Daughter's fiance has swapped jobs and lost his company car and I got dragooned into taking him to find a replacement.
He wouldn't take my advice and seek out a reasonable condition example of our favourite vehicle but was fixated with getting an old VW Passat TDi. With the wedding an' all their a touch short of the readies.
He had me drive him over to a cheap as chips car lot in Bradford. They had half a dozen old Passats and he chose one that hadn't had a bag of coal on the back and in some cases the front seats and had the odd undented panel.
He drove it up and down a local motorway and it went and stopped OK, well OK for a car that's seen the best part of 200 kliks.
The lad's a retail buyer in real life and negotiated the guy down from a screen price of £2,350 to £2,000 plus a new tyre, that impressed his future father-in-law.
The dealer came out to my van to fetch him at one point and peered inside, asked me if I wanted to sell and offered me £25K cash straight off without knowing the spec. I reckon I could've twisted him up a few more thou. with all the bells and whistles.
That's quite satisfying to know that a non specialist will offer me that sort of money. Hopefully when I need to change dealers will still be as generous.





