Cartell showing erratic change of ownership

cianclarke

Hi all - I'm about to buy a new car, which has a full service history up to 64k mls with it's original BMW garage, and since then nothing, and the clock reads 94k mls. I have no reason to suspect foul play here, all seems fine, and the BMW service history was verified by the garage.
I had a cartell.ie report done, which showed no major discrepencies, however there was a somewhat erratic change of ownership history. The car changed owners at some stage in 2006, makes sense. The car then changed owners on both the 10th and 16th of April 2008.
The original owner claims he has had the car for two years.
Obviously something isn't adding up, and it's quite possible the car went from his name to his spouses name or the likes, but why two change of owners last month, within a week of one another. Is this cartell service completely accurate, or are there some irregularities?
Is there any other way of verifying this, and perhaps find out who the owner changes were last month?


(Less important sidenote- anything to watch for in a BMW 520, E39??)
Cheers.

mickdw

Thats just garages trading the car around. I didnt know until lately that trade sales were actually recorded like this. These owners wont appear on the log book number of owners though so sounds perfectly genuine

Edit. Sorry above is crap. read it wrong, see post below

cianclarke

Thanks for the reply, didn't know garages did this.
Alas, it's a private trade, no dealer involved!!

Tipsy Mac

As far as I know garages don't put their name on any cars except demo models so it shouldn't show up as an owner even if they sell a traded in car to another dealer. I'd take what it says in the log book as number of previous owners.

mickdw

Sorry didnt read that it changed owners while the guy claimed to own it. thats odd. Sounds like he is a trader. Have a look at the logbook for evidence and

tipsy mac,

What I said above: traders not listed as an owner on logbook but they seem to appear on cartell records. Perhaps something to do with revenue and vehicle registration people to keep track on trading. I know this as sister recenty bought car from garage with 1 previous owner however it was recorded as having changed hands twice in weeks before she viewed it according to cartell.ie. Anyway, registration people in shannon confirmed that it was traders buying and selling and when logbook arrived, Only one owner recorded.

Tipsy Mac

Yes I kind of ready your post abit too quick earlier

mickdw

Tipsy Mac wrote: »

Yes I kind of ready your post abit too quick earlier

I never do things like that

cianclarke

Ok, thanks for the replies!
I got the impression that he kept it with about 2years, and he was adamant that it was a family car, and he wasn't a small time dealer at all... Hmm! Thanks again

cianclarke

Since googling his mobile number, I've discovered he's bought and sold a few bits and pieces recently - so a bit of a wheeler dealer, even though he told me he was a private individual and this was his family car with the past two years. That, along with the lack of service history makes me think the car is very very likely to be clocked.
Why does Ireland have so many bloody crooks, starting to get quite annoyed! :mad:

T J Hooker

Thats quite a jump in conclusions.....
He told you it was his family car for two years but after googling his number you find he has sold a few cars here and there, so now the BMW is clocked and he is a crook?

Did you think to ask him for further information about the cartell report you aquired before this assumption?

cianclarke

The car tell report tells me he transferred this car into his own name last month, just after he sold his last car on carzone.
The clocked part is a bit of an assumption yes, but if he's dishonest about the car's ownership history what's to say the mileage is legit.
I've become incredibly cautious ever since the last time I went to buy a car, two out of the three cars I looked at turned out to be clocked, one by 200k...
He's stopped answering his phone over the weekend anyway, so methinks i'll have to let this one go..

Eoin

T J Hooker wrote: »

Thats quite a jump in conclusions.....
He told you it was his family car for two years but after googling his number you find he has sold a few cars here and there, so now the BMW is clocked and he is a crook?

Did you think to ask him for further information about the cartell report you aquired before this assumption?

It may be a bit of a jump, but with the way the car sales are at the moment, there's absolutely no reason to buy a car that you're not 100% comfortable with if you're a cash buyer. The lack of service history would be enough to put me off.

cianclarke wrote:

(Less important sidenote- anything to watch for in a BMW 520, E39??)

Which one? There's a 2 litre and a 2.2 litre version. The 2 litre may not be too quick.

cianclarke

The 2 litre, yeah. Coming from a 1.6 Passat, it's plenty quick!
But yeah, a buyers market at the moment - and I'm too wary of this one now..

Eoin

Then shop around! If you can take the time to go to the UK, you can get some serious bargains. You can do 90% of the research over the phone and internet, and just spend one day going over and back, and then whatever time it takes to get to the VRT office. The e39 is a cracking car. I just got a 2000 one last week, and am thrilled with it.