The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

On my soon to be released blog I talk about the way that the media misleads the public about, amongst other things, car finance. For some reason when it comes to anything vehicle related they put out reports that are poorly researched then draw conclusions that are either ill informed or simply inaccurate. This week we saw The Telegraph with headline news about the way that motorists are conned into buying ex rental cars, believing them to be proper single owner cars because the cars have been registered to a company that doesn’t give away the fact that the cars have been used for daily rental. Duh, this has been going on for years. I was General manager in a company with 500 vehicles years ago and every car was registered to our transport manager, and that was in the 80’s so why it should be hitting headlines now I really don’t know. In those days if the car wasn’t run in properly you could virtually throw the car away after 20,000 miles especially if you missed the first oil change and drove around with little bits of the engine swirling around in the oil for 5,000 miles, when the car was first serviced, causing untold damage. These days with cars that virtually need no ‘running in’ it is less likely that the car is any worse at 5,000 miles, the time when most rental cars are sold, than a car with one owner. In fact if you get a low mileage diesel owned by a single, little old lady, what many would consider to be the perfect buy, walk away, there is a fairly good chance that you will need to replace the particulate filter. Of course, as with most stories in the press, they have totally missed the root problem and that is the selling of cars on the black market to car supermarkets that could be sub spec. Full details are in my book, ‘An Insider Guide To Car Finance’. Cars that are destined to go to daily rental companies, with discounts and bonuses of up to 50%, are sold to wholesalers by the daily rental companies without even seeing them, in return for a fee. These batches of cars are split down to say batches of 10 and sold to the car supermarkets, brokers and leasing firms. However, in order to use up stocks the manufacturer may make a car that has a different, lower grade trim or parts missing like fog lights and different wheels, steel wheels fitted instead of alloys. Of course the full spec. badge is fitted on the back of the car but the innocent buyer, unless he checks the spec of the car against the manufacturer’s brochure, will never know. Lots more about this in my book. But this is the real con, not the fact that buyers are taking cars that have been used for daily rental. When you buy a used car from a dealer he may have bought the car from auction and may not know that the car is an ex rental car and to describe the car as having one previous owner is not a lie. He would only lie, as was suggested by the article, if he said the car had one previous driver but he is responsible for the condition and providing an accurate description which are covered by your legal rights. It is more of a risk buying a new car from a supermarket or broker as a new, full spec, car that was in fact cobbled together for the daily rental market with the rental companies being given a little more discount. Checkout my book. By Graham Hill