Buying A Used Car In Ireland

What Is The Best Car?

Who Should I Buy From?

There Are Five Main Options:

• Main Dealer

  This is where the best cars can be found and the best guarantee. 99% pass with no faults.

• SIMI Dealer

  This is the next best to buy from. Good cars, good guarantee. As with option one you get what you pay for, but usually at double the price you would pay if you were to buy the same car privately. 90% pass with no faults.

• Car Sales

  Most of the cars sold in sales lots are bought from main dealers. Although they are main dealer rejects they can be perfectly good cars with lots of life left in them. The costs here are less than the main dealer, but well above the cost of a private sale. Car sales lots are roughly divided into two categories. These are car sales with workshops and car sales without workshops and imported car sales with and without workshops. Of these the best option is car sales with workshop because the mechanics check the cars and advise what is needed to maintain the cars. With car sales only the salesman decides what has to be done and he is not as knowledgable as a mechanic and is motivated by profit. A three month guarantee is mandatory with an option to extend. 70% pass with no faults.

• Car Dealer From Home

  Many used car delaers sell from home. These cars are generally the rejects from the used car sales or main dealers or perhaps the auctions. These can be perfectly good cars and very often a better choice than the used car sales as they have to try harder and only select the best. No guarantee is given with these cars. 70% pass with no faults.

• Private Seller

  Used cars are sold for a variety of reasons, but mostly for some kind of change or upgrade. Private sellers are not usually mechanics and as such cannot really say if the car is good or not. The biggest issue with buying private is the practise of “clocking”.More than 50% of private sales are clocked or have serious issues. This pushes the price of private sales way below market value because buyers think that all private sales are clocked or defective. This is not true of course and it’s just a matter of sorting the good from the bad – a task that is beyond the abilities of most car buyers. The result is that very good cars only make the same price as very bad cars. I know this because I see it every day. Good or bad the cars always sell, so who buys the bad ones? As you are reading this it’s probably not you. The type of person that buys the bad cars is somebody who thinks he knows what he is talking about because he can drive. I see examples of people buying good used cars for half the price of buying from a garage. I recently inspected a Renault Grand Scenic 7 seat diesel in excellent condition for €2900 privately and and identical year and mileage car in excellent condition at a car sales lot for €5995. Or bmw 320d 2005 low miles full service history bought privately for 2400 similar car in a garage 4995 Work it out for yourself. You could buy two cars and have one spare for the same money .

• Auction

  Probably the worst place to buy a used car is the auction. Auctions are where reject cars are sold and they are usually attended by very expert car dealers who can expertly pick out the best cars. The ordinary “expert” car driver does not stand a chance against the real experts. Bargains can be had, but generally prices are above that of a private sale.