As per my other recent threads I've been looking for a car. I have viewed several at various main dealers across several marques and have been quite disappointed with the quality of the cars. Many of them have had many marks and scratches even after the dealer has prepared them. I do appreciate they are not new cars and some marks are to be expected. But in years gone past I've managed to easily find some immaculate cars and I have kept them that way. I am very fussy about the condition of my cars and try to keep them so.
But it's been about 6 years since I last went shopping at an authorised dealer and in that time it seems the quality of the stock has deteriorated considerably. Last week a dealer called me to cancel a viewing because the clutch on the car (2 years old, 18k miles) was found to be faulty and they had to temporarily withdraw it from sale. I've walked away from several due to excessive marks. Today I viewed a car which had not yet been prepared. Due to a miscommunication by the dealer they allowed me to view a car which had just been part exchanged the day before and they had not yet prepared it for sale. The condition was shocking. Again the car was two years old but had several kerbed alloys, various marks on the bodywork, terrible scratches on the rear bumper (it needed respraying - that won't polish out) and the boot was not only covered in dog hair (which explains the bumper scratches) but old bits of stick the dog had chewed on.
I don't blame the dealers for this. They can only sell the stock which they receive. But it seems people nowadays just don't care about treating their new cars carefully. My 24 year old Corrado is in better shape than some of these two year old cars and my nine year old Golf was almost like new. The last time I traded a car in I washed it, polished it, waxed it and valeted the inside. The dealer was shocked by the condition (in a good way). I am always annoyed at small marks, keep my cars clean and drive sympathetically while they warm up.
Having though about this a while, and wondering why things seem to have deteriorated over the last six yeas since I was last looking, the glaring factor seems to be people leasing and buying on PCP. I guess that if they know they won't be keeping the car then they won't treat it with any care. They will just thrash it from cold, park carelessly, let their dog jump all over it with sharp claws and generally abuse it. After-all it's cheap finance and they can just move into another car in a few years.
Sorry, rant over
But it's been about 6 years since I last went shopping at an authorised dealer and in that time it seems the quality of the stock has deteriorated considerably. Last week a dealer called me to cancel a viewing because the clutch on the car (2 years old, 18k miles) was found to be faulty and they had to temporarily withdraw it from sale. I've walked away from several due to excessive marks. Today I viewed a car which had not yet been prepared. Due to a miscommunication by the dealer they allowed me to view a car which had just been part exchanged the day before and they had not yet prepared it for sale. The condition was shocking. Again the car was two years old but had several kerbed alloys, various marks on the bodywork, terrible scratches on the rear bumper (it needed respraying - that won't polish out) and the boot was not only covered in dog hair (which explains the bumper scratches) but old bits of stick the dog had chewed on.
I don't blame the dealers for this. They can only sell the stock which they receive. But it seems people nowadays just don't care about treating their new cars carefully. My 24 year old Corrado is in better shape than some of these two year old cars and my nine year old Golf was almost like new. The last time I traded a car in I washed it, polished it, waxed it and valeted the inside. The dealer was shocked by the condition (in a good way). I am always annoyed at small marks, keep my cars clean and drive sympathetically while they warm up.
Having though about this a while, and wondering why things seem to have deteriorated over the last six yeas since I was last looking, the glaring factor seems to be people leasing and buying on PCP. I guess that if they know they won't be keeping the car then they won't treat it with any care. They will just thrash it from cold, park carelessly, let their dog jump all over it with sharp claws and generally abuse it. After-all it's cheap finance and they can just move into another car in a few years.
Sorry, rant over