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If you are about to finance a car in your own name as opposed to through a business, you will need to allow a little extra time between ordering, signing the finance agreement and collection/delivery of the new car. According to the new EU Consumer Credit Directive all agreements that fall within the terms of our own Consumer Credit Act must be given a 14 day cooling off period. In the past, if you signed the agreement on trade premises, for example at a dealership or the premises of a broker Read more »

If I was asked where would you least like to be in the UK, behind the wheel of your car at rush hour, my immediate answer would be in the centre of London. As I’m sure would be the answer given by most of my readers. But this isn’t the worst place to be, in fact according to Government figures it’s one of the best places to be, the worst being the West Midlands with 4 out of 5 commuters making their twice daily commute behind the wheel of a car. The national average is 10% less at 70%. The next Read more »

Volvo are about to move the breathalyzer onto another level. They currently have a system called the Alcoguard breathalyser whereby you have to blow into it and be below the legal limit before you are able to start the car. The new system relies upon the driver’s sweat to monitor the level of alcohol in the system. The newly developed system is still at an early stage but Chris Wailes of Volvo said that the new technology Read more »

I’m confused! It happens when you get older I’m told. Why am I confused? Well just as I started to get used to cars getting bigger, and not as a result of changing my glasses, manufacturers have started bringing out cars as big as a large shoe! Look at a new Clio – it’s about the same size as an old Megane. The VW Polo is easily as big as an early Golf and a Corsa has the size these days of an old Astra. As for Mini if, as I saw Read more »

It seems that every week I have something to say about tyres – and this week isn’t going to be any different. It would seem that there has been a growing trend towards the removal of a spare wheels from new cars, first of all replacing a full spare with a skinny emergency wheel and more recently with a puncture repair kit consisting of either a can of foam that you squirt into the tyre inflating it and sealing the Read more »

As the economy bumps along showing minimal signs of recovery the CVO Survey shows that large companies continue to actively use contract hire as its main method of financing its company cars whilst SME’s continue to blindly use cash, loans and overdrafts. Why should this be? I would suggest out of ignorance. Far too little is understood about leasing for SME’s to make a considered choice so they end up Read more »

If you are a regular reader of my articles and newsletter you will know how I bang on about the benefits of the Electronic Safety Control (ESC or also called ESP). Car testers EuroNCAP say that all cars should be fitted with ESC now without waiting till they are legally obliged to do so. Only 60% of new cars are fitted with ESC compared to 99% in Sweden, 80% in Germany and 72% in Spain. If ESC isn’t fitted as standard on Read more »

Whilst I’ve been warning about long lead times for months now the industry has warned those that lease their cars to make arrangements earlier to replace their cars as some leasing companies are proving to be very inflexible with regard to lease extensions unless you are replacing your current car with another of the same make, especially where a captive funder has been used. Worst at the moment are VW Read more »

We recently had the Mercedes C63 AMG on offer. If you had ordered a car, which is partly hand built, it would have taken Mercedes about 10 weeks to get the car built and delivered to you. But in one of the worst examples of long delivery of a standard car one dealer recently quoted 20 weeks to deliver a standard VW Polo. This is partly because this particular dealer had used up his allocation but even dealers with Read more »

Warnings have been issued regarding the screen resolution of your computer. Well not exactly the resolution itself but the affect that your screen resolution can have on the colour options shown on the manufacturer web sites. Customers, ordering new cars, have been choosing colours from the car manufacturer’s website only to be totally disappointed when the car has turned up looking several shades away from Read more »