Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) The Decline of Car Dealers?...

There's a definite spy in MS OS - I posted try "Motorway" further back in this thread, my MSN feed has now showed two links to "exchangemycar.co.uk"

The robots are listening...

I was in the Mini dealership to buy a new ( used) car for SWMBO last week. On a desk there I saw a manual entitled , if I remember correctly, something like the "New Retail". I asked the friendly salesman what it was about and he explained the following.

As an official dealer, and starting in a month or so, all new and second hand stock will belong to Mini - the dealer is not allowed to retail other brands anyway. All other makes part exchanged either get passed on to another garage in their chain , one who deals with than particular brand, or they get put through the auction.

Under the new system, Mini will decide the retail price of all second hands their official dealers hold and the prices will be adjusted day by day to reflect the demand they are seeing model by model. This gets rid of any risk of competition between Mini dealers. Its the system used by Tesla already.

Incidentally the finance companies ( and 90 % of new cars are sold on finance) put their cars through the auctions when returned and then most second hand dealers as opposed to official dealers get their stock from auctions. Thats where the WBAC link comes in.

I had an interesting glimpse of car dealing at the other end of the scale yesterday afternoon. No sooner had I walked into the pub when a mate said 'Tim, you know a bit about cars, do you mind popping out to have a look at one I'm thinking of buying?"

It was only 100 yards or so from the pub, so I gave Oscar the barman strict instructions to guard my pint with his life and off we went. It was a 2003 Fiesta petrol with 104k on the clock. A steady MOT history of failures for all the usual stuff, but nothing untoward and they'd all been fixed and a fresh ticket issued. Last serviced 10k miles ago, it was now sat with the MIL light on but is started and ticked over very cleanly. Code reader revealed a failed Oxygen sensor, which tied with the most recent MOT failure on emissions (apparently a quick Italian tuneup had got it clean enough to pass.

The seller was a youngish family chap with a couple of kids, nice guy but he had been spooked by the MIL light and had been told by a garage that he could be looking at a very big bill to get the car fixed. (£30 for a sensor and a couple of hours max to change it by my reckoning). He was scared he might have to scrap it. A lovely little car in much better nick than you would think from its age, so we gave him the full asking price of £500. There was no honour in haggling the poor sod down any further, with no MIL on it would have been a decent buy at twice that I reckon as insurance and tax is so cheap on them.

My mate's a lovely bloke but hopeless when it comes to spannering, so next job at Hamwich towers looks like it's going to be a lambda sensor change on a Ford Fiesta!

I often forget that having spannering skills (or spattering ) is not actually very common. Was given a car once by a mate who said it had a terminal engine problem and he'd bought a new car rather than plough £1000's into a fix.

Went to pick it up - and couldn't hear anything when the engine was running. Mate said the noise only happened when it was running. Drove it home, replaced a wheel bearing and used it for about 4 years.....

The car manufacturers are making it increasingly harder to replace even simple things like an sensor. Mercedes replaced Sue's SLK NOX sensor and the replacement sensor had to be calibrated to the specific car, which meant using the Mercedes box of tricks diagnostic system. So not only are they trying to lock out owner repairs but also independent garage repairs unless they have access to their very expensive diagnostic system or a knock off of it. So in addition to the cost of the part and fitting it labour I had to pay £150 calibration fee on top. I was there watching them using the computer once they had fitted the new sensor to calibrate it to Sue's car.

Fortunately it was all covered under warranty but at £913.71 for a NOX sensor, it certainly stung.

Another good reason not to buy new cars, none of that malarkey with a 2003 Fiesta!

It does seem to me sometimes that car manufacturers and their dealers are almost wilfully contributing to their own demise. When any car built since the turn of the century is good for a couple of hundred thousand miles when properly maintained, and new cars are so complex and expensive to maintain, what motivation is there for anyone to spend far more money than they need to have a new car? The 'keeping up with the Joneses' effect will only go so far in these days of stretched household finances.

Good point. My old man was hopeless at anything remotely DIY related, but he recognised the advantages of being able to work on cars so he bought me books and encouraged me to learn all I could. But apart from having the knowledge and skills, simply getting the tools and equipment and having somewhere secure to store them is not a trivial exercise these days.

I agree with your sentiments, unfortunately I believe before too long we will see older car scrappage schemes being implemented more and the restrictions on entry to cities etc extended, meaning that older cars will for emissions reasons not be economically viable before too long. Its coming, once 2030 is here and no ICE sales we will see a massive push to get ICE off the roads. Even simple things like petrol stations will start to disappear at an alarming rate.

Indeed ... I've lost count of the thousands of pounds being 'good at fixing/building things' has saved me over the years. I'd feel so helpless if I lacked the skills to (mostly) fix my own stuff .... it's only a matter of time til vested interests get their paid politicians to outlaw 'amateur' car repair ... on the grounds of 'safety' of course.

My neighbour, bless him, is the opposite ... his version of DIY is Don't Involve Yourself 🙂

K