Halfpenny

Signs the previous owner ran on a shoestring, tyres are often a clue (e.g. random selection of Chinese tyres). HVAC works (can be costly to put right). Scruffy/smelly interior. I don't buy 'automated-manual' cars (like Honda iShift or Toyota MMT etc). If its DSG then check operation - obviously assumes you can road test the car. After 40 years I can quickly spot paint and panel problems.

The bankruptcy affects only the US and Canada operations. They have the best part of $20bn of debts! Their international operations are seperate and not affect so the 30k vehicles a month are US only. US car rental companies tend to buy cars outright and then dispose of them themselves. UK rental companies generally use buyback agreements with the manufacturers. Europcar and Sixt have already had bailouts (France and Germany, respectively) but expect to see a lot of rentals coming onto the market in any case. Almost nobody is renting cars at the moment.

I think you mean 'insightful' Anyway, welcome. You've certainly picked a very challenging time to start out.....best of luck..

At the time of the last scheme I was at my previous premises - used car sales and servicing/MoT. On the service side we definitely lost a few customers thanks to scrappage. There were plenty of good older low mileage cars taken off the road. Mainly cars driven by older 'careful' types who didn't cover a lot of miles. I don't like scrappage at all because (as described in the article) it is effectively an indirect transfer of government funds to car makers. Since most of the manufacturers who would benefit are overseas (e.g. Korea, Japan, EU) its not going to benefit UK plc very much. As to supporting the Franchises - well IMHO the UK Franchised Dealer model was broken well before Covid. The 'Spanish Practices' going on in a lot of dealer networks are unconscionable and the best way to clean up would be allow them to collapse and allow new ownership/management in. From an environmental perspective scrappage removes an older car which (generally) is not being used much (not causing much overall pollution) and requires the manufacture of a new car with all the attendant pollution, use of resources and materials etc).

There is nothing to 'clear up'. I wrote in plain English that tfl only got the government money by agreeing to congestion charge reintroduction and CHANGES proposed by the government. Full details here....http://www.infrastructure-intelligence.com/article/may-2020/tfl-£16bn-funding-package-described-‘sticking-plaster’-mayor-london Other conditions are that government representatives will sit on TfL's board, so it becomes in effect a direct instrument of government.

TfL is a puppet agency of the government. It is free to do what it wants, but it only gets government funds if it does what the government wants. Hence it only got the £1.6bn bailout by agreeing to the Congestion Charge changes.

Don't worry, the government have got it all under control (like Covid)...... At the moment potentially 20% tariff on car exports from the UK. That should do a nice job of driving a stake through the heart of what's left of the industry.....

Yes. Sorry. I mistakenly read it as car wouldn't start.......

You have two faults - the remote control circuit not working (could be bad contacts on the battery or the push buttons) and you have a missing/faulty transponder chip - this is a small passive (no battery) chip the size of a big rice grain. Normally the transponder chips are very reliable so (1) check it is not missing, (2) check the inductive pick up system in the car is working (may need diagnostic reader and go to Ford for that).

Sorry I don't know a specific source of information but if you google 'used car import' along with EU and WTO etc then I am sure something will turn up. I don't know of any UK used car dealers that have an outlet in the EU and send UK cars there to sell. Most countries in the EU are LHD so mainstream UK spec used cars would not be attractive to buyers. There is a certain amount of trade between UK and Ireland (also RHD). UK used cars that do sell in Europe tends to be specialist/prestige stuff, and in small numbers. But the dealers would stay UK based and the EU customer would come to the UK for the car (or have it delivered to EU). I think Brexit will put the lid on most of that trade.

At the moment we are still operating under EU single-market arrangements (until 31st December) so there are no import duties to pay, other than for imports to Cyprus and Portugal. A car could be 'exported' to an EU country and retailed there - just paying any local sales taxes and registration fees (and roadworthiness check, if required). All of those vary from country to country. A used car is one that has been driven more than 6000km and you'd need an EU Certificate of Conformity and an exhaust emissions test (if 3+ years old). Assuming we leave the EU without an agreement then the UK would be treated as a 'third country' and presumably the EU's 10% car import tariff would be applied. Export/import documentation would be required which would include Cert. of Conformity etc.

I'm not in London but I do know of Technosport (well regarded BMW specialist) who would be about 5 miles from Ealing I think. technosport.co.uk The fault you mention is quite likely to be one of the shock accelerometers. We've done a couple - they seem very prone to failure. Part cost is around £120 and its a 30 min job IIRC..

As a famous lady Prime Minister once said, 'You can't buck the market'. Dealers and banks etc only pay for CAP services because they are seen as the most accurate and reliable window into what's happening in the market. If they allow industry lobbying to influence their published valuations, then their reputation will collapse and people stop paying for their service. That's why Mike Brewer suggesting that CAP, Glasses 'support the market' is ridiculous. He states.... ‘We need a very gentle way into this because I simply can’t have that amount of money knocked off my stock value. My business will collapse, it’s as simple as that. ‘That means there will be over 100 people out of work immediately because a guide comes out and dictates what the motor trade should be doing.’ Well, Mike, the guide doesn't 'dictate what the motor trade should be doing', the market does. And if 'Crazy Joe's Motors' down the road are selling £1000 cheaper than me then I have to respond in some way.

Superdrug SIM (Superdrug are owned by the same company as Three). £20/month 30-day contract for unlimited everything. If you don't need unlimited data there are much cheaper deals. https://www.superdrugmobile.com

CAP, Glasses might like to think that they 'set' prices. They do not, they report prices. I am not sure exactly how their 'valuation experts' work, but if they try to 'support' the industry by 'filtering' the data then they will lose all credibility.

Three had their own network from launch. They are part of Hutchison telecoms and their network was the first 3G network. Which is why they are called Three. Smarty and Superdrug mobile piggy-back on Three (Hutchison own Superdrug and a load of other companies). Virgin mobile piggy-back on EE. But Virgin broadband have their own fibre network and don't use BT lines. Its all owned by Liberty Global.

Virgin mobile is a virtual network that actually uses EE's infrastructure.

We are only 15 mins walk from a major hospital and we have quite few customers who work there. One doctor had a Ferrari 348 which he used to bring to us for a yearly service and MoT. It only did about 1000 miles a year. His daily car (which we also looked after) was a Toyota Avensis 1.8 ! The Avensis was far better built!

Hmm... Two big and seemingly unmanageable groups trading in 'penny share' territory. Yeah, that should be a great marriage..!

Well it was only a box of 50.....

Not bad. Delivery was quoted at 10-20 days and came in about 14 days. Think I should maybe go into the PPE business rather than cars. I think compulsory mask wearing is coming - there'll be a market for millions...

I got 50 of the 3M ones from China for £25 inc. delivery.

That's not the way it works. Judging by a query from you about Jaguar disc sizes (and being reluctant to take a wheel off to measure) I suspect you are not involved in the service side. Sadly there are an awful lot of people who can't afford to properly maintain the £15k cars they are driving around in. We meet them every week. They max themselves out buying a used Merc or BM and then have nothing in reserve for maintenance. We see them with Chinese tyres down to the cords, pad warning light been on for weeks... Just before lockdown we had a 5/6 year old X5 in with a £1500 transmission fault. The owner outright told us he had no money to fix it. Was going to have to look for a loan.

A couple of months ago a lot of folks were posting on here about Covid being 'no worse than flu'. I did post at the time that it was going to be very serious and 'failing to plan is planning to fail'. We stopped buying anything from late January and ran stock down as quickly as possible, with quite a lot going to auction (at decent prices too). So at lockdown we had about 11 cars (about 25% of normal stock). Two of those are provisionally sold to personal contacts. We are not selling, but open for service and MoT - reasonably busy. In terms of 'holding nerve' on prices, that's just not the way the used car market works. We are just one fish swimming in a big shoal. CAP values at the moment are meaningless - there are insufficient transactions to give reliable data. I think a lot of people are not fully grasping the scale of the economic storm we are facing. The motor industry is going to be one of the worst sectors affected. Probably 50% of all motor trade jobs will go - 2M jobs.. https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/2020/04/18/new-analysis-of-the-impact-of-lockdown-on-uk-jobs We seem to be heading for a No Deal Brexit at the end of the year which will likely result in a further devaluation of the pound. So imported cars and parts (and everything else) will get more expensive and inflation will take off. Unemployment will be much higher, taxes will be higher. It will be a 1930's style recession. The plan for the next 12 months is just to survive.

I've never owned or even driven a McLaren but I've heard bad things about them. Poor paint and panel fit and finish. Poor reliability. I suspect that like a lot of 'supercars' they are mainly for looking at and maybe driving 2000 miles a year. Owners then either keep them a long time as a collector's item or quickly get bored and sell them for something different. Porsche are good though - they do seem to be usable in the long term.