Car has been for sale for months - will this put you off?
Discussion
Found a 2013 XF-S Portfolio in quite a nice spec with 55k miles on the clock at an independent dealer, and checking the MOT history saw that the mileage was unchanged since Oct 2017.
Called the dealer, whose well presented website shows a nice selection of premium cars where this car is, I would say, in the bottom third price wise, and he freely admitted that they had had the car since then and have not had much interest in it. I asked if there was anything wrong with it, and whether they would be prepared for it to be inspected at a Jaguar dealership to which they said that would not be a problem. They had recently reduced the price, it sits in the middle of the range of similar age and mileage cars on AT.
Would the fact it has been sitting around for the best part of a year put you off and what would you want to be determined beyond a pre-purchase inspection to allay any other fears?
I would be buying it unseen as I am outside the UK and am importing it here hence the Jaguar inspection, so would the car having sat around that long put you off?
Called the dealer, whose well presented website shows a nice selection of premium cars where this car is, I would say, in the bottom third price wise, and he freely admitted that they had had the car since then and have not had much interest in it. I asked if there was anything wrong with it, and whether they would be prepared for it to be inspected at a Jaguar dealership to which they said that would not be a problem. They had recently reduced the price, it sits in the middle of the range of similar age and mileage cars on AT.
Would the fact it has been sitting around for the best part of a year put you off and what would you want to be determined beyond a pre-purchase inspection to allay any other fears?
I would be buying it unseen as I am outside the UK and am importing it here hence the Jaguar inspection, so would the car having sat around that long put you off?
No. The Jaguar "management" cars (management, ex-demonstrator, ex-fleet, ex-hire) seem to take 3-12 months to progress through their system when it comes to selling them off. The XF-S I bought a few years ago had only done a couple of dozen miles in the last 6 months, between it's first service and the time I bought it, and it was fine.
JLR direct cars are a little different as I believe they hold them at Heyford to protect used values.
There is probably nothing wrong with the car in question, more likely the trader has caught a cold as no doubt he paid strong money and has not reduced it in line with market pricing until now and is trying to minimise any porential loss.
It is not an uncommon situation to have cars for a long while, some independent dealers joke of cars having “birthdays” where as some dealer groups price cut or auction after 90 days.
Best check it and all seems OK get it inspected. I am sure the seller will be keen to move it so maybe see if they will pay for a main agent service?
There is probably nothing wrong with the car in question, more likely the trader has caught a cold as no doubt he paid strong money and has not reduced it in line with market pricing until now and is trying to minimise any porential loss.
It is not an uncommon situation to have cars for a long while, some independent dealers joke of cars having “birthdays” where as some dealer groups price cut or auction after 90 days.
Best check it and all seems OK get it inspected. I am sure the seller will be keen to move it so maybe see if they will pay for a main agent service?
I bought my TT from an Audi dealer who'd had it in stock for 4-months. Nothing wrong with the car it was just very overpriced to begin with, as I paid nearly £5k less than the original asking! New set of tyres too so no worries on that front.
Only thing which would make me wary in these sort of cases would be if any time-based maintenance has been missed. E.g. if it was due a service on time at the point it went on sale, and the dealer then didn't carry this out until it was sold.
Only thing which would make me wary in these sort of cases would be if any time-based maintenance has been missed. E.g. if it was due a service on time at the point it went on sale, and the dealer then didn't carry this out until it was sold.
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