You need the knowledge

▶ If there’s one thing that one really needs to trade profitably these days, it’s a first-rate knowledge of the service intervals and routine replacement requirements for the cars you trade in. While service intervals have, as we all know, generally got longer with time, this does sometimes mean that at a particular mileage, they’ll be a lot of jobs that are due. If this service hasn’t been done, you need to before selling the car, even though it can make a massive dent in already-squeezed profit margins.

It’s also far from unknown for astute fleet managers and private owners to time a vehicle’s disposal to just before a major service is due, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. Here’s an example from a few years back; I bought an ex-police Volvo V70 with 149,800 miles on the clock. It was a Thames Valley car and, as usual with police cars managed by the Chiltern Transport Consortium – a combined police car management service comprising Thames Valley, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and the Civil Nuclear Police – it came with a super service history showing on-the-nail servicing up to 140k. So far so good…

But on that particular model, the 150k service is a real biggy – the full all-filter service plus brake fluid change and, most significantly, a timing belt. That’s a good £3-400 worth, even at trade-mates rate. More in hope than expectation, I asked the police if, by any chance, the belt had been done. They were totally honest and up front – it hadn’t because they had sold the car to avoid paying for it on a car that was coming up to disposal anyway.

I’ve no complaint about that; in fact, it shows a commendably frugal use of public funds. I couldn’t, though, sell it like that as it would have put most buyers right off, and had a buyer bought the car and not done the belt – and it had subsequently failed – I would, quite rightly, have been held responsible.

So, the only option was to bite the bullet, accept that the profit on this one was going to be down on expectations, get the work done and try to claw back some of the cost on the basis that having just had the big service, this particular car wouldn’t need another anytime soon.

Definitely worth checking before buying a car that you’re not familiar with.

Make sure you know when potentially major jobs like a timing belt are due on a car you’re buying – it may be on the market because it’s due – and the owner knows that it’s a big job!