Gone in 60 Seconds

Part 6 of PHer V8mate's guide to the auction scene

By V8mate / Monday, 29 June 2009 / Loading comments

Vectra: Yours for £55

Fifty-five quid. What does that buy you these days? An average pair of shoes? A mid-range mp3 player? A couple of bottles of brand-name bubbly? Probably. But this isn’t the John Lewis column, this is Gone in 60 Seconds, so the answer is an old Clio van or a first-generation Vectra, because this week we find out where old Lagunas go to die.

You’ll find ‘General Sales’ at every auction venue. In the evening or at weekends, these sales represent the pinnacle (or depths, depending on your perspective) of the vehicle disposal scene. Firstly, you will never see such an eclectic mix of people in one place. Imagine a typical, bustling street market in each of the following locations: a suburb of Moscow, a Calcutta street-scene, downtown Cairo, the dockside in Lagos, Nigeria and the slums of Rio. Teleport a group of locals from each place, and you have the captive market at these sales.

The mix of vehicles is just as eclectic as the clientele, if not particularly salubrious. These are the cars no-one wants anymore. Dealer trade-ins, over-age stock, 'problem' cars and, worst of all, private disposals. There will, of course, be private sellers who simply want the benefit of a quick sale and payout at any price but, experience tells the savvy buyers, they will be outweighed by those who have to get rid of the car due to a horrendous impending bill or failure.

X-Type: Sold!

The cars for sale are certainly not the ‘retail ready’ lovelies of the fleet auctions, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all simply avoiding a date with the scrapyard. What they do require, however, is that you engage a higher level of consideration as you browse them pre-auction. Do you have some skills yourself; can you effectively tackle light panel damage with a few well aimed prods and pokes? Can you replace panels completely and paint them? Can you accurately identify what is causing ‘that knocking sound’ and know how much it will cost to remedy? The more you can do yourself to turn that sad auction entry into something to be proud of, the bigger your bargain will be. But if your best shot is simply having it delivered from the venue straight to a mechanic on hourly rate, you may very well remove any benefit from having bought at auction at all.

I would have been failing in my duty if I had started this report with anything but the bad news. Of course, it can’t be all bad at these sales, or no-one would ever buy there. A good deal of these cars are part-exchange trade-ins from main dealers who simply have no option but to turn cars they cannot retail themselves into cash. And we all know that the motivation for trading in our old car when buying a new one is not always the poor condition of the existing vehicle. Main dealers of prestige marques often attract owners who look after their cars quite meticulously and, when buying a new car, do not want the hassle of selling their old vehicle privately. Check out the Jaguar X-Type in the listing below; seven years old, large petrol engine, moderately desirable, you’d expect it to have gone for a song. But traded in to a Mercedes-Benz dealer, in immaculate condition, with low mileage and a full service history it fetched a price comparable to many similar cars in classified adverts. So as with the fleet auctions, buyers will still pay good money for sensible cars.

Old Laguna for £1200

Private buyers also need to be aware of the associated fees charged on sold lots. They are, proportionately, much more costly than on higher-priced cars. If you had, in fact, fancied that L-reg Clio van for £55, you would have been in line for a whopping £42 buyer’s premium, thereby almost doubling the hammer price. So if you are in the market for a budget car, it can often be worthwhile doing your research and finding out which auction venue in your area has the most competitive fees. Compare this fee scale – hammer price range against fee premium at Manheim - with the one published for fleet cars in

Part Five

£30 - £59 = £42
£60 - £99 = £66
£100 - £199 = £93
£200 - £499 = £137
£500 - £999 = £147
£1,000 - £1,499 = £175
£1,500 - £1,999 = £198
£2,000 - £2,499 = £203

As you can see, being at the lower or higher end of one of the fee ranges can also seriously impact on your overall expenditure.

The upside of these sales is that you get all manner of weird and wonderful vehicles turning up. I was a little disappointed that, on the night I went to get the price list printed below, there weren’t any real oddities, but I would say that that particular sale was the exception rather than the rule. And these sales are a great source for cars that are destined only to tear round a track.

So what would my parting advice to you be? Should you go along and experience the vibe of the bottom end of the car market? Definitely. It’s better than a day at a theme park for thrills. Should you buy anything, though? Well, maybe. But be very, very careful. To see our auction picks for this week, see the comments thread below.

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