The back lot/ trade in corner...

[Cavcraft]

I bought that light blue early-ish 205 from the back of a Peugeot main dealer in Crewe a couple of years ago.

[sierraman]

You can usually tell with a lot of these car lots whether they are any good by the stock they are selling generally.

[dave j]

A guy I work with is getting a new car next month, the main dealer didn't want his car in px! Maybe that's easier than sending it to auction- make it someone else's problem!

[Lacquer Peel]

Huh? 

 

You recalling details of cars for sale in dealer lots 15-20 years ago. It's not an insult, take the test. http://mindchecker.channel4.com/test-autism.html

[TataBobu]

 a well positioned pretty central sales pitch in Newport 

 

Not the one across the street from Lidl, is it?

[Aston Martin]

There's a dealer near me, that reopens every 5 hours. It's essentially a house, but has a glass showroom instead of a living room.

 

They had a £250 primera last week. It was fucked. This was the only car on the forecourt.

[mercrocker]

It may not be autism that causes us to recall minute details of everyday life 30+ years ago....It might just be that everything is shit now.      

 

There is a car lot in our street between two houses.   Apparently the triangle of land has some kind of watercourse under the surface preventing it being built upon.   Been there absolutely years, they used to hire out old chod too.  I used their Mk1 Transit Luton vans when I was in my 20s.     Nothing much of interest now but there is plenty of stuff that I suppose kids today will be spaffing about on here in 25 years time.    Their back row includes an M reg. Legacy estate that has been there for at least four years.   I thought it was a goner the other day as a Hiab was lifting something out of the brambles next to it but that turned out to be a fucked Mondeo. 

[sierraman]

I can remember going to look at a Nova Saloon near me at a garage... god... 14 years ago, so before I passed my test. Was really tidy, wish I'd had it now as you never see Nova 4 door saloons now.

 

Also remember seeing a Sierra 2.3 Diesel for sale, unusual in respect it was K reg so post 90 facelift. They seemed to do a few at the end of the run to use up old engines because I saw another Sapphire gain J/K plate with a 1.6 Pinto in it in a breakers.

[Hendry]

There are still a good few of these places in Glasgow and surrounding areas as I discovered the other day when i picked up a copy of the free car sales paper.

 

Theres 2 places stick in my mind, because as said you can usually tell how good a place is by its stock. The first place sells blinged up Range Rovers, X5s, older (by that I mean modern but not new enough for a franchised dealer) Audis, BMWs, Mercs, sporty stuff like Golf GTis, Astra and Corsa VXRs, but they all seem ropey and rough but are strongly priced, and round the corner they have another lot selling cheaper stuff like Fiat Stilos, Astras, Focuses, that sort of thing, but you just get a vibe the cars are likely to be problematic.

 

The other place is smaller, and mainly deals in performance and modified stuff, sometimes very badly modified, So you have your stuff like Imprezas, Audi S4s, Focus ST, Corsa SRis, and also base Corsa, Focus, Astra with big alloys, bean can exhausts, aftermarket head units, limo tints, no badges, cone air filters, slammed suspension, that sort of thing, but they must do well because their stock changes frequently, there must be a decent market for cheap modified cars. I remember going to look at an 04 plate Corsa 1.7 CDTI SRI there which was maybe 5yr old at the time with i think about 60K on it for £3.5K, it was a bit tatty, had 6x9 speaker holes in the parcel shelf, oddly had very very fresh Arnold Clark plates and window sticker that looked like they had just been fitted, the book pack suggested it was an ex Arnold Clark lease car to someone working for the NHS, but after that it had a load of service stamps for an Arnold Clark Citroen dealership which had closed down a few years before and changed to Ford, then my pal noticed the front bumper had loads of movement in it, and it had prefacelift Corsa C headlights, so we asked if it had been in a bump, the sales guy said no it had angel eyes which were damaged so he sourced a pair of standard headlights from a breakers, strongly suspect it had been front ended. 

 

Working for Arnold Clark, all employees could have their pick of any auction car we wanted at the price theyd paid for it as a trade in, you were only allowed to buy something like 3 a year because some employees had been buying loads and flogging them on themselves. One general manager even got sacked for doing it because one day he sold one to a customer on the premises and as such the person who bought the car thought he had bought from AC and had some comeback if a fault arose, which it did, general manager told him, you didnt buy the car from AC, it was my car you bought from me, private sale. But the guy went higher up and after an investigation it was discovered and he got binned because of the comeback that couldve happened by any one of these customers because the car was AC property which the manager was selling on for a profit and pocketing the difference which was stealing, and because the cars were never officially sold and V5 transferred to the managers same so they truly were his personal cars, legally the buyers had a comeback on AC. 

 

Sometimes a car would sit in the auction section for ages then suddenly theyd change their minds and retail the car, or itd go through the auction a few times and not meet its reserve so theyd retail it. Happened with a lot of post 2002 Fiat Puntos. 

[AlabamaShrimp]

There's a dealer near me, that reopens every 5 hours. It's essentially a house, but has a glass showroom instead of a living room.

 

They had a £250 primera last week. It was fucked. This was the only car on the forecourt.

This place sounds amazing! 'Watching the telly tonight?' 'no, a fucked Primera'

[sierraman]

Ha ha! The staff competing with their employers for business!

[eddyramrod]

Ha ha! The staff competing with their employers for business!

That isn't very funny really.  Not so much your remark but the original story.  Many many years ago one of the other drivers was summarily sacked from the fruit-and-veg wholesaler I worked at.  He'd been loading up extra stock on his pickup in the mornings and flogging it to pre-arranged contacts, apparently.  That was quite a worrying time to be an innocent colleague, believe me.  It isn't good for internal relations!

I was there another four years though, so there must have been some vestige of trust left.

[sierraman]

Hang on... he was pinching the stock to sell on?

[Rod/b]

One of our drivers at the Electronics shop used to always come in and take batteries out of stock "for the remotes". Nobody thought this was weird until i pointed out that all the sets we sold came with batteries included for the remote controls. He'd also been selling the scrap fridges to a place in East Ham and pocketing the proceeds - it was actually his job to arrange to have them picked up from our depot for scrap to fund the 10 quid p/x discount we used to offer.. Only old fridges and batteries, but silly old cunt lost his job over it. He was in his seventies...

[eddyramrod]

Hang on... he was pinching the stock to sell on?

Exactly.  And on company time, using the company vehicle!  I can quite see how Arnold Clark would have viewed their bloke's activities in the same light.

[Aston Martin]

The Primeras back!!!

[Hendry]

Exactly.  And on company time, using the company vehicle!  I can quite see how Arnold Clark would have viewed their bloke's activities in the same light.

 

Theres always someone comes along and rips the arse out of it and abuses the leeway we get given and then it ruins it for everyone else!

 

Pretty much every place Ive ever worked have been decent with us regarding stuff like that, borrowing a car occaisionally, before someone takes the piss and everyone else loses their privileges. Only in this guys case he got back in by getting a job as a salesman at a subsidiary company, transferred to AC and is now a sales manager again, this happened quite a lot with sacked staff there. 

[eddyramrod]

Does nobody check work history/references these days????

 

Could I literally make up any old shit on my CV?

[sierraman]

I've an even better one. I knew someone who had a job driving scrap from the yard to a specialist recyclers a few miles away. Anyway, he decides one day to take it to a different scrap metal merchants 1/2 mile down the road (bearing in mind how these sort of outfits all know one another) and try selling them the stuff that was to go to the specialists. They rang up his employer to corroborate what he was doing. Needless to say he got fired for his bit of entrepreneurial spirit.

[sierraman]

Does nobody check work history/references these days????

 

Could I literally make up any old shit on my CV?

In finance etc they are quite rigorous about checking you out. There's every likelyhood though you could get away with false references for driving work. Just say you were driving for some tin pot outfit somewhere and put your mates number.

 

They'd probably rumble you once they'd seen you twatting into everything though.

[eddyramrod]

There's every likelyhood though you could get away with false references for driving work. Just say you were driving for some tin pot outfit somewhere and put your mates number.

 

They'd probably rumble you once they'd seen you twatting into everything though.

I seriously hope there isn't!!!!!!!!!!!!  Having said that, many of the places I've worked have closed down/been taken over/absorbed so my file of potential references is pretty thin.  I wouldn't even know where to start looking for the personal details of some of my ex-employers, not that I'd want to; that would surely qualify as stalking!

[Royale80]

Years ago there used to be a garage in Abertillery called Empress Car Sales-it sold good, cheapish cars (owner sold for millions years later). It had an offshoot for all the "older cars" run by Dan the Banger Man-friend bought two Sd1's- a Green Series 1 2600 and an Oporto red series 2 2600 (the red one went like the clappers). Unfortunately nothing like that around now.

There also used to be a place in Taffs Wells which had super prime shit. I once bought a Daimler XJ6 2.8 mod BTG 708J for £450. Sold it for £500 a few years later and then saw it years later on ebay for £5000.

 

Steve

[Guest bangerfan101]

Trade cars cleckheaton?

Fuck me they have some shite there. I went to look at a ka there when the ex first past her test. Full 12 month mot on it. But when I looked at the galloping wob underneath it. It had a previous mot's yellow crayon all over it and a break flexi near enough rubbed thru touching the tire

 

Nice little runner for your girl Innit bruva

 

No Abdul. It's a fucking death trap

[sierraman]

I've heard they are purveyors of some seriously clapped out cars.

 

I think the way a lot of these 'Trade Cars' places get people is issuing them a receipt saying it's 'spares or repairs' as a bit of a loophole to sell unmerchantable stuff. You often find they've got loads of cars, all bags of shit, that they have got in from the auctions for literally scrap price then try punting them on for £5-600 or so.

[holbeck]

Years ago there used to be a garage in Abertillery called Empress Car Sales-it sold good, cheapish cars (owner sold for millions years later). It had an offshoot for all the "older cars" run by Dan the Banger Man-friend bought two Sd1's- a Green Series 1 2600 and an Oporto red series 2 2600 (the red one went like the clappers). Unfortunately nothing like that around now.

There also used to be a place in Taffs Wells which had super prime shit. I once bought a Daimler XJ6 2.8 mod BTG 708J for £450. Sold it for £500 a few years later and then saw it years later on ebay for £5000.

 

Steve

 

I remember Empress Cars. They were like a prototype supermarket type of dealer. Very keen prices but the stock was large numbers of 1.6LX type vehicles. My dad got a Montego from them, 18 months old but 80K on the clock. ISTR he traded in his green 2600 SD1 there.

[Aston Martin]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=&_ssn=cheapdealsonwheels4u&_sop=2

[neil1971]

At the end of all the tat for a few hundred quid, he's selling a £75k Bentley Mulsanne!

 

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=&_ssn=cheapdealsonwheels4u&_sop=2

[AnthonyG]

I remember Dan the bangerman at Empress Car Sales as well, I was very taken by an Alfa Alfetta 2000 on a Y plate. It was 9 or 10 years old and I think he wanted £1000 for it.

 

As I was 18 and without a) a full driving licence and b ) a hope in hell of getting my mum and dad to lend me the cash and let me put it on their insurance, it stayed there.

[DodgeRover]

Does nobody check work history/references these days????

 

Could I literally make up any old shit on my CV?

Yes pretty much if you can talk the talk and walk the walk

[Split_Pin]

I just took that test and scored 32 which is "High". If there is any weight in it, that will explain why I can remember every car numberplate of a car belonging to someone that I have become acquainted with since I was old enough to know what a numberplate was. Ho hum.