buying first car...advice

jobless

hi,

i'm in the process of buying my first car...basically i'm looking for some advice...

am i better off buying from a dealer or looking in te buy and sell, the buy and sell has a lot of good bargins compared to similar cars on dealer websites...

do you think its dodgy buying from adds in the papers such as this....or is ok once te car has a recent NCT.......any other pitfalls you could warn me of???

cheers

unkel

The NCT says nothing about the condition on the car really apart from the time you have before it needs to be tested again and that on the day the car passed, it was safe on the roads.

If you don't know too much about cars, you need to have a mechanic have a look at it when buying privately, because you always buy "as is". Buy from a dealer and you will get a warranty

What's your budget and what kinda car are you buying? It is much safer to buy a '00 micra with 25k miles from a lady who owned it from new and had it Nissan serviced every year than buying a '96 BMW 318 with 4 previous owners, advertised (!) as having 60k miles and without a service history

jobless

its about 4000-5000.....looking for something with a small engine....

Is there any way you can find out how many owners the car has had...?.....if its recently passed its nct then surely there cant be any mechanical problems, can there?

Gurgle

I'd advise going to the buy & sell.
Dealers will charge about an extra 20% for any car and they usually only give a 3 month warantee on cars over 5 years old. To me a 3 month warantee means they took it as a trade in and haven't even looked at it.

Find a mechanic who will come with you for a few quid to give it a look over.
Even if you buy a car with a fault in a private sale, the difference in cost will often cover repairing the problem.

The log sheet has the number of previous owners on it but if it's an import, its the number since it was first registered in Ireland.

And IMO, a recent NCT is a very good sign that there is nothing seriously wrong with either the engine or the bodywork. Ask for the actual report not just the cert, this tells you how close the car came to failing on emissions, brakes, suspension etc. It will also mention at the bottom anything that they noticed when examining it that could cause future problems.

trotter_inc

yeah - def go for the buy and sell - I got a great deal on my Mitsubishi Colt.

just make sure you get a mechanic to give it a quick look over before you buy it

make sure you get all the manuals and proper docs with it too.

good luck!

The Clown Man

An AA moblie engineer will sometimes oblige for around €50 and call out to wherever you are to have a good look at the car. Some chancers will have been in contact with the local garages - especially if the chancer is a mechanic himself and knows them all well. (I came across this in Lucan before.)

Don't think they release numbers for this purpose but the emergency calls helpline is a good place to start...