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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 »

As if by magic, after writing the earlier gadget of the week article, I immediately read about the car manufacturers up in arms because the EU has just added another item of safety technology to their growing list of compulsory fitments, you guessed it Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS). They feel it is unnecessary and adds around £250 to the cost of the car (methinks they should pop down to Maplins). Whilst the manufacturers argue the toss over whether this addition will actually save Read more »

Two brothers have finally been jailed after being found guilty of staging 93 smashes at Eden Point in Stockport in Cheshire. Is it me or don’t you think that a couple of alerts should have sprung up somewhere after half a dozen similar incidents happened at the same spot? Ninety bloody three – what was going on? The brothers, Rehan and Rezwan Javed ran North West Claims Centre in Burnley. They paid crooks £500 Read more »

According to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) around half of vans on UK roads fail spot safety checks suggesting that van fleets are wilfully disregarding mechanical defects and ignoring the need for regular maintenance checks. Their findings show that van fleet offences now exceed those of HGV’s and PSV’s. More than half of the 21,000 vans checked last year uncovered mechanical defects compared 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 »

The car and car finance industry is full of opinionated people who haven’t a clue as to what they are talking about. So called experts guess and make assumptions without any real knowledge on the subject. About now you will see national newspapers, radio and TV reporters telling you to shop around for finance before the launch of the new 60 registration, ignore dealer HP and find yourself a cheap personal loan, Read more »

Insurance premiums should start to fall soon as the Government introduces a tough new law next year to clamp down on the 1.5 million uninsured drivers. The legislation will put the onus on the registered keeper of the car to ensure that the vehicle is on cover. This will be monitored via a link between the Motor Insurance Database (MID) and the DVLA with the uninsured automatically fined £100. Andy Drane, 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’re an avid reader of my newsletter and blog you will have read that you no longer need to have your car serviced by a main dealer in order to maintain your warranty. The rules that were relaxed several years ago that prevented you from having your car serviced wherever you wanted are known as the EU Block Exemption Rules. These rules have just been reviewed again and the rules pretty much left as they Read more »