Spares or repair

 I’ve covered this subject before but, following online arguments, I’ll revisit it again. Recently there was a smartlooking Ford Granada 2.0 for sale for £1500 at a dealer. The advert said the car was for spares or repair, which everyone online (all being experts in secondhand car values, of course) said was a joke. I can see vaguely where they were coming from – especially when scrap is 100 guinea per tonne.

However, the only honest way you can retail such a vehicle these days, assuming you are not a classic car outfit, is to advertise the car as spares or repair, or as I do, describing it as ‘for parts’. That’s because no matter how much the customer tries to convince you they are buying it as a classic project or as something a bit different to smoke around in, you simply cannot believe they won’t come back for warranty.

Remember my mantra; all buyers are liars. They will haunt you, demanding a gold-plated warranty repair or their money back after three months of play.

Granadas were a bit of a gamble when they were current; galloping rot, snapping timing belts, shattering flywheels to name just a few issues. I never much cared for them for this reason. I’d hate to remotely retail a 27-year-old one now and, by implication, give a three-month no-quibble warranty.

So when presented with such a car as a swopper, you can either make the part-ex price pennies, as you’ll have to ‘block’ it – to be rid of it cleanly – in which case you get pennies back for it. Or offer a fair price with a view of selling it on to an ‘enthusiast’.

To sell it on, without any comeback, you cannot sell it as a ‘part-ex to clear’ or anything similar such as ‘trade-in’ or ‘sold as seen’. Only if you are selling a car to a registered motor trader can you do that. Sell such a car to a member of the public and you are retailing it, no two ways about it – the customer cannot sign their rights away.

To sell a car as spares or repair to a member of the public, you cannot allow it to be driven off the forecourt. That is because you are implicitly implying in the advert it has got serious issues, deeming it unroadworthy. It must be uplifted and delivered. Allow it to be driven away and you’ve just retailed it.

Selling it as a collection of parts is slightly different. You change the taxation of the car on the invoice. Instead of selling for £1500 including VAT (all used cars have VAT), you sell it for £1250 + VAT as you would a spare part. I’m happy to do that and allow the customer to inspect it, test-drive it and take it away, recommending an uplift. By amending the invoice, the customer cannot go to trading standards or demand a refund after three months of drifting it around an industrial estate.

Doing it this way allows you to give older or more interesting part-exchanges a second lease of life. It allows enthusiasts to have a good look over it and save a fortune compared to a classic car auction, where you buy blind and pay a premium. And it legally lets you off the hook selling such antiques.