Things to look out for on an ex demo car?

[Russ]

Going to have a butchers at one tomorrow, astra h 150 diesel. It's got less than 10k on the clock and it's _cheap_

should I keep an eye out for anything in particular? Or ask anything?

Cheers.

/awaits zaks pm wanting the juicy details

[mycarsavw]

Not sure about you, but when I demo a car I'm not very kind. It's going to have been thrashed, bashed, bumped, crunched etc.

IIRC Vauxhall did 72 hour (weekend) demos too - so who knows what's gone in that particular vehicle.

Me, I'd be paying the least I could get away with or walking away.

[dave87]

I'd be having a look at what drivethedeal etc can offer you off a brand new one, then work from there.

No point having one with 10k on it for the same price as a new one

[Zak33]

where is it please?
and pm me details pls

[menthel]

We got £6k off a mazda 3 because it had 4k miles on it from being a demo. Pristine inside and out. Just have a bloody good look at it all over and give it a good test drive tbh and then treat it like a 2nd hand car for valuation.

[Russ]

PM sent.

dave87 - its a massive reduction from what they are new, and a bit less than what other similar spec'd cars are going for

mycarsavw - yeah i know exactly what you mean, everything i've borrowed or test driven has been abused, i'll have a good look round it go, going while its still light

Menthel - cheers, that gives me some hope

[KidChameleon]

The main things to consider are driving styles of testers and the price. As above, when people test a car at a dealership they tend to rev it up, which might not be good in the first few thousand miles. Although, I believe running the engine in is not such an issue these days.

We got a Peugeot 407 at the end of 2008 with under 5,000 miles on it, six months old. It was under half the list price of a new one. It's since done 34,000 miles and had nothing wrong with it, apart from general wear (tyres etc). To be honest, I've probably been more rough with it in all that time than the testers were over a few thousand miles. I think we got the manufacturer's warranty included with it, just like a new car.

I think most of the cars my family has had in the last 15 years have been ex demo. A few thousand miles and at least a quarter off the usual price isn't bad. It's not like you're buying an old beater.

[Russ]

It was like going To view a car for sale on eBay. We turned up, they'd never heard of the car, then they had but it wasn't there because the bloke who used it to get home used his moms car to get to work. Such ametuer salesman too, he didn't give a monkeys and just wanted to get home asap

[Sair33]

I'll sort it tomorrow

Zak on Sair's account... whoops

[malfunction]

Not quite a demo car but my wife's Focus (which I'll soon inherit, lucky me) was an ex-enterprise rental car in 2003 that we bought at 6 months old with 12,000 miles on the clock. It's done nearly 100,000 now and has not given us any major problems in fact from memory the only non-consumable stuff has been:

1) Wife parking accidents ...not the car's fault
2) Being rear ended once at a roundabout ...also not the car's fault
3) New coilpack recently-ish (~95,000 miles, there's a thread on this very forum from October about that)
4) ECU update very recently to cure a rough warm idle (possibly a contributing cause of #3 or related to it or possibly just one of those things)

Other than that it's only had consumable stuff and normal service items.

[Russ]

Thx zak your awesome

[Russ]

Bought one, a different one. Love it! Will get some pics tomorrow as it's raining and dark

[kalniel]

How is it over bumps?

[Russ]

Dunno there's no speed bumps in the country side?

[kalniel]

Dunno there's no speed bumps in the country side?

How is it over holes then? (I'm countryside too, but speed bumps aren't my problem )

[Russ]

It's no worse than an escort estate