Clocked Car

[ripley500]

Not my Aston, but I just found out that an X5 I bought a year ago has 30,000 more miles that the speedo reports. It was found out because the auto gearbox has gone and the garage fitting a replacement just told me that under the BMW computer they can see that the mileage is 30k more - when the car comes back to me they will apply the correct mileage.

I bought from a non-franchised but reputable dealer and will be following up with them in the first instance. Bad enough that I've just had to shell out £2.5k for the gearbox replacement but then to find out the car now has 30K more miles and hence has hit its value you can imagine I'm pretty annoyed.

Any pearls of wisdom or advice is appreciated.

Thanks

[divetheworld]

Find the culprit and apply 7.62mm. Preferably belt fed.

If that's not your bag, I'd call the rozzers/VOSA/DVLA. It's fraud and they need to follow up on it.
you never know, you might be able to get some compensation, either personal or fiscal.
Oh, and speak to a brief. Essential and money well spent.

[threesixty]

divetheworld said:

Find the culprit and apply 7.62mm. Preferably belt fed.

If that's not your bag, I'd call the rozzers/VOSA/DVLA. It's fraud and they need to follow up on it.
you never know, you might be able to get some compensation, either personal or fiscal.
Oh, and speak to a brief. Essential and money well spent.

Wise words but I guess for me it would depend on what the cars worth in the first place. If turns out the cars done 150k rather than 120k then its not worth the hassle in my opinion.

[divetheworld]

Maybe so, but someone out there is clocking cars and you have evidence. It's worth reporting even if you don't expect any joy personally.
Just a thought.

[bogie]

if you did a HPI check on it usually you can claim on that too...up to value of the car depending on company providing the HPI and level you chose

[897sma]

[flame suit on] Some of you would perhaps not wish to hear this but I was chatting to a friend of a friend on a night out a couple months ago who runs a "mileage correction" business and he was telling me that the AM Vantage was the 2nd most commonly "corrected" luxury car. The first being Range Rover.

edit: BTW it isn't fraud to change the indicated mileage. It is misrepresentation however if you state that mileage to be correct when you don't know for a fact it is. Thats the reason all motor traders actually state that they cannot guarantee the mileage.

Edited by 897sma on Friday 15th March 10:43

[jeremydb9]

There was a case in the USA many many years ago. Someone had been wronged and the fine for clocking was something like$10. Then they found out that the docs were being sent by post - which is owend by the federal govt - which then made it facilitating fraud using the US Mail .... which was a federal offence and carried lord only knows what penalty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_and_wire_fraud


Other relevant article here

http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2012/...

[v8woollie]

897sma][flame suit on said:

Some of you would perhaps not wish to hear this but I was chatting to a friend of a friend on a night out a couple months ago who runs a "mileage correction" business and he was telling me that the AM Vantage was the 2nd most commonly "corrected" luxury car. The first being Range Rover.

edit: BTW it isn't fraud to change the indicated mileage. It is misrepresentation however if you state that mileage to be correct when you don't know for a fact it is. Thats the reason all motor traders actually state that they cannot guarantee the mileage.

Edited by 897sma on Friday 15th March 10:43

Hmmm. Your friend of a friend sounds like he was maybe exaggerating a bit on the Vantage part. Why would anyone clock what are predominantly very low mileage cars anyway and given the very own volume ever made I doubt it is the second most clocked luxury car. I bet ya more Porsche cars could be found clocked.

[triple5]

I remember years ago that some (non franchised) dealers used to use the "can't guarantee the mileage" trick as an excuse to zero the clock. Not seen it recently so don't know if it's still common practice.
Strangely if they did have a car on the forecourt without intergalactic miles on it they left it alone, guess they could confirm those ones

Hope you get it sorted ripley.

[897sma]

v8woollie said:

Hmmm. Your friend of a friend sounds like he was maybe exaggerating a bit on the Vantage part. Why would anyone clock what are predominantly very low mileage cars anyway and given the very own volume ever made I doubt it is the second most clocked luxury car. I bet ya more Porsche cars could be found clocked.

QED perhaps?

Anyway, not arguing the point either way as I don't know for a fact nor really care that much. I am only relaying a conversation I had with a guy whom I don't know particularly well (but does this for a living)as it seemed relevant to this topic.

However, is it possibly true?. Perhaps. No one would bat an eyelid at a 60k -70k five year old Porsche but Gaydon Astons seem to be really sensitive to mileage. At 30k people are concerned, at 60k-70k it becomes a pariah fit only for those who can't afford better, not my view btw but read some of the comments on this forum (not everyone before you get defensive ) anytime someone asks for advice about buying such a thing.

A quick look at the classifieds and you will find many many cars which only seem to average 2-3k pa. Some maybe, but so many? My own DB9 had done 17k at 6 years old, with 9k of them in the first two years and then around 1500 miles pa - 28 miles a week, really? Not suggesting for a minute that mine or any of those for sale are in someway dodgy, just food for thought.

Anyhow moving on. What sort of person (other than George) buys a new Aston and then doesn't drive it? They really are missing so much of the experience, you can't possibly get to know your car driving it so infrequently

I'm sure many of us are pleased those people exist, the two owners before me dropped around 100k between them and hardly used it enabling me to buy an almost as new car at a third of the cost new. Thanks.

Edited by 897sma on Friday 15th March 14:11

Edited by 897sma on Friday 15th March 14:13

[jeremydb9]

We have had a BMW x 3 daily driver for 5 years or so and average 7600 miles per annum. We live pretty centrally in London and just drive round in small circles between home, office, nursery, school. We do the odd longer trip. In the DB9 we have covered about 1500 miles since just before xmas - it is now the daily driver. Given we really don't go anywhere and live icentrally so the distances are very small our usage must be tiny compared to someone living "in the country" - so 2-3k per annum - suspect at best.

[theno23]

Yeah, same here - though I actually did 7k miles in my V8V last year, but 3k of that was on a tour. The remaining 4k is a lot for me.

- Steve

[Simpo Two]

triple5 said:

I remember years ago that some (non franchised) dealers used to use the "can't guarantee the mileage" trick as an excuse to zero the clock. Not seen it recently so don't know if it's still common practice.

I would be astonished if there isn't a get-out clause in the paperwork, such as 'Whilst we try to... believe to be... cannot be responsible for.... EOE' etc, and even more astonished if the OP's claim makes him a penny. All dealers are the same - once your money is their till, they suddenly ain't interested.

[v8woollie]

I've just done 4,000 miles in the past year. My just turned six years old car now has 18.5k miles on it and is very much a weekend and odd evening car so if I'd had it since new it would only have 24k miles on it.

On many cars that I would expect to be daily drivers that would raise suspicion with me but for a car that is predominantly a second or third and less used car I don't find it strange.

That said, I take Steve's point that because of the low mileage associated with Astons it could make them a target for clocking as it would not look suspicious.

On balance I'd probably rather not have know this information

[GTDB7]

Quite simple to check these days though with the online MOT database, which records indicated mileage each year.

So to get around this the re-clocking would require tweaking before each and every MOT to keep the trail clean.

[hedgefinder]

GTDB7 said:

Quite simple to check these days though with the online MOT database, which records indicated mileage each year.

So to get around this the re-clocking would require tweaking before each and every MOT to keep the trail clean.

not really as the majority of the clocking is done within the first 3 years before an mot is required..

[ripley500]

bogie said:

if you did a HPI check on it usually you can claim on that too...up to value of the car depending on company providing the HPI and level you chose

I didn't do a HPI check as I recall the dealer showing me the HPI check they had done and as they are a reputable dealer it did not occur to me that it would be useful to have done my own check - false economy perhaps.

Just waiting now for the BMW specialist to give me written proof of the clocking before I contact the selling dealer

[J_S_G]

1. There's a question of WHO is to blame on the miles. The dealer you bought it from, the previous owner that sold it to them, or somebody FAR further back in the car's history. Unless you can prove it's the dealer, or get them to go after the previous owner, it's all going to get a lot mudddier. If you got an HPI check, maybe some come-back there. If you've got the service history stamped in the book, have old MOTs, mileage checks from inter-service work, etc. you may be able to spot something funny. But, realistically, it's probably someone who's put a lot of motorway miles on it in a year, and wound it back before the service. And for that, there's no way of telling, unless the dealer can pull a lot more info out of the gearbox data.

2. I was in my local garage a couple of months back, and talking to the auto-electricians in there about this. Know the guys well, and they're not the type to exaggerate... Their take on it was that they were asked to / knew people who carried out the winding-back of mileage on over 50% of the high-performance cars in the area. Given I'm right in the middle of Man Utd. footballer hell, that's a LOT of Ferraris, Lambos, and Astons. They reckoned the majority of the footballers et al do it - limited mileage policies, HPd vehicles, largely scallies at heart, if one does it they all do it, etc. Given the details they could go into, I don't have any hesitation in believing them. If their numbers are right, most of those cars have done between 2x - 5x the miles they're reading.

As for normal owners, the rest of the country, etc... "your mileage may vary"?!?

[divetheworld]

I've got/had a few VAG vehicles and the engine ECU also carries an uneditable counter of distance covered. It's a very easy check with VCDS to compare the clocks.
Is there a similar and accessible method on AM?

[jeremydb9]

This ihas peaked my interest and I ent 30 mins googling on its detection whilst the kids were busy destroying the place.

There is a link here

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

The counter chips are sold in blocks of 500 on eBay!

My car came from an Aston dealer, and you assume it is ok but the more you read, who knows.