Right, some of you are going to shout at me now for being an impatient muppet (to put it mildly). I looked at that car and HPI checked it while I was at another dealer who was suspicious of the mileage. There was no outstanding finance on it, but it was declared cat d after an accident.
The car, however, had been repaired as if it was new. The door was resprayed but you can't tell. There are no dents in the car at all and the bodywork was tiptop. Under the boot was clean as can be and looked like it only did 20k miles. Inside was very very clean. The leather interior had no dents in it, the carpet looked new. Steering wheel, gear stick and pedals had no wear on them.
Starting up the car, it sounded funny but my dad said that's just because it was cold. Once it was warmed up, the engine sort of got quieter and lower pitched and sounded normal. Started first time, drove like a car, handled like a car, stopped like car. Didn't feel anything wrong there.
After we viewed that car I was very happy with it, but tried to play it cool and said we were going to view another car. We went to a dealer to look at this -
http://search.autotrader.co.uk/es-u...cleYearOfManufacture=2004&vehicleRegLetter=54
We got to a showroom and there seemed like hundreds of cars under this one garage roof. Got to the car and there were a few dents on the body work and the hood had some specks of rust. Dunno how you even rust the top of the hood. Inside looked immaculate but as it was a lower spec car than the other, it didn't appeal to me as much. We went to start up the car but it wouldn't start. A lot of splutter but no "vroom". You have to love my technical analysis. We looked under the bonnet and he said it could be because the mechanic unpluggs something for security reasons. He plugged in the 'earthing' cable but that didn't help him. He then said it was because the car had no petrol in it. They need to keep low amounts of petrol in it for insurance reasons. If one car ignites and they all had petrol in, then the whole place would go kaboom.
Once they had petrol in it, it started up but sounded a bit unhealthy. He said it was because the unsuccessful starts before had drawn air into it. They said they would look into it and have it ready for tomorrow. We told them we would see about it and let them know. All in all it didn't look good so we tried to get them to lower the price but they weren't having it. We told them about the other car that we saw, said we would probably go for that and started to make our exit.
As we were almost out, they called us back. He thought the other car sounded fishy and did a HPI check for us. That's when I found out about the Cat D. He then put his saleman hat on and gave it to us - we could have a newer car that has never been in an accident for only 500 quid more. He tried to tell me that Cat D would also raise my insurance premium.
The way I looked at it was that the car was £500 more and because it was a 1.8l the insurance was going to be £100-£200 more. For £700 quid I was willing to gamble on the other cleaner car that started first time. As far as I can tell, Cat D means bodywork damage. It could mean that the cost of repairing it outweighs the cost of the actual car or something. I gave my insurance people a ring and they said it would have no effect on my premium. From what I could find out on the internet on my iPhone, Cat D would mean that I might have problems selling the car and in the case of an insurance claim, they might not pay out as much.
I think this is a risk worth taking, as I was planning on riding this car out until it had died. The £3000 I'm spending on this car will be made up in a couple months so I'm not missing it.
Stuck a deposit of £400 quid and I'm going to pick up the car tomorrow.
Let the forum beatings commence.
