A friend of mine is a driving instructor and mentioned that within the next 4 weeks he was looking to change his vehicle...an '06 Golf GT Tdi 3dr in black, with 140k on the clock. It is immaculate, obviously FSH, no accidents, and has to date been faultless. It has a leather interior, but lacks a sunroof and two extra doors which I always prefer! He will be replacing it with a similar model Mk6 Golf.
We both know that the only cost that matters is the 'cost to change'...p/ex values are worthless if you end up paying full list price.So, if he buys from a web based dealer (any recommendations please?) what would be a fair price for me to pay? I only drive 5k pa, but fancy a change after 18 months with my utterly reliable Mazda 626 2.0 SE petrol...I shall only be keeping the car until mid 2010 when my fiance and I wed, when we shall then buy a convertible as a joint wedding present to ourselves, and I would hate to lose too much value in depreciation!
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VW?
140K?
Ex driving school?
Avoid.
Unless its very cheap I would expect the clutch to be pretty had it by now, also does this have a dual mass flywheel if so avoid.
All learner cars suffer from a lot of abuse to the suspension, gearbox and clutch, I have driven plenty at even at 30k a lot of them felt pretty worn out.
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I'm with Rattle on this. How has anyone clocked up that mileage in 3 years running a driving school? Would any current or ex-driving instructors who may read this care to comment?
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When my dad was at his busiest he was doing about 50 lessons a week - even then his cars did about 100,000 over three years.
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DJP - thanks for the input. 50 lessons a week is VERY hard work I should think; an hour each plus transit time. I would add that I think a 2 litre car is an unlikely vehicle for a driving school but I am probably wrong on that too!
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Yes it was hard work - 12+ hours a day if he wanted a day off, he's down to about 10 lessons a week now.
A driving school car should be cheap to buy, cheap to fuel, cheap to tax and cheap to service.
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Even just working a 6 day week of 8 hours, this means a constant 18 miles per hour. There's not many driving schools manage to achieve such a high figure. I've seen a driving school car sit for 15 minutes opposite my house just trying to do a hill start!
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Quite right, and when it rolls backwards, the odometer counts down, not up. :)
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Hi,
It really depends on the asking price, the driving school and how the car is looked after.
140,000 is probably about right for the time it has been used.
My wife has a driving school with several instructors and the mileage can vary from 20,000 miles a year to 70,000 miles a year.
The car you are talking about is a very good car with long life service intervals of 20,000 miles or 2 years. As long as it has been serviced and looked after properly it should be ok.
Let's face it, the instructor required the car to be reliable, so therefore would be foolish if he didn't look after it.
The instructor also has to be realistic with the asking price for the car and you need to factor in if it has had it's 7th service and MOT and if it has recently had a clutch and brakes & discs replaced.
My wife has two of the Golf 2.0 GT TDi cars as driving school cars. A 2005 model and a mid 2008 model.
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I'd jump at it - but budget for a new clutch if not recently replaced (and DMF if relevant). It's never done short journeys.
With 140k on a 3 year old car, it will be horribly cheap as the market hates high mileage cars. Glass's reckons a trade-in of 4-5k.
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Thanks for all your replies.
Some say yes, some say no!
My driving instructor friend is self employed, and I have never seen the car dirty. I am certain it has a FSH, and if he suspected anything wrong with the vehicle it would be sold elsewhere.
I shall factor in (if necessary) the cost of a new clutch, disc& pads, tyres and DMF against his asking price, and take the matter from there.
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Well it's insured for others to drive so show interest and ask for a good test drive ;-) On all sorts of roads/speeds. And factor in a clutch and DMF?
Friends should not sell cars to each other in case things go wrong. So he's probably genuine? But he's your friend.
Edited by rtj70 on 23/03/2009 at 17:30
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There are four categories of car I would never buy:
Ex-hire (with the possible exception of large automatics)
Ex-plod
Ex-taxi
Ex-driving school
Driving school cars get a canning. They may be cosmetically in good condition and well serviced (it's in the instructor's interests to keep it all up together) but the damage is to the bits you can't see. Jerky gearchanges and stalling placing strain on the whole drivetrain. Clutch slipping particularly on a DMF car is likely to be expensive wear you can't see. Lots of stopping and starting, low speed manoeuvres, clipping of curbs, lots of urban traffic etc. No thanks, someone else can play that game.
Also bear in mind this car will have even less value in the future. An ex-driving school car needs to be seriously cheap
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The Clio I in passed it had worn discs, a slightly iffy clutch (biting point was high) a rather springy and nothcy gear change and needed a new drivers seat a week before my test.
My friend has a similar car but more than twice the milleage and that feels a lot newer to drive.
I would never touch a learner car from my experience, I also have too recent experience on how they get treated!! Expect the wishbones and springs to be quite worn too!
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A married couple we know are in a situation where the lady is a driving instructor. She changes her car for a new one about once every three or four years. Her husband then takes her "old" one as his daily commuter car and then gets rid of it when she is ready for her next one. This way they look to between them get up to eight years use out of a car. He doesn't seem to encounter an unusually high number of problems but maybe he has just been lucky. On the contrary, he and she believe that the very fact that her cars spend so much time with the engine hot actually benefits their longevity.
I wouldn't know.
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 25/03/2009 at 21:43
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I would think its not the engine that suffers though with moden oil they can all take a bit of revving. Its the clutch (poor clutch control) which used to be a cheap and easy job but this is changing. The gearbox will also take abuse, all that crunching and the cars will always be getting kerbed etc. Then there is the heavy braking which will wear at the discs.
I hit a kerb at 20mph once when I was learning and my instructor did not seem bothered that is how normal it must have been.
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I hit a kerb at 20mph once when I was learning and my instructor did not seem bothered
I would have been furious. I learned with a BSM instructor and they basically leased the car. So they would be livid. I would think an instructor knows when to let someone on real roads and when they do, they expect someone to be able to control a car and not hit kerbs at 20mph. 20mph is not that slow...
Sorry Rattle but that is not normal learner driving. Your instructor seems to be poor. Maybe why you're nervous. Can I suggest booking a two hour lesson with someone like BSM or AA?
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. It was a truck coming towards me at high speed (this was a long time ago too btw) so I had to doge it by going on the kerb it was the trucks fault but if this happened now I would have seen it and moved onto the kerb at a much slower speed. It was probably more like 15mph but I am sure it was enough to cause damage. It was a slow back road and was when I was first starting to drive so a while back.
He probably was furious afterwards but the hardest thing about being a driving instructor is probably not loosing your rag. I had one breifly a couple of years ago which i sacked after 6 lessons as he would loose it if I did the slightest thing wrong.
I did mount the kerb with my last instructor a couple of times but at much slower speeds.
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I'd bet the cars I used as an instructor left my ownership in above average condition, having seen the lack of car sympathy shown by "experienced drivers" on numerous occassions. I would never have let pupils get away with some of the things I have seen friends and relatives do, including attempted murder of clutches and seriously laboured engines.
The knowledgeable folk of the backroom and their ilk are but a tiny percentage of the motoring population. Most of the rest treat their cars with the same respect and care that they show their firdge. A couple of years doing driver improvement courses for the council was an eye opening experience.
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It's naiive to think that an instructor can prevent a learner from curbing his wheels at sometime. They can't drive with one hand constantly on the wheel and learners can steer perfectly until they're on their test , then curb it when their instructor isn't there, or sitting in the back.
the instructor who didn't get annoyed was probably a good one .... there's no point in getting 'furious' with the pupil , it'll probably make them worse.
As for booking a lesson with BSM ... would that be with one one their qualified instructors or one of their many trainnees? You'll pay just the same for a lesson with aBSM trainnee, even if they are one of the majority who NEVER qualify at all.
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No......all those kangaroo starts and emergency stops etc etc.
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