Dealer’s Diary

Bad news for bangernomics: scrap metal is priced at around £150 per tonne at the time of writing. This means the temptation to turn around a bin-end swapper is significantly reduced.

Take the tidy Fiat Punto Mk2 we reluctantly scrapped the other week. It needed a clutch, a valet, a service and an MOT to make it ready to retail. Note the key word in that sentence: retail.

Technically it owed us £100. The MOT costs £35, a valet is £15 and you’ll pay £200 for a clutch (it’s a catapult job) and service. We’d have advertised the car for £600£750 depending on final costs. Chances are we’d have settled for a monkey.

Projects like these we used to turn around for fun on a Saturday. We’d have a steady stream of customers who needed something for the folding in their skyrocket. No retail therapy, just a cheap and cheerful car to tide them over. It was essentially disposable motoring – they wouldn’t come crying to us at the sign of an EML light on a cold morning. As long as the car started, steered and stopped, that was enough.

But after the tale of woe I heard from a trader with a similar Punto, we’ve decided that the social responsibility of near-end-of-life recycling is not worth it. Over a cup of tea he told me about the smart-looking Punto he’d knocked-out for £600. Within a fortnight the customer complained that the heater was broken. It wouldn’t blow – a common enough issue. So as soon as the part arrived he went around to her house and fixed it on the spot. Aside from his time and petrol, the job cost £22. Head upside down and under the dash, a bit of dizziness and the job was done. If that was a franchised dealer repair, you’d be waiting weeks and be charged hundreds for the privilege.

A week later, the customer was back on the phone. The brake lights had blown and she was not happy. Dead simple, dead cheap: the filament was shot and not the high-level lamps. Two new bulbs would cost £1 from anywhere on the High Street, then two nylon nuts undone by hand to remove the cluster and you’d be roadworthy again. The customer, however, was now questioning the validity of the MOT.

Now we know it’s common for one bulb to take the other out when they blow. We also know that a bulb can blow at any time. But this customer knew her rights and wanted her money back as the car was clearly a wrong ’un.

Social media, the rights of the consumer, the argie-bargie grief, the mobile phone calls and texts. The visa card company taking the funds back (we’re a cashless society these days, in case you’d not noticed). All these things go through your mind when the customer kicks off. So you roll over and give them their money back.

For these reasons, we did a James Brown on an otherwise sound small car. That is to say we took it to the bridge.

‘We reluctantly scrapped the tidy Fiat Punto Mk2’