Hi all, a friend of mine is looking to buy a used Toyota Celica in the near future, her budget is about as low as you can go for the new model at £6K.
For this money I would prefer her to get the car inspected before purchase by a competent mechanic. As we may end up looking at a car a long way from home I thought a firm like the AA or RAC may be best as if she's sure she's found the right car, she can send them out to do the inspection without travelling hundreds of miles herself only to go and view a lemon! (this is the voice of experience talking)
Has anybody used such a service before or does anybody have any recommendations? She may also be looking at a private sale and as such is even more wary of the prospect of buying a dudd car so before she splashes out on a £150 inspection I'd like to know that they're worth the money.
I can offer some limited help to her myself but as I've recently proven to myself, even I am taken in by shiny paint when viewing cars for my own use, the last BMW Ibought had as much filer as it did bodywork but I failed to notice until long after I drove off in her, and I most certainly don't want to repeat the performance when helping a less knowledgeable friend buy one! On a more positive note, I doubt I will get rose-tinted glasses when viewing a car for somebody else, I never have before.
Blue
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I've used the AA and I was well pleased. The "inspector" even got the dealer to adjust the tracking because the car was pulling slightly one way.
However I wouldn't arrange an inspection before I'd seen the car myself. There's no point in spending money until reading (and approving) the inspection report is the only thing stopping you from signing on the dotted line.
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L\'escargot.
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blue. do what you can in the way of guidance for your female friend, but be warned, if anything does go wrong with the car afterwards you may well get the flack
What about a local independant garage doing a full safety check followed up by an hpi?
this will come in quite cheap and nothing needs dismantling so vendors of car should be happy?
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i agree about the flak business, i will never again help my misses choose a car, as soon as it went wrong( she shoots from the lip ) i got both barrels
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Better off having an independent garage do a once over & also an MoT - with a copy of the failure/advisory notice, if it gets aany issued. Then buy a warranty from Warranty Direct - viae Relibility Index link above - with the change.
AA don't inspect anymore, I think you'll find. Not sure of RAC. But from experience, when we've had customers arrange to inspect anything I've sold, it was reasonably fair, although somewhat limited.
Plus the disclaimer about not inspecting anything which wasn't accessible, nothing dismantled & only a suggesdtion for 'further investigation', to cover themselves,just in case!!
VB
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MOT doesn't prove anything. Mrs MLCs Fiesta needed a very expensive replacement steering rack (leaking seals..and boy were they leaking) but still went straight through!
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Independent garages that are soft-franchised to Unipart used to do a check for £99 - this was done on the ramps in their workshop (at garage local to vendor). Covers all the basic stuff plus HGF check etc. Worth seeing if this is still available.
AA now longer does checks after they were bought up, they direct you to DEKRA (German co. who took on a lot of the AA-checkers).
I always think these checks are rather poor value, but worth doing for peace of mind I suppose.
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Thanks for the comments everyone, I would prefer an independant garage but sadly most of the cars we are looking at are almost 200 miles away, so a check doesn't seem like such bad value when you take into account the considerable cost of trekking across the country only to find that the car is no good, if we travel that far we wanted to try and make one trip if possible. Maybe we should just accept we'll have to make two!
Blue
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