Bernie Fineman, Original Motor Mouth

by Bernie Fineman

  They say seeing is believing, and sometimes you can’t believe what you see. If a car is too good to be true then it probably is. Do a bit of detective work when you’re looking round a car, think about its age and mileage and think about what sort of state you expect that car to be in. A little bit of wear and tear isn’t too much of a problem if it’s an older car, but wear and tear on a low mileage car rings alarm bells for me.

  For instance, if a car has 20,000 miles on the clock, have a look at the brake and clutch pedals. If the rubbers on them are very worn away and smooth, then beware. Unless you’ve got size 25 shoes I can’t see how the rubbers could wear away that quickly. Look at the steering wheel. If it’s worn away or pitted then again it suggests the mileage on the car isn’t exactly what it’s showing. Look at the general condition of the seats; if the ‘squab’ or the back part is worn away then you’ve either had a fat bastard driving it or the mileage isn’t what it should be.

  Listen to the engine. It should be basically quiet. If you can hear strange rattles or squeaks, make sure you find out what the problem is. They might just say it’s a squeaky fan-belt, but it could be your water pump on the way out or crankshaft damage, which could be a very expensive repair.

  When you take it for a test drive, look out for certain things. If it’s a manual car make sure the bite on the clutch isn’t too high. When you put it into gear and let the handbrake off and lift the clutch off to make the car move, the bite should be an inch-and-a-half or two inches from the bottom when the pedal is fully depressed. If it’s right near the top then that’s telling you the clutch is on the way out. On some cars this will cost you £150 to replace, but on others it can run into thousands, particularly if it is a single mass flywheel or if it’s a dual mass flywheel.

  Go through all the gears, take it out onto a national speed limit road so you can get up into fifth gear or sixth gear if it has one. A rumbling sound in certain gears or a car jumping out of gear can denote a very, very serious problem inside the gearbox. For an automatic car, put it into gear and drive, and then watch the change-up speeds: first to second should be roughly at 15–20 miles an hour, and it should be into top gear at 40. If you’re getting faster and faster and you’re still going through the gears, in an automatic, that’s telling you the clutches inside are worn. Again, a very expensive repair.

  Also, and this is the thing everyone forgets but I’ve seen it happen before, make sure the car goes into reverse! I had a client eight or nine years ago who bought on impulse. It was a really beautiful car but it had no reverse gear, so it was next to bloody useless! It was a Jaguar and it cost him two-and-a-half grand to get it fixed.

  Look under the bonnet. If it looks too clean always query it, ask if it has been steam cleaned. Sometimes it can be done for a genuine reason and the seller wants to present something cleanly, but sometimes engines are steam cleaned in order to disguise things, particularly major oil leaks. Engines that are steam cleaned and finished with a bit of WD40 (an oil that acts as a water displacing spray) may look nice, even smell nice, but a few miles down the road you may find you’ve got a big puddle of oil underneath it.

  Not everyone carries car jacks with them, so obviously to look under the car for most people is very, very difficult. My advice is, stick to what you know: if you’re in computers don’t do someone’s haircut! Get friendly with your local mechanic, even if you’re buying from a dealer, and take him or her along with you. Offer to pay them for their time, even if it’s just a nice cup of tea and bacon sarnie afterwards, but get him to check out what you can’t check out.

  I’d say that the majority of the people in the motor trade can be magicians when they want to be. They can hide anything that you’re not going to find in a million years. So take someone with you who knows what they’re doing and that you can trust, and make sure they’re happy with the car. But even if they are, always do an HPI check; that way you know you’ve done all you can and you can be confident you’re not going to get, what we call in the motor trade, ‘FUA’ – meaning ‘fucked up the arse’!

  All cars that have been in an accident have to register with HPI. Go online, enter the registration number and it will give you a detailed history of the vehicle and if it’s been in an accident. If it’s been in a bad accident then walk away, because even if you can buy it at a reasonable price, you’ll probably not be able to re-sell it.

  It’s very important to make sure the car has a service history. If you’re buying a car you want to know that whoever has had it before has looked after it. If it’s not got a service history, query it, and find out why. If the dealer hasn’t got it, ask them to contact the previous owner and find out if they have one. If a dealership has been carrying out the work then they will hold a duplicate detailing all the work that has been done. Again, you’ll struggle to sell a car without a service history, so think twice when you’re buying it without one.

  Ask how many owners it’s had. If you’re buying a 2010 car and it’s had five owners already, when you come to sell it as the sixth owner it ain’t worth nothing.

  Buying a car from a dealership, to my way of thinking, is safer than buying from a private person. An individual selling a car can be one of two types of people: they could be genuine, someone who’s selling his own car or doing so for a family member, or you could be dealing with what’s known as a ‘home trader’. A lot of home traders don’t register themselves as traders, they buy from auctions and sell to the public and if anything goes wrong with the car you’ve got no comeback whatsoever.

  If you buy from a dealer then you are covered for a statutory warranty of three months, and that’s by law. They may well offer you an extended warranty, which will cover the main parts of the car, that is the engine, transmission and differential, but beware. If you take the extended warranty then this often renders the statutory warranty null and void, so anything else that goes wrong that isn’t covered means you’ll find it exceedingly difficult to get your money back.

  Even if it’s a Ford dealership and they sell you a Jaguar it makes no difference, they are a dealer and you are covered by your three-month warranty. Anything that goes wrong in those three months, apart from consumables obviously like brake pads, and you are covered by law: either get your money back or they have to put that vehicle right. My advice is don’t take the dealer’s extended warranty; get your statutory three months, then when that’s nearly up, shop around. There are loads of warranty companies on the internet and you can probably find yourself a better deal without infringing your statutory rights. That way you get two bites of the pie rather than one, and I’m a greedy fella!

  If you have a car for sale it is better to sell it first and become a cash buyer. That way, you’re in a much better bargaining position and likely to get a better price on your next car.

  And if you’re buying from an individual, ask them if it’s their car and if it is registered in their name. A good trick to find out whether they are a home trader or not is when you phone up, say you’re ‘calling about the car they have for sale’.

  If they say ‘which one?’, put the phone down, as they are probably buying and selling as a business. If you’re buying from a dealer, ask if it has had a 42-point check and are they going to service it before you drive it away. And always ask if there’s a deal to be done – nine times out of ten there will be. The best way to wangle a deal with a dealer is to be straight with them. Say, ‘I’m interested in the car, the price doesn’t interest me, I haven’t got a part exchange. If I pay cash for the car what sort of deal can you do?’ If they say, ‘This is my final price,’ say ‘Fair enough, I’ll spend my money somewhere else,’ and walk away. They’ll either change their mind and say something can be done, or they’ve genuinely got a very small margin on the car and so can’t budge on price.

  Be clear with a dealer by saying you might not buy the car today. What they wanna do is wrap you up, tie you up and get the deal done. But don’t be strong-armed into a deal and don
’t buy on impulse, take twenty-four hours to think about it. Always keep yourself a little bit back, don’t be too obvious, don’t be too eager. If you seem that way then you’ve got the word MUG written on your forehead and every dealer loves a mug.

  Beware of what we call ‘dealer spiel’. They’ll butter you up, give you compliments, saying you look great in this car, this that and the other, so you’ve got to be straight with them to show them you’re in the box seat. Say you want to take it for a road test and on a fast run, so that you can feel how the car handles. Tell them you’re not going to buy the car today and you’re not going to pay the price they are asking. That way they know you know what you want and their sweet-talking won’t work. They don’t hypnotise you, they just use a bit of psychology, they butter you up in order to get a quick sale, and the quicker they can wrap up a deal the happier they are, and the quicker they can buy other cars.

  Always get an insurance quote before you buy a car too, so you don’t get any nasty surprises. It might only be a 1.6 litre you’re looking at, but if it’s a turbo or fuel injection this can have a huge bearing on the cost of insurance, so that bargain car may cost you more than you bargained for. Find out what road tax group it is: there’s no point buying a cheap 4x4 if you’re going to get lumbered with a £600 road tax bill and a £2,000 insurance premium. A more expensive car might be cheaper in the long run, so work out what your budget can do.

  When you are buying a used car, it’s second hand, it’s been driven, so don’t expect a ten or fifteen-year-old car to be in mint condition. Perfect cars have either been completely rebuilt after an accident or wrapped in cotton wool and not driven. If you asked me is it better to buy a high mileage car or a low mileage car, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. A car that’s been driven in town only, that’s five years old and has 8,000 miles on the clock, is actually more worn than a car that’s spent all its life on the motorway and done 50,000 miles. I’d rather have the one that’s lived on the motorway – all that stop-go stop-go in the other one creates wear and tear. Plus, if it’s got 50,000 miles and been serviced regularly you’ve got all the little quirks out of the way.

  Buying a very sporty ‘muscle’ car is like having a beautiful woman, and I guarantee you she’s been used more than an ugly woman! If you’re buying a sports car, expect it to have had a reasonably hard life, they’re there to be driven, they have power, so obviously someone has used that power. I’d say about 80 per cent of the muscle cars I’ve worked on – Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis – have all had an accident. They’ve all been driven fast and the people who buy them first-hand don’t know how to handle them.

  It’s the same with anyone who buys a sports car. There’s no point getting out of a Peugeot 206 and jumping straight into a Ferrari, you’ll crash that thing on the first day. It’s lovely to say to someone, ‘I’ve got a Ferrari,’ but I’d answer, ‘Yeah, but can you drive it?’ If you’re going from a standard car straight to a muscle car, the best thing you can do is take some lessons with the Institute of Advanced Motorists, so you learn to control that thing. It’s like going from a 100cc motorbike to a 750 twin motorcycle: if you’re not careful and experienced you could end up killing yourself and other people.

  And it ain’t just muscle cars you need to be wary of. You should get specialist advice on any car you buy that is different from what you’re used to. A few years back the wife of a customer of mine treated herself to a Mercedes SLK Automatic – nice car.

  But she’d only ever driven manual Fords and Vauxhalls before, which were nice and easy. She bought the car on impulse (don’t they always?), had no one with her, and then proceeded to set off down the M1 back from Northampton to north-west London, having no understanding of how an automatic vehicle works. After eight miles down the motorway with the lever set to a low gear, car screaming blue bloody murder, and clouds of smoke pouring out from under the bonnet, she pulls into the services and calls me. I send a truck straight up there to pick her and the car up and bring her back to the garage. The damage? Head gasket blown, automatic transmission overheated, a right mess. She got a £4,500 bill for her trouble and no, the dealer wasn’t liable, it was just a very expensive mistake on her part. She learnt her lesson the hard way. Always look into things you haven’t driven before.

  Finally, once you’ve done the deal, check what you’re getting. Make sure you have the logbook and all the keys. There should be two sets of keys. If there’s only one then alarm bells should ring.

  An old scam that still happens is someone buys a car and takes it home. Next morning they wake to find the car has vanished. They call the police, get a crime reference number and inform their insurance company. Wondering if the seller has something to do with it the police turn up at the vendor’s property but they’re nowhere to be found, the house is either empty or squatters are living there. They’ve kept the spare set of keys, know your address from when you filled out the log book retainer, and have driven off with it in the night. By the time you’ve noticed it’s gone it’s probably on a ferry to Calais. So make sure you have both keys when you purchase the car, as all modern cars have electronic management systems, and you have to show evidence to a dealership (log book, passport and utility bill) for spare keys, which are coded to the car.

  I’ve made millions of mistakes in my life, but when it comes to buying a second-hand car I’m very, very thorough, as there’s just no point taking risks. In fact half the dealerships in London won’t deal with me, and if they do it’s, ‘Bernie, take the car away, tell me what needs doing and deduct it from the price, but for God’s sake don’t bring the bloody thing back again!’

  They know if there’s a problem with the car I will find it, and they don’t even argue with me because they know that they’re selling cars every day with minor faults that aren’t picked up. The problem is people buy on impulse and they don’t want to see the faults on a car, they don’t wanna know. So if you come to me with a problematic car you’ve only bought a few weeks ago don’t expect any sympathy from me, you’ve obviously not done your homework!

  But follow my guidelines and tips and you’ll give yourself the best chance of getting a good deal and a reliable, safe car.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BERNIE’S GUIDE TO CAR SCAMS

  I am ashamed to say that in this day and age there are so many garages out there that aren’t kosher. I’d say about one in four is probably not as honest as it should be. This is because either money is so tight that they’ve got to screw people over to make a decent living or they’re just run by just the type of person who is greedy and doesn’t care about screwing people over.

  In north-west London for every twenty garages I could show you eighteen that would fuck you up the arse before you’ve even left the yard and they’d laugh at your back, they don’t give a fuck. If you try to come back and complain they’ve got dogs and they’ll see you off the premises. There’s no licensing, you see. So, if you’ve just moved to an area, how do you know what’s a good garage?

  First thing to do is make friends with people. Ask around, find out which garages are popular, who do people recommend, are there any positive stories or bad experiences? Just check before you ask that they have no association with the garage. It’s very important when you go into an independent garage to ask if they work to the guidelines of Trading Standards. That way you are protected. Also ask if they are members of any professional bodies like the Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMIF), the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) etc.

  Should you have a bad time with a garage – for instance, if they don’t do something properly and it needs to be put right – then you have some recourse. You’ll have to go through local Trading Standards but the RMIF and IMI have client helplines and they will act as arbitrator between you and the garage to put things right. If they’re not members of any association and don’t work to the guidelines of Trading Standards then walk away. If you’re not sure, then phone your local Trading Stan
dards and ask which garages they have listed as working to their guidelines.

  A nice smile and a cup of coffee in a nice palatial reception area doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good garage or that your car is going to be looked after. Always ask questions, and if something doesn’t sound right then don’t be afraid to say, ‘No thanks, please put my car back together,’ and take it away.

  Don’t be duped by sponsored schemes where members are just those that choose to stock particular products. There are lots of membership schemes like this: you pay your money and you go on to their ‘trusted’ list – they don’t check to see if you’re any good or not. Blow it out your arse.

  So you’re driving down the road, thinking your car hasn’t been serviced for a while, and you see a sign saying ‘FREE tyre check, FREE clutch check, FREE brake check’. Well take it from someone who knows, there ain’t no such thing in life as a free meal. It’s just a way of getting you in, they’ll take the wheels of the car and they’ll tell you that you need new discs, new pads and whatever. If you decline to have it done you should not have to pay one penny, but don’t be surprised if you get an earful, first telling you how dangerous your car is, then they’ll get really angry when you walk out the door. If they do then you know they’re not an honest garage.

  An honest garage always puts the customer first and accepts it’s your decision. But these places, where they try to force you to part with money, are often only paid pennies; these poor buggers rely on commission from sales to make a decent living. But to my mind that’s no excuse – so beware. Don’t be hassled into something you’re not sure about.