When it comes to cars, there’s no such thing as “Sold as seen”, but there should be a term which says “Buy at your own risk”. Lou (my partner) recently bought a Mitsubishi Pajero which turned out to be a dud. It was a private sale from a friendly family in a place called Frogwell near Callington in Cornwall. A few weeks after buying it, the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree with warning lights and the temperature gauge rapidly climbed off the scale. It turned out the fault was with the fan belt pulley on the end of the crank. It was chewed to pieces and bodge-welded to the crank itself which was also ruined as a result. The only option was a complete engine strip-down and a new crank and pulley, or a replacement engine. We were advised to go for the whole engine as nobody knew what other horrors might lurk inside the old one.
Unsurprisingly I was pretty unhappy about this. She paid a lot of money (well over the odds) for the car and somebody had hacked a repair and sold it quick, leaving us with a massive £2,072 bill to sort out the mess. There’s also that nasty feeling of knowing you’ve been had. Time to research some trading standards.
After some reading, it turns out the that the purchaser of a private vehicle has very few legs to stand on. The exact terminology Trading Standards quote is “Buyer Beware”. Providing the car is roadworthy at the time of sale that’s all that matters. The fact the engine is a wreck and held together with recent gash welding is irrelevant. If a brake light had been out, that would be a different issue as the vehicle would be unroadworthy. How ridiculous.
So that’s it. There’s nothing to stop private sellers from deliberately misleading a buyer into thinking they’re getting a good vehicle whilst selling them a lemon. The only lesson to learn is, buy from a reputable trader where the buyer has considerably more rights in the event of trouble. I can’t help wondering about the sellers; what sort of person can look you in the eye whilst you hand them £3.5k for a car where they have deliberately concealed a major problem?