Lease cars will be mostly three years old and under, (sometimes 4) with 1 owner. (the lease company)
anything else is a repo.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Interesting that this was repo after 5 years - one owner from new so I guess that could be a good thing, if you buy/finance £32,000 worth of brand new car I would imagine you are unlikely to treat it like rubbish...
Are 5 year leases unheard of?
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not common - most are three years
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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The last lease car I had was driven straight to the auction by the bloke delivering the new one with no tarting up at all.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Reposessions don't always mean broken lease. Sometimes it is case of towing away anything of any value that the owner or business had on premises...
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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Repossessions usually, but not always, have it stated on the entry paper. Finance or lease cars are not always treated well ? it is also not true that ex-lease cars will always be fully maintained or well looked after ? sometimes they haven?t seen an oil change in 100,000 miles or more. Equally, don?t assume that a finance repossession is necessarily a disaster - it might have been an amicable one rather than a midnight raid by the bailiff. You have to judge each car on its own merits.
Very few lease or finance houses do any prep for cars at auction ? that?s the whole point ? they are sold as seen to the trade to prep. Some do valet them these days but little else, also some auction houses do some sort of cursory inspection and offer a 3-5 day warranty on major mechanicals. Sometimes these inspections pick up a lot, sometimes they miss a lot. I know BOS cars at Manheim are often ?Manheim Assured?.
I?ve bought and sold endless cars at auction but everyone gets caught sometimes. Last month I bought a very well looked after major manufacturer prestige car with an impeccable history and serviced by a main dealer just 600 miles previously. The new (very expensive) engine goes in tomorrow?..
You pays your money and takes your choice. Auctions can be cheap because of the associated risk is a lot, lot, higher. As long as you accept that they are fine.
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As regards expensive cars being treated well - if only. Many an expensive cars is treated appallingly - often it's the small cars which are treated best. Many a leased expensive BMW, Merc, Porsche etc. is thrashed and driven into the ground with no maintenance and then to compound things if they need paint the owner can't be bothered to go through insurance and gets a back street job to paint a £40k car using a can bought at Halfords. Go to any auction and you will see rows of them. On the whole, out of the so called "prestige" brands I reckon on financed cars Audi owners look after their cars the best followed by Volvo estates (but not the Volvo saloons).
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This particular car has 6 stamps to 139k - which works out as an average of 23k between services. The 5 Series uses variable servicing - is a service interval this high an indication of:
a) Almost exclusive Motorway use
b) A Stingy owner running thousands of miles over the service due light
c) Neither of the above
Ta ;)
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Also, with regards to the used, abused and thrashed examples reffered to - would it be fair to say this sort of car would be quite easy to spot by its external condition? After all, I cannot imagine somebody who treats a car that badly to be fastidious about keeping it clean, tidy and pristine on the exterior and interior...
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If you're going to the auction have a look inside the car, if a repo could still have a lot of the last owners stuff in the car.
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MichaelR: Sorry if I've missed something, but do you know this car's a repo, or are you just wondering?
Seems unlikely a company would run a car for even 5 yrs and 140K miles, but if they did, then now would be a reasonable time to get rid.
The servicing intervals are indicative of lots of motorway use, however it may well still have been driven pretty hard. I think some people assume that 'motorway miles' means the car's cruised at 70MPH for its whole life. In reality it could have spent its life in lane 3 tailgating the vehicle in front. I'd expect it to have some hefty stonechips - you tend not to get many on the motorway, but they can be nasty.
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.. I'd expect it to have some hefty stonechips
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bil payer - refer to michael's thread here:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=43...8
where he says:
".... Aside from stonechips ....."
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>> .. I'd expect it to have some hefty stonechips >> bil payer - refer to michael's thread here: www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=43...8 where he says: ".... Aside from stonechips ....."
Am I supposed to review every thread that someone has posted in, before adding a comment?
That sounds like a different vehicle anyway.
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Am I supposed to review every thread that someone has posted in, before adding a comment? That sounds like a different vehicle anyway.
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no, but, yeah but, no but, michael has been posting these threads very recently; and as any good accountant who regularly pops in to this forum, you are expected to keep on top of it. :: ;-) ::
it sounds just like his ideal high miler bmw e39 sport, with all the goodies included that he is after. i cannot see michaelr going for anything else.
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6 stamps to 139k - which works out as an average of 23k between services ..
if the last service was at 120k, that means a service every 20k. next one probably due anytime soon or maybe just overdue!
anyway, even if was 23k, it is pretty standard to find this type of interval. see
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=43...8
my e39 was serviced by bmw for the first 3 years for warranty reasons (all around 20k intervals), now i do it all myself amd get 20k between services quite easily, and since then i have not had the service book stamped - it just has my own notes in it. since i do not plan to get anything much for it if/when i eventually sell it on, i don't care! it has mega 100k plus mileage on it and still feels like brand new, and has needed nothing more than routine servicing (filters, fluids, oils, brake pads, plus the odd broken lamp and mirror ).
audi reckon you can get even greater intervals using their variable servicing:
www.audi.co.uk/audi/uk/en2/fleet_sales/ownership_b...l
In practice, this means that each Audi gets the maintenance it needs, when it needs it. Audi owners don?t have to fit their working lives around traditional fixed service intervals, because there is no predetermined mileage for a service. Depending on how ? and where - the individual drives, the interval can be up to 19,000 miles/24 months for petrol engines, up to 22,000 miles/24 months for the V6 TDI diesel and up to 30,000 miles/24 months for 3 and 4 cylinder TDI diesel engines.
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Hi all,
Yes this is a different car to the last thread. By 'SH to 139k' I assume it means the last service was at 139k.
It sounds like it might be considerably under my budget, in my head at least it makes sense even if I need to spend a bit of money on it, after all, its not as if there is a plethora of lower mileage 530i's around for me to chose from with manual gearboxes!
Now, my theory about condition is that with the exception of stonechips, it is age and not mileage which dictates the condition of a car in terms of dents, scrapes, scratches and marks - if anything, a lower mileage car has spent more time in carparks and standing still where people can bump into it, scrape it, scratch it or what have you.
Would it therefore be unreasonable to expect a car of this age and mileage - it is just 5 years old - to be in similar external and internal condition (Not mechanical) to a car with half the mileage of the same age or more, and thus excessive scratches etc indicating a lack of care? This certainly seems to be the case with my Mondeo, whcih despite being 4 years old and having 113k when I bought it, was as close to immaculate inside and out as you'd expect on one with 40k, let alone nearly 3 times that.
The idea of taking advantage of a car which will not appeal to 90% of people purely down to something subjective like mileage is very appealing - for the same reason, I'd consider a Cat D or a Parrallel import..
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Now, my theory about condition is that with the exception of stonechips, it is age and not mileage which dictates the condition of a car in terms of dents, scrapes, scratches and marks - if anything, a lower mileage car has spent more time in carparks and standing still where people can bump into it, scrape it, scratch it or what have you
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on average, your theory should hold. but you may just be unlucky and get a car owned by someone who has no sympathy for the car ( eg. never bothers to treat stonechips to prevent further damage), never cleans the car insisde or outside, or lives in an area where anti-bmw thugs will key the paintwork.
but these are cosmetics that youn can easily attend to. just allow for that in the price you pay (as per glass's excellent-good-bad condition prices) if you evidence of such maltreatment.
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p.s. if it turns out to be dud, put it back through the auction and just be prepared to take the loss.
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There was a 51-plate 530i Sport with leather and a few options (but no sat nav) with 19k on the clock sold at Colchester earlier in the week for £9800 but they usually have a lot more miles.
As far as dents etc. are concerned just judge the car on its merits - there is no way of telling without looking at it. There are 160k cars in very good condition out there and equally 20k cars without a straight panel. I've seen basically wrecked cars with 5k on at auction.
The service history sounds OK - at that mileage I'd be more concerned about what might need spending on bushes etc. to keep the suspension taught than the exact miles between each service.
Don't go to an auction with your heart set on just one car - you usually end up buying it whatever which is how you buy duffers, also keep an eye on ebay where the odd decent E39 seems to pop up every now and again.
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I'm not actually attending myself - I have Joe Dowd on the lookout for me.
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