Auto Advice Topics
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- AutoAdvice
- 75676
What useful information is available to me as a buyer on a vehicle registration certificate?
Most people don’t know the difference between a licence receipt and a registration certificate. In very simple terms, a licence receipt is the document on which you have cut out the licence disc. At a casual glance the two documents appear to be very similar. A registration certificate will have the words CERTIFICATE IN RESPECT OF REGISTRATION OF MOTOR VEHICLE right at the top. This is the important one and the document that will tell you a lot about a car. It should always be an original. A copy is worthless. The paper is a greenish tint and is similar to cheque book paper.
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- AutoAdvice
- 53952
As we all find ourselves in the midst of a deepening recession; inevitably there are consequences to over spending. For most of us our cars are our second biggest investment and we must try at all costs to maintain those monthly repayments. But what happens when we skip a payment?
During tough times, once a repayment has been skipped, it becomes very difficult to make it up. Consequently your account remains one month in arrears for a long period of time and your account will continue to attract interest on arrears. The more payments you skip, the worse the multiplying effect of those interest charges become.
Contrary to what many people think, the banks are not waiting drooling to repossess your house or your car. In fact that is the last thing they want to do. Just for interest’s sake, it is really bad business for the bank to take your car back because once that happens; you become blacklisted on ITC for a period of 5 years. Each client who has a repossession is another person removed from the market place. The present rate of repossessions are said to be between 5000 and 7000 per month nationally, between all the banks. Multiply that by 12 months and it equates to the car and finance market losing 60,000 to 84000 clients per year.
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- AutoAdvice
- 27457
How on earth do we know if the reading is accurate? Why do some people turn the mileages back (what is commonly known as a ‘haircut’). Firstly it constitutes fraud and is a criminal offence. People do this to gain a higher selling price.
If there aren't service books AND a contactable previous owner, just walk away and take your business elsewhere. In all the years I have been in this business, I have rarely heard a genuine case of the books being missing. 99% of the stories are pure nonsense. I can look at a steering wheel, upholstery and foot pedals and tell you within 10,000kms accuracy what the actual mileage of any vehicle is.
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- AutoAdvice
- 18104
Which is the better buy? New or used?
This is one of the most common questions I get asked. From a pure ego point of view, undoubtedly new beats used, but from a Rands and Cents point of view, used is king.
How can I say that? Well…lets start by looking at the Auto Dealers Digest and you will see that there is no book value for cars of the current year. They start with 2007(at time of writing in December 2008)
Lets take an arbitary example. A 2008 Audi A4 2.0 TDi sells new for R 298000. The book retail value of a 2007 model is listed as R 229000, whilst trade value is R 199300. That is a drop of R 98000 in one year. In that specific case, if you had put your ego in your pocket you could have been at least R 69,000 better off - and probably more in the current market. I have been very conservative in this example. The reality could be a lot worse.
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- AutoAdvice
- 13306
My first word of advice here is to read the small print. You get policies and you get policies. Some have high excesses and low premiums, others have the opposite. There are certain things that they all have in common:
- Male drivers under the age of 25 are penalized heavily on premiums
- High performance cars carry very high premiums
- Your car needs a good immobilizer system to reduce premiums
- Older drivers and women are rewarded with lower premiums