I bought my 6 month old Jazz froma dealer in Leeds - 70 miles away (They were £1000+ cheaper than anyone else. And it had done 300 miles.)

I would not travel 70 miles for a 70k miles Jazz.

If you were looking for a bog standard Fiesta we'd all suggest as local as possible for all the obvious reasons, but you arn't looking for a car that every dealer in the country will have on his plot.

Surely that sums it up. If you have a particular or unusual model in mind, you may be lucky and find one close to home; otherwise you have to cover a few counties to find some to select from.

357 miles is how far i travelled to buy my van. I was looking for something specific and although this van was amongst the higher priced of those i was looking at, the dealer (Globe motors in Blackburn) had excellent reviews, and the van looked immaculate. It was as described, the couldn't fault the dealer, and 7 months on am still happy with it.

But some manufacturers are 1 year and then 2 years dealer warranty.

It is your responsibility to get the car back to the selling dealer for faults

If the car is covered by the original warranty any dealer anywhere is able to repair it under warranty.

Taking the car to the selling dealer only applies to issues covered by the selling dealers warranty or sale of goods act rectifications.

Imagine if all of the buyers of the tens of thousands of nearly new Fords they bought from a supermarket had to return them to the selling dealer for warranty work. An example. We bought a one week old pre reg Mondeo. It was registered in Nuneaton and we bought it from a supermarket. The warranty was 3 years, one year manufacturer, 2 years dealer backed. But when we had suspension bush issues for the 1st MOT the local Ford dealer did the work with no issues.

Emailed a trader earlier today asking for more details about an S-Max they had for sale. No answer yet. So much for their 5 star feedback from 20 customers.

I don't remember coming across any dealer who consciously returns a phone call. Of course Emails can be safely ignored without explanation. Now I assume that dealers' phones only take incoming calls, so their Emails may be similar. Maybe they are always too busy attending to eager customers?