Test driving a car without tax

[paulqv]

yes you are allowed to drive any car to a mot station without tax or MOT but after that you are meant to go and tax it straight away! There is no free return policy!

[H_Kan]

Not a great solution, but why not get the seller to drive you to a Tesco car park etc, as he seems ok with the car being untaxed.

There you can have a little drive around, and being private property it should be ok. Obviously you can't go very fast etc but you can feel the car being driven on the road and get a rough feel for it.

[Sheepy]

You are allowed to drive to a pre-booked MOT and, if it fails, back to a place for repair.

If you're seriously interested in the car, then get the owner to pre-book an MOT and you drive the car there and back (because you know it will fail because you've remove the bulbs from the rear foglights, and you'll "repair" them at the owners home ). If it fails on anything else, then gives you ammunition to use when negotiating with the owner!!

[H_Kan]

Sheepy said:

You are allowed to drive to a pre-booked MOT and, if it fails, back to a place for repair.

If you're seriously interested in the car, then get the owner to pre-book an MOT and you drive the car there and back (because you know it will fail because you've remove the bulbs from the rear foglights, and you'll "repair" them at the owners home ). If it fails on anything else, then gives you ammunition to use when negotiating with the owner!!

However, given that an MOT is around £45 then he may as well stick 6 months tax on it instead.

[Kinky]

H_Kan said:

Not a great solution, but why not get the seller to drive you to a Tesco car park etc, as he seems ok with the car being untaxed.

There you can have a little drive around, and being private property it should be ok. Obviously you can't go very fast etc but you can feel the car being driven on the road and get a rough feel for it.

I thought you could be done for this as it's an area to which the public would have open and unrestricted access to?

[SS2.]

Kinky said:

H_Kan said:

Not a great solution, but why not get the seller to drive you to a Tesco car park etc, as he seems ok with the car being untaxed.

There you can have a little drive around, and being private property it should be ok. Obviously you can't go very fast etc but you can feel the car being driven on the road and get a rough feel for it.

I thought you could be done for this as it's an area to which the public would have open and unrestricted access to?

That is the case for insurance, but excise duty is required only if the vehicle is kept or used on a 'road maintained at public expense'.