Previous Owners

[Crafty1980]

Howard- said:

Because as a car gets older, the fewer owners the car has had, the more valuable the car has been to each owner.

Someone who paid £30,000 for a BMW 3 series and kept it for 10 years is going to treat it like a £30,000 car. If that person instead sells it after 5 years to someone for, I dunno, £10k, then the new owner sells it a few years later for £4k, then it's a £4k car to the third owner. A cheap car by all accounts. That means they will try to justify cheaper tyres, less rigorous servicing, less rigorous finding and fixing of problems that may arise...

I see where you're coming from with this angle. It's a valid point to make too. But what happens if owner 3 decides that he loves that car and wants to make sure it's as good as it could be (even if owner 2 had ragged it about a bit). So he/she decides to spend a ton of cash reparing/replacing/fixing everything possible to make it a better car... Would you still treat it as a terrible 3 owner car? I guess all cases are different. Interesting responses though!

[Howard-]

Crafty1980 said:

I see where you're coming from with this angle. It's a valid point to make too. But what happens if owner 3 decides that he loves that car and wants to make sure it's as good as it could be (even if owner 2 had ragged it about a bit). So he/she decides to spend a ton of cash reparing/replacing/fixing everything possible to make it a better car... Would you still treat it as a terrible 3 owner car? I guess all cases are different. Interesting responses though!

Not at all, and I'm sure as PH-folk, we've all been in similar situations. If someone was selling a car after putting a lot of work in to it I would expect this to be reflected in an advert and then I can assess the car individually. Likewise if it was me selling the car. Personally, the value of my car is irrelevant; I'll always treat it as best I could, regardless. But most of the 'general public' don't share this attitude. "Oh it's only worth £2000 why bother spending £500 on tyres" "The suspension has a bit of a knock, meh I'll see what the MOT man says in 6 months' time" etc.

If I see a 3 or 4-owner car with cheap tyres and 'some service history', I'll probably move on. My explanation was just me generalising on what my mindset tends to be when looking at the number of owners.


I think as a car gets older and/or is more of a classic/niche then the number of owners is less of a valid generalisation. But on something newer, it tends to serve as a reasonable indication of its upkeep IMHO.

Edited by Howard- on Thursday 30th October 14:32

Edited by Howard- on Thursday 30th October 14:33

[Hol]

Its a Barometer that everybody reads in a different way, due to personal experience and/or fears.
It definitely does not trump a clear and clean service history & paperwork (which I thought an odd suggestion).

Too many owners too early in life, or too many 'recent' owners - is usually indicative of a problem car.

It's up to the person buying to decide, if that means a hidden problem, or just that people have had their fun (or it wasnt for them) and moved on to something else.


If you had the choice of cars/deal 100% identical in every way, apart from the number of , what would you choose?

[BobSaunders]

For me i would prefer to know that only a couple of people have ragged it silly.

[Dog Star]

Howard- said:

Because as a car gets older, the fewer owners the car has had, the more valuable the car has been to each owner.

Someone who paid £30,000 for a BMW 3 series and kept it for 10 years is going to treat it like a £30,000 car. If that person instead sells it after 5 years to someone for, I dunno, £10k, then the new owner sells it a few years later for £4k, then it's a £4k car to the third owner. A cheap car by all accounts. That means they will try to justify cheaper tyres, less rigorous servicing, less rigorous finding and fixing of problems that may arise...

Perfect! I couldn't have put it better if I'd tried.