t get away from the idiots entirely. I’d hate to think I had a forecourt full of small cars, sports cars & Audis - I’d end up assaulting the customers.

Haha not many but I’ll start with most Toyotas, Hondas, Volvo 70&90s, many Fords & (don’t laugh) I’m partial to a PETROL Zafira or two - you can shove their diesel engines & the rest of Vauxhall’s range up your arse. Basically proper cars that show proper profit for me. I’ll hasten to add that out of that little lot I do NOT include small cars - I can’t stand the greedy penny pinching bottom of the range twats most small cars attract. Except for offering some poor wretch about £200 for his desperate Punto swapper, the thought of investing in one of FIATs finest doesn’t register on my radar.

It’ll be on the next series of Police Interceptors being shafted across the middle of a roundabout by a cannabis fuelled Iqbal.