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What happens to the laws being introduced by the EU after Prime Minister May has started the Brexit process by enacting Article 50? Over the next couple of years, called the transition period, the EU will impose laws on all member countries but where does it leave us as we will still be part of the EU for two years after Article 50 is passed through parliament?

Take the European Court of Justice ruling in the Vnuk case. A Slovakian man was injured when a tractor reversed into a ladder that Mr Vnuk was on. Insurers refused to pay up as the accident happened on private land so it was up to Mr Vnuk to sue the driver privately for his injuries.

His claim went through the courts and failed at eac level until it was referred to the European Court of Justice. The European Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that it was compulsory for all vehicles to have insurance, whether on the road or not, and whether used as a vehicle or machine, which should have therefore protected Mr Vnuk.

The EU’s Motor Insurance Directive states that vehicles such as lawnmowers, disability scooters and golf buggies should all carry insurance, much to the annoyance of our own insurance industry. The Government is, as a result, consulting about changes to the Road Traffic Act in order to meet the EU regulations.

Having expressed concerns regarding the cost of conforming to the EU regulations it would seem that as we are expecting to be outside the EU when the changes have been formalised the lawmakers have introduced a ‘sunset’ clause which means that changes to our current laws, as a result of this directive, can be immediately ditched the minute we Brexit. What a waste of time and money.

The question is how many more regulations will be introduced with ‘sunset’ clauses incorporated into the UK laws before we fully exit the EU? And where do we stand when European workers come into the UK to work on farms and experience similar accidents, will we need regulations to cover UK workers and others to cover EU workers and will UK workers be happy to be refused the same protection as those working in EU countries? And so my concerns about the full implications of Brexit continue. By Graham Hill

There are a great number of misunderstandings when it comes to resolving problems with garages and dealerships. You can avoid the costs of a court case by turning to an Alternative Dispute Resolution company, recommended by the Government as a way to stop courts from getting clogged up.

If you have a dispute with a dealer that you cannot resolve between yourselves you can refer your complaint to an ADR company. In fact the dealer must suggest an ADR company if they are part of a trade body. If they aren’t part of a trade body the dealer must point you in the direction of ADR but they do not have to adhere to the recommendations of the ADR company, which kinda makes the whole process a bit of a nonsense.

If they are part of a trade body the dealer must be signed up to a code of practice against which their performance is judged. I have my reservations regarding this practice, especially as the courts themselves can encourage you to go through a court appointed ADR company in order to avoid taking up court time and the possibility of you carrying the costs if your court case fails.

I just feel that a court appointed ADR service would carry more weight than an independent working with the dealership’s trade body. Time will tell if my reservations were justified. By Graham Hill

One of the great things about new cars is the quietness of them. Improved car design reduces wind resistance and wind noise. Drive a diesel car and you could be mistaken into believing that diesel engines no longer rattle, they do, but because the soundproofing is of such a high standard now, you can hardly hear the engine from inside the car.

Tyre compounds and new suspension systems reduce road noise dramatically and of course hybrids and full electric vehicles are as quiet as a mouse when operating in electric mode. The problem is that many of the changes have come about very quickly so when a driver moves from a 3 year old car to a new car the noise level drops so significantly that he or she loses all perception of speed.

The main indicators such as engine noise, road and wind noise have been all but eliminated in some cars so the fear of many safety experts is that we will see a significant increase in accidents and/or speeding tickets as a result of speeding. Having read about the latest Tesla challenging Faraday Future FF91 capable of developing over 1000 bhp out of its electric engine taking it from 0 – 60 in 2.39 seconds without making a noise, I’m very worried.

Even petrol and diesel engine’d cars pose a threat to safety. So if I or anyone else has convinced you to ditch your 5 year old car for a brand new model make sure that you acclimatise yourself to the noise levels before you start ‘opening her up’ on an A road or motorway. You don’t want to be writing your new car and/or you off in the first few weeks of taking delivery! By Graham Hill

Over the near 30 years that I have been in this industry I have seen and done many things, seen some of the most crooked activities carried out by dealers, brokers and car supermarkets, amongst others, as well as fraudulent attempts to acquire cars by crooked customers.

For many years I was an expert witness for the Crown Prosecution Service in cases of vehicle and asset finance fraud so I’ve seen most things crooked that go on in the automotive industry, some of them revolving around so called pre-registered cars and ex demonstrators.

Whilst I won’t bore you with all the fraudulent things I’ve witnessed, you’ll have to buy my upcoming book for that, I’ll share a couple of things with you as I’ve had a couple of potential clients who have recently avoided contract hiring a new car in favour of a so called pre-registered car or an ex demonstrator on HP or PCP.

First of all I should point out that it is possible to get a good deal on an ex demonstrator but it’s the luck of the draw and I’ll explain why. But let’s start with ‘pre-registered’ cars. First of all let’s be quite clear, there is no such thing as a pre-registered car in the way that it is advertised by dealers. Even the head of CAP HPI refers to pre-registered cars when referring to cars that are registered then sold when they include huge discounts. The pre-registering of highly discounted cars is an illegal act made illegal by Stephen Byers when he was Labour Trade Secretary in 2000.

He was concerned that the practice carried out by manufacturers who forced their franchised dealers to buy cars, albeit at heavily discounted prices, was skewing the new car registration figures. So as part of his Supply of New Cars Order 2000 it was made illegal to pre-register cars, here is the excerpt:

This order was made under the monopoly provisions of the Fair Trading Act 1973. It prevents new car suppliers from:

• discriminating on price between dealers and fleet buyers
• providing bonuses and discounts to dealers on pre-registered cars
• imposing on dealers restrictions on price advertising

Now let me be clear, dealers can pre-register cars but not as a result of increased incentives applied by the manufacturer on individual cars. However, some dealers and manufacturers have found a way around this. As an incentive and across the board, a dealer will be set a sales target for the month/quarter/year and he will be paid a Volume Related Bonus (VRB) by the manufacturer if he can achieve the target.

This money is paid retrospectively on all cars sold during the month, quarter or year. As the bonus is not specifically on the ‘pre-registered’ cars they kind of get around the regulations. As an example let’s say the dealer is offered a VRB of £2,000 per car provided he hits his target of 100 cars for the month. With a few days to go he has sold 90 cars and he is aware that if he doesn’t sell the 100 he will lose £200,000 VRB.

So in order to hit his target he pre-registers the 10 cars in the name of the dealership and pays his normal purchase price for the cars – keeps him onside with the Supply of New Car Order. He now factors in the £2,000 per car that he will receive as additional discount then adds in the normal discount that he would include in the deal making the car a cheap car.

I’ve heard of some dealers preregistering cars and selling them through auction just to recover a reasonable proportion of the money spent out rather than have the cars sitting on their forecourt. Whilst the above may sound like pre-registered cars are a great idea there are other, far more shady, methods used to heavily discount cars and sell as new cars even though they have already been registered. Some, not all, car supermarkets have been known to use this method as well as some dealers.

The cars are diverted from where they were intended – daily rental companies, driving schools or insurance company/bodyshop courtesy cars. When supplying cars to these companies the manufacturer uses part of his marketing budget to heavily discount cars that either get them seen on the road more or are driven by potential buyers. In my experience a daily rental company can buy cars at up to 45% off the list price with 20 – 25% being very common.

In order to get around the Supply of New Car Order dealers started to set up their own daily rental companies and bought their ‘pre-registered’ cars through the new operation at huge discounts then sell them on to buyers, having never put them out on hire, with just delivery miles on the clock, on big discounts as ‘pre-registered’. Nothing wrong with that. Of course the extra name in the log book will affect the resale value of the car – but only marginally. But this is where the 3 month rule comes in.

If you have ever bought a pre-reg. car you will sometimes be told that you won’t receive the V5 log book until after 3 months. This is because in order for a daily rental company to qualify for the extra discount they (normally) have to keep the car for a minimum of 3 months or say 5,000 miles, whichever comes first. Now if the manufacturer wants to carry out an audit the dealer needs to be able to show the auditor that he still has the car.

Whilst he may argue that the car is out on hire, so can’t be inspected, he can produce the copy of the V5, supposedly proving that he still has the car, and everyone is happy. Again, whilst this is shady, is this something that a buyer should worry about? There are also some dealers who will keep the cars in stock for 3 months to avoid this situation. But here’s the crunch. Remember that I said these cars were intended for daily rental companies and they are then supposed to be sold as used cars after 3 months?

Well, many years ago I became involved in this process. Before realising exactly what was going on, I had been arranging stocking finance for wholesalers who would arrange to buy batches of brand new cars from daily rental companies and sell on to car supermarkets for a small profit, similar procedure to the operation following the Stephen Byers order.

This allowed the car supermarkets to sell new cars at less than main dealers could buy them for. The daily rental company would order say 100 cars that would be funded by the wholesaler. The cars would be diverted, at the time of delivery, to the wholesaler who would pay the daily rental company £100 per car for their trouble – they never actually saw the cars.

However, as the cars were intended for daily rental I had calls from dealers, and one comes to mind, who would say that the manufacturer had produced a batch of cars using up old stock of parts, for sale to daily rental companies. In this particular case the interior trim was lower grade, items were missing in the car such as cup holders and front fog lights were missing, all part of the standard spec. of the model badge on the back of the car.

In return the dealer knocked off £250 per car. The wholesaler agreed but do you think he explained this to the supermarkets who were selling these cars as brand new but pre-registered cars? Of course not! It would be fine to sell the cars in their sub spec. condition to the daily rental company who were supposed to rent them out.

A customer is hardly likely to refuse a rental car because the interior trim didn’t match the manufacturer’s brochure for the model he was hiring. And of course they were to be sold as used cars at the end of the 3 months or when they had covered 5,000 miles so the buyer would be buying not a new car but a used car as seen.

There is another way that you can achieve a big discount on a ‘pre-registered’ car. When there is a new model coming out or a facelift on the current model the dealers need to make way for the new model and get rid of the old model cars so he practically sells them at cost but they don’t always tell you about the new model.

I’ve also heard of cars turning up at the customer’s house only to find that he has bought or leased an old model car when he thought he was buying the new model. So check the spec. very carefully if you are going to buy a pre-registered car – it may not turn out to be what you thought you were buying. Oh and some of the cheap lease deals are cars as illustrated above so make sure that you check the spec. meticulously.

You sometimes get what you pay for. Moving on to ex-demonstrators. There are two points to be made here. First is the discount. Demonstrators are taken by dealers not just to demonstrate the basic car. They will often have a mass of options fitted, clearly so that they can be demonstrated to potential customers.

So when they tell you that they will knock 8 grand off the list price of the car that’s the list price including the options that may still make this used car, having had multiple drivers, more expensive than the brand new car with the standard spec. which is what you were originally looking for.

Their trick is to compare the cost of the demo with the full list price of the new standard car – but you’d not have paid full list on the new car in the first place. Balance up the desire of the options and the fact that the car is used against a new car without the options and with a discount. Secondly we have perception.

When you call into a dealership and take a demonstrator out with a nice salesman beside you, toodling along at 30 mph you believe that this is the way that all ex-demonstrators have been treated. Well, let me correct that perception. Many years ago in industry as general manager in one of the UK’s most successful PLC’s, I had a fleet department report into me, responsible for around 700 vehicles.

With a fleet that size we were signed into the manufacturers’ demonstrator programmes which meant that every day transporters of brand new cars would turn up, with virtually every make of car on board, that we would have on loan for anything up to 3 months, often 2-4 weeks. I would allow our sales and service staff to use these cars. As they weren’t their own company car they would proceed to ‘burn rubber’ out of our depot and treat the cars like rallycross cars till they were returned.

As we didn’t own the cars I wasn’t worried but at that point I thought to myself I will never ever buy an ex demonstrator as I know how many of them are treated. Oh and often dealer sales staff get to use the demonstrators for personal use and I’ve seen the way they drive them away from the dealership so I strongly recommend that you give ex-demonstrators a very wide berth or you may end up spending more time waiting for repairs to be carried out than actually driving the car! By Graham Hill

Are electric cars the way forward? Clearly as far as the environment is concerned of course it is so why are many fleets taking them off their options list and consumers becoming reluctant to buy or lease them? Cost has always been a problem but the costs have been dropping whilst driving ranges increase.

So why are people not only refusing to take electric vehicles but also the plug in hybrids? The answer according to Business Car is charging points. There is still a grave lack of charging points but not only that, early points need to be replaced as many are no longer working and those that are, are simply inefficient or have the wrong connection points fitted.

The Government which was fairly and squarely behind this project has let the industry down according to experts, something that Transport Minister, John Hayes is well aware of. One of the issues that needs to be addressed is the mapping of charge point locations that was to be undertaken by Government. Not only the location but also which charge points were most suitable for which car.

In a survey it was found that only 25% of fleets offered a plug in model to its drivers whilst 69% of drivers said that they would be happy to drive an electric car. John Hayes has agreed to take the issues on board and look into the infrastructure as this is clearly a barrier to EV expansion.

He is also looking into driver education although I would suggest that this isn’t needed as drivers are very much in favour of electric vehicles. So if you are looking into an electric vehicle at the moment it may be worth some extra investigation before taking the plunge. By Graham Hill

Technology is advancing at an amazing rate in cars to the point where many new and used car drivers are quite oblivious to some of the latest features fitted to their cars. It is bad enough getting to find out what is fitted to your car when it is new but when you buy a used car from a used car lot the chances are that the dealer hasn’t a clue so you’ve no chance.

However, as always Hill is here to help so here is a breakdown of some of the latest features and what they do: 360 Degree Cameras: Rear parking cameras have been with us for about 15 years but the low cost of cameras and new technology enables you to have an all round view of the car and in some cases an image of your car from a position above. This technology can help with parking, especially into car park bays with cars either side.

However, what we need is continual surveillance and a voice that tells anyone, in no uncertain terms to F*** Off if they are about to key the side of your car and inform them that they have been photographed – something I could have done with a year ago. Bastards!

Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB): This uses sensors to check to see if you are getting too close to an obstacle when driving. If, given your speed, you are getting too close a visual and audible warning is given. Get too close, where the system senses an accident is about to happen, and the brakes are applied with sufficient force to enable you to stop before impact. Euro NCAP safety tests favour cars with this feature fitted as it is believed to prevent 38% of rear end crashes.

Lane Departure Warning: Does what it says, if it feels that the driver is drifting across the lane markings the system will alert the driver with either an audible and/or visual alert and in some cars a vibrating steering wheel (leave it). This feature is already standard on many new cars.

Traffic Jam Assistance: This uses AEB technology along with lane departure technology to keep you in the lane in slow moving traffic with little intervention by the driver.

Blind Spot Warning: this detects cars approaching either side of the car from behind using radar technology to detect cars approaching in your blind spot. It doesn’t do this every time a car is about to overtake or a bike undertake – that would be silly!  Only when it senses that you are attempting a lane change and senses an approaching vehicle will it sound an alarm or lights appear around the door mirror on the side that the vehicle is approaching. Automatic Main Beam: You can switch this on continuously but will only automatically activate when the light dictates. The system senses when you are approaching a car in front or a car is approaching you from the opposite direction and automatically dips the main beam. It can even detect cyclists approaching and also drops to dip beam in lit up areas. Some new LED units can now give the driver as much light in front even though the headlights are no longer dazzling approaching drivers. Clever!

Rear Collision Warnings: This clever system senses a fast approaching car from behind and immediately switches on the hazard warning lights to alert the driver of both vehicles. If the car continues to close fast the seatbelt pre-tensioners are applied and the brakes are also applied to reduce whiplash injury and attempt to stop the concertina effect.

Evasive Steering Assist: This system senses an approaching vehicle on a single carriageway and prevents the car from veering into its path. Some systems can sense a pedestrian walking into the path of the car and allows the car to gently swerve to miss the person then return to the normal driving line.

Rear Cross Traffic Alert: This is activated when reversing out of a parking space and can sense anyone else approaching, possibly also in reverse, and stops the car in order to prevent a collision. Some can also sense cyclists and pedestrians.

Speed Limit Detection: This picks up the speed limit from speed limit signs and adjusts the cruise control speed automatically. It can also place the speed limit on the screen if you are exceeding it and it will gradually adjust the adaptive cruise control speed down to within 5mph of the limit. So there you have it, some of the latest advances in technology, most of which is either available as an optional extra or fitted as standard on new cars. By Graham Hill

I recently heard at a Motor Industry conference, to the point of annoyance, about the continued move towards the totally connected car. Manufacturers seem obsessed with the collection of data for a number of reasons. Some data helps them with the design of future vehicles, collecting information such as true MPG, emissions, faults and systems failures.

This information along with other data/information relating to where the vehicle is during working hours, scheduling servicing, monitoring deliveries and customer calls, calculating running costs and evaluating efficiency can help larger company fleet managers. Personally, a driver could use data to challenge speeding fines, tickets collected by cloned cars and identify ‘cash for crash’ scams.

But this increase in data collection could have sinister implications. Especially as there seems to be no differentiation between the cars that are bought or leased by large fleets and those bought or leased by SME’s and consumers. Within the large organisations employee rights to privacy are laid out in their conditions of employment but what about consumers and SME’s running cars within their businesses?

I don’t recall any customer ever being asked to sign a release allowing manufacturers to collect data from the new cars they drive. And when does the transmission of data stop. If you buy a used car that is 2 or 3 years old does data collection continue. Also if you are connected to the Internet it would seem that not only Google, or whichever search engine you use, can collect search history, so can the manufacturers it would seem.

And if large companies can collect information about where their drivers have been or currently are located why can’t a crook with a bit of IT nous do the same to find out where you are before breaking into your house? Or if the vehicles are out on business a competitor could see where all your sales and delivery staff are and target the same clients. We are entering a dangerous world and one over which we are having less control.

Little did I know that when I explained that you should clear down your telephone contact list held in your car when you sell it or return it at the end of your lease, that so much more data was likely to be collected and passed on. And how do you clear that down and prevent future transmission? We need legislation to protect us and our businesses urgently, it is a big flaw to this whole Big Data tsunami! Oh and I don’t doubt that the private eyes out there preparing divorce cases are all over this like a rash!!! By Graham Hill

One of the most common questions I get asked is how to finance your leased car. You have a number of choices if you run your own business, less of a choice if you are employed and only have one option provided by the company – finance the vehicle yourself then recharge the company for your business mileage.

But for many of my clients it can be a dilema which the HMRC is about to complicate further if their proposed changes go ahead. We knew that they were looking into Salary Sacrifice schemes which can get very complicated because it allows employees to pay for their car out of gross income rather than what the rest of us do and pay out of income after tax and NI has been paid.

I wasn’t surprised when it was announced that the HMRC were looking into this as they not only miss out on employee tax and NI payments but also employer NI. However, because of the very complex recording and reporting of car usage it has only been viable for providers of salary sacrifice to make available to companies of over 100 employees. And with only 80 – 100,000 cars on such schemes it has not grabbed the attention of the guys in HMRC.

However, it now seems that the net is widening and the tax man is now looking at the way company owners, directors and employees finance their cars in an effort to raise more money. They have taken the view that the provision of a car allowance should be lumped into the investigation.

With the proposals potentially being included in the Autumn Statement 2016 we could see the new rules effective from April 2017 this is worrying for those receiving car allowances, especially if they have opted for an Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV). If they had opted for a company car they could end up paying less tax than taking a car allowance. Very complicated but worth discussing with your accountant before making the decision. Once they have completed the consultation and finalised the rules I will let you know. By Graham Hill

The reason to install a dash cam in your car was originally to avoid arguments over insurance claims following cash for crash claims. These claims come about following an incident whereby a driver swerves in front of you, brakes hard, giving you virtually no time to stop causing you to run into the back of their car.

The driver and the passengers of the car in front all claim for whiplash injuries whilst you lose all your no claims bonus. With dash cam evidence the police can carry out an investigation and often prosecute the driver of the car in front on a variety of charges.

However, whilst dash cams are one of the biggest selling gadgets right now and Citroen have started fitting them as standard in their latest C3 to combat cash for crash crime, there are other reasons why you should install dash cams. They are invaluable for general claims as insurance companies become increasingly lazy.

In a recent case I read about a young driver who was sitting stationery in a backed up queue on a roundabout, when another impatient driver decided to take a quick route then cut in modifying the front end of her car. She was clearly not at fault so she claimed through her insurer for the repairs only to find that the other driver had made a claim against her insurance company, not only for repairs but also, guess what? Yep, whiplash.

The advice from her insurance company was to accept liability as in court a judge would be unlikely to find in favour of a newly qualified driver having an accident on a roundabout. That is a disgrace. However, had the young driver, whose premium was already ridiculously high and set to go higher, had a dash cam fitted the case would have been open and shut.

So isn’t it about time that manufacturers followed Citroen’s lead and started to install cameras as standard into the back of the rear view mirrors to help drivers to keep on the road and minimise claims times and costs as well as help police investigating accidents? After market dash cams are unsightly with wires dangling which puts drivers off installing them but maybe if the insurance industry and car manufacturers got their heads together we could see an end to cash for crash, quicker claims turnarounds, a decrease in insurance premiums, less time spent by police investigating accidents and more prosecutions. GH climbs down off soapbox for a sit down and cup of tea! By Graham Hill

I’ve warned in the past about selling your car that has hands free Bluetooth fitted and the need to delete your stored telephone numbers, especially if you have stored sensitive numbers that you wouldn’t want others to know. Well the situation is getting worse now that ‘connected’ cars are now being sold on or part exchanged.

Some cars built over the last couple of years are capable of connection to mobile devices via apps which is great for the owner of the new car but it can lead to all sorts of problems when these connected cars are bought by used car buyers down the line.

Tim Church from Weston-Super-Mare found this out when he sold his Land Rover Discovery Sport only to find that sometime later he was still able to access the car’s InControl App via the app on his phone. From his app he could still see the location of the new owner as well as whether the car was locked or not.

The latest connected facilities can include pre-warming or cooling the car from your app, remotely unlocking the car, downloading music as well as knowing where the car has been and is currently located. When questioned by Auto Express Land Rover said that it was the responsibility of the previous owner to remove the vehicle from their account when they sell it. I’m sure this will be of great comfort to new owners of Land Rovers! By Graham Hill