Why the ‘experts’ are completely wrong about buying a second-hand car
Navigating the absurd world of used car ads makes buying new seem sane, reckons Porter
There’s a particular kind of Online Car Man who delights in giving obtusely useless answers to car-buying dilemmas. They reply to a question about dog-friendly family wagons by suggesting a Subaru BRZ because of its handling, tell someone considering an MX-5 that they should look at early Continental GTs, or insist your elderly grandmother is wasting her time looking at Yarises and should seriously think about a Caterham. You know the sort. And one of the things that gets them raging like Martin Lewis on overboost is the notion of buying a brand-new car. Or, worse still, financing one.
Some of this self-righteousness is justified, because it doesn’t take a keen fiscal mind to know that unless you’re buying a GMA T.50s or the next limited-run 911, a box-fresh car is going to shed value faster than bananas and bog roll. ‘Why on earth does ANYONE buy a new car?’ the Online Car Men rage. A more financially prudent route, they point out, would be to take the money you’ve saved for the full price or the down payment on a PCP and use it to buy a second-hand car outright. Which is fine, but it does mean you’ll have to browse second-hand car adverts. And that’s a minefield, not because you risk buying something that a stranger has redlined from cold and farted in with abandon, but because of the state of some online car ads.
> How to rediscover the love for cars? Get out there and buy an affordable classic
Firstly, at the sticky-seats and missing-centre-caps end of the market, it means encountering sellers who mistakenly believe the maximum number of words the law allows in used car ads is seven. Which is why their full description reads, ‘hOdna cvivc, 17, 4,0500 mls, Mot’. And you can’t learn any more about it from the photos because there are only two and one is out of focus. But not everyone is so bone idle. Some people actually take a lot of photos. Unfortunately, what they post is 19 shots of the outside and none of the interior, or 27 images depicting the seat-belt clasps, air vents and headlight controls, but only one of the outside (which is badly framed and has a thumb over the corner).
It’s the same with the words beneath. Not everyone thinks the description should resemble a haiku written on a calculator, but instead they tell you at length about how they gave the car a name and have done several long journeys in it but don’t mention which trim level it is, nor whether it comes with the private plate visible in one of the pictures or the spaniel you can see in another. Special mention to people who give a decent amount of detail about the car and then two-thirds of the way through casually mention that the engine is ‘jammed’.
Another advert irritation comes from the type of car dealer that’s noticed how estate agents drop fake blue skies into pictures of palpably drizzled-on houses and now doctors the pics so the car appears to be parked outside a sleek, modern office block. Except the perspective is all wrong and the building looks like a futuristic prison. But these kinds of photos do at least warn you this is probably the kind of dealer that’s also started using AI to write its descriptions and you’ll have to wade through reams of not-quite-right drivel claiming, ‘your passengers will be entertained by the standard leather seating in this primary example of a silken saloon-style car’.
This, however, is nothing to the absolute nonsense spouted by some of the people selling older, more unusual cars. You’ll spot the type immediately because they’ve posted about a million mildly oversaturated photos, including five of the indicator stalk from very slightly different angles. Then you get to the description, which gets off to a bad start because it begins too far back in time with some unnecessary waffle about the man who founded the company, some completely irrelevant puff about the site of the factory, and some absolutely needless bilge about the chief engineer’s favourite type of trouser.
Then, after just 9000 words, there’s the first mention of the specific model for sale with a paragraph that starts, ‘This beautiful example was ordered brand new from Frisby & Slices of Writhing, in Agony, by a Mrs Anthony Crestfall, a local magistrate and horse pest, who wished for a new vehicle in which to visit her sister, Biggie Smalls (no relation), at her dormer mansion on the south coast. She declared that she would call the car Polenta, unless it was a boy. The elegant machine was ready for collection on 1 October, a day that was unusually mild, though a low mist hung in the Gloucestershire area for reasons that are lost to history...’ Your shoulders sag, your lungs deflate, you silently mutter: ‘For the love of all that’s holy just tell me the frigging mileage.’ And so it goes on.
The Online Car Men might tut, but when you encounter certain kinds of second-hand car ad you can see why people run into a Dacia showroom screaming ‘PLEASE GOD, JUST PCP ME SOME CAR!’
This story was first featured in evo issue 339.
