Garrison wrote:Silk - Please just answer "yes" or "no".
- would you buy an undeclared written off car?
- would you buy an undeclared clocked car?
I bought a car (my Scorpio Cosworth) which was undeclared written off in the advertisement.
Actually , I did the latter .
I purchased a Mercedes 300TE-24 from a breakers yard ; this was on a 'spares or repairs' basis and I onot paid a few hundred for it .
The car was showing 170 odd thousand on the odometer , which was not unreasonable for a seventeen year old car ; it also came with the V5 which showed it to be a one owner car , beyond that there was no history , although it did come with the owners handbook etc and drove very well .
Although I got only the new keeper's slip , within a couple of weeks I had the full V5 showing the address of the former owner , so I contacted him re the history . He told me he had no paperwork , but that the car had been looked after by the local dealership from new and wanted for nothing ; he had ran it as his company car and only traded it in for a new SL on his retirement , and suggested the dealership could verify the history . Since I am also a regular customer at the same dealership , I did exactly that ; however , in the meantime I had happened to drop into a local Mercedes Indy I also frequent , and he told me the mileage wasn't right as he knew the car and it had been past 200K when he last saw it during his days at the dealership some 10 years earlier !
A day or two later , I dropped into the dealership and , after they phoned the former owner , they printed out the service history for me - all the way from the original PDI to the last service 3 months before I acquired the car . It truly had wanted for nothing , including a six grand new engine fitted 18 months earlier at 380,000 miles due to high oil consumption , then a new speedometer fitted just after , with the next record showing 123K then building up to the 170K when I got it - from this , the car had done AT LEAST 430K ! The staff in the dealership all knew the car , said it had 'everything' done over the years and thought they would never see the back of it .
Was I upset or annoyed ? On the contrary : how many other people get to pick up a one owner car with nothing needing done , which drove and looked like new at 17 years old and flew through the MOT , for a bargain price .
I saw the high mileage as something to be proud of , a fitting testimony to the superlative engineering integrity of Mercedes-Benz , and I actually set about winding the odometer up to the correct mileage - only despite inserting my cordless drill into the back of it , it was taking forever , so I gave up .
I had that car for about 18 months , then one fateful morning I was rudely awakened by a car crashing through my garden wall and writing it off against the wall of my house - ironic after it surviving all these years on the road - the errant driver turned out to be uninsured too .