Jamie Edmonds

The drivetrain is all Merc SLK stuff, but the interior tends not to wear miles as well as its German cousin. Chrylser dealers in the UK are starting to disappear now as the franchise has been pulled so they aren't going to get any easier to move either. What would we buy any car offer the customer for it? Might be worth a punt if it closes the deal for you.

@jimreidvehicle and @umesh I'm glad you like Spec Chek - it was a product I developed and launched when I was at HPI so it's nice to see positive comments about it from users. @Steve92 If there are things you think aren't right then click on the 'report a problem' link and they will be investigated and fixed. If we sort a problem out it fixes it for all cars with that option so we really appreciate the feedback. Regarding the difference between the check providers, in most cases you get the same data from them all, however there are some differences. Private plates are tricky and the companies are not always in sync depending on the amount of manual processing and work they do behind the scenes. The other big thing is warranty, hopefully most customers will never need to use it but do check the small print - some companies will refuse to pay out if the finance co hadn't updated their records leaving you liable for the bill even thought he car showed as clear when checked.

Vehicle ID check is literally a plate lookup without checking for finance, total loss etc but useful if you want to just do a valuation or spec check. I'm not sure why it's greyed out but Glass's isn't, it might be worth a call to the customer services team to ask if they can 'un-grey' it for you.

You can do a CAP valuation with an HPI vehicle ID check rather than having to do the full finance/write off etc check. Just select 'HPI Vehicle ID' from the drop-down where it normally says 'HPI Check' then tick the boxes below for the data you need. A vehicle ID is a few pence so much cheaper than the full check if you're re-valuing a stock vehicle or similar.

As a private seller this is even worse - last time I sold a car in the UK it was the cheapest in the country for spec, age and miles and sold in two days but I still got 18 calls and texts from people offering 50% of the asking price. I strongly believe this is what has driven the growth of the likes of WBAC - dealing with these types of idiots takes so much time and energy it isn't worth the hassle. Don't confuse them with genuine buyers, most are just trying their luck and will only respond if you accept a stupid offer which would allow them to run the car for six months and sell it for a profit after that.

To a lot of people a two seat diesel roadster was a bit of a crazy idea in the first place, but with fuel prices and road tax as the main determining factor (as well as company car tax) they still managed to find homes. Now fuel is a lot cheaper, petrol CO2 emissions and economy figures are improving, and we've had 'dieselgate' is the market experiencing a major shift away from this kind of vehicle? Will diesel 'sports cars' become as undesirable as a petrol powered Peugeot 407 or VW Passat was ten years ago?

Is it just the wrong spec? Are buyers expecting to have built in nav? I was surprised to see a standard stereo there, personally I'd lose that pic and if the lack of nav is an issue you can at least try and convince them face to face why it's a waste of time and they're better off without it. (Having said that, most of the ones on AT don't have nav either so maybe I'm talking rubbish)

Here speaks a man who has bought a Ford with a non-opening bonnet without realising....

Steve, are they good or bad in your opinion? I love adaptive cruise as it makes motorway traffic jams so much easier. The best feature I've ever had on a car is electric memory seats I think. I share the car with my wife who is 10" shorter than me and this is so much easier than having to adjust the seat every time I need to go somewhere. Stuff I hate - stop/start on automatics, I'm yet to drive one which managed to re-start the engine before I had pressed the accelerator and expected it to move away. I'm also not a big fan of touch screen controls for everything, especially when things like the heated seats are buried in a sub-menu. I can remember where a button is, and hit it without looking when on the move but with a touch screen I have to take my eyes off the road to find it and that's a step backwards. However, by far and away the number one hate I have (and I admit this might be slightly personal to me...) is the wretched Hyundais which don't let you pair a phone with the Bluetooth while moving. Why can my wife in the passenger seat not do that while I'm crawling out of Heathrow airport?! What a daft idea!

Yeah, must be, it's £600 below CAP Retail! Can't help but think there's something missing though...

A very good point! I've been away from garages for a few years now, and I guess these are all into 'worthless bangers' territory but the really bad ones were Renault Laguna 2, Megane 2 and Scenic 2 - all had catastrophic faults baked in all over the place with clutches, DMFs, ECUs, general electrical stuff, handsfree key cards, EGR valves, body control units and handbrake mechanisms depending on which engine you had the misfortune to be dealing with at the time. Then there are the headlight/sidelight bulbs on the Megane... The fact that window regulators and ignition coils were basically a consumable item was a mere sideshow when compared with the impending mechanical doom likely to be round the corner. A colleague ignored all the advice and bought a top spec Laguna 1.9dCi as it was a grand cheaper than a Mondeo. Within six months it ate that in repairs and in not much over a year it needed a body control unit, ECU, clutch, flywheel, EGR (twice, I think) and other sundry bits. The alloy wheels were also made of cheese and buckled if you looked at them in the right way. I'd also like to preemptively nominate any of the PSA 'Hybrid4' models for this category in the future. Most of them will have covered plenty of miles, they're hugely complex, have the 2.0 HDi engine and an automated manual single clutch gearbox and frankly I just wouldn't trust one.

The Grand Picasso is a real shame, they're brilliant family cars, and the cockpit makes you feel like you're driving something which is actually interesting - a feat which most MPVs can't manage. We had a one year old model and even that had issues with the stupid electric parking brake (don't get me started on which moron put the handbrake button on top of the dash so you have to lean forward to reach it...) Do you guys generally avoid particular vehicles as a whole or is it more down to the engine and gearbox combination? I guess with the Picasso the 1.6 HDi is the only one which sells, so even if the 1.6 petrol was more reliable it would be hard to find a buyer for.

I agree entirely with the above diagnosis, however it is possible that one pack was failed and two were showing issues when tested so the garage recommended they were replaced too - this is normal for a garage as the coil packs are pretty much consumable items. A cheap coil pack on these engines is a false economy, often they don't work properly in the first place and they are likely to fail within months in any case. We tested several different sources for VAG coil packs and only the OEM supplier made ones actually lasted any reasonable length of time, the cheap ones flew back under warranty at an alarming rate. In summary, I don't think the garage has done anything wrong, the driver can't possibly have put diesel in the car as the pump won't physically fit in the filler neck. It's just one of those things which can happen I guess.

MG ZS? At a place I used to work we managed our own fleet - disposals and refurbs etc. A sales guy's Mondeo came back and it looked like he'd put a wood-chipper in the boot before feeding three quarters of a forest into it, It took the valeter five hours to get the bits of wood and leaves out of the boot, the back seats were full of dog hair and various bits of trim were cracked and scratched. Goodness only knows how he trashed it so badly in four years, it would have passed for a 12 year old farm hack.

Hi Dave, I guess by 'Hybrids' you're talking 95% about the Prius as that's what the workshops will be seeing. I recall a little while ago Scott Brownlee from Toyota saying the Prius has the lowest warranty claim rate of any car they sell so I'm not surprised people aren't seeing many. From my days in the parts industry I remember the engine oil being very specific to the vehicle, a 0W20 or something else strange. The procedures for battery disconnect and reconnect are now available through companies like CarweB but you have to be very careful when working on the high voltage electrical systems. For a well equipped and competent workshop they shouldn't be worried about working on them, but it's often the unfamiliarity and fear that results in garages turning them away or sub-contracting the work.