We bought a 4 year old, 53,00 mile Peugeot 407 2.0 HDI Sport Coupe for a little over £6,000 from a Citroen main dealer. So it is not a ‘used approved’ car.
That’s £22-24,000 of gadget-laden car with a main dealer three month warranty and the salesman’s assurance that there was nothing wrong with the car, Sir.
Which is why we bought it unseen over the phone. It was at least £800 less than it should have been, or perhaps I should say less than cars in my area.
The only other low mileage car in the country that was priced in the same ballpark was a ghastly green-gold thing that the dealer still hasn’t sold three months later. There’s nothing wrong with buying cars that Elton John would like if you are planning to keep them for a long time. But Used Car Expert needs me to sell this on so we can do more mystery shopping for something else.
So it was the more sellable Silver 407 Coupe for me, shipped direct to my door in London from Evans Halshaw, Bradford. And this car that had ‘nothing wrong with it’ was immediately revealed to have a feint whiff of smoke inside, a missing spare key, unbalanced rear wheels and a buckled front right alloy.
Which sounds terrible, doesn’t it?
And if you are the end consumer then you would feel a bit cheated. But not immediately, because that new car excitement, and wanting to believe the car is the deal it seemed on paper, will keep your dander up a while yet.
Plus you don’t know about the wheel issues yet. You need to get on a motorway to know about the wheels. But trust me, when that happens later, you’ll know about them.
Now, I am not a petty man, I didn’t want to claim on the warranty or complain. So instead, I went to Halfords and bought a strong smoke-killer air freshener. It looks like a bar of soap and I put it in the door pocket to let out it’s fresh, limey aroma. Which it did, having an immediate impact. And over 2 – 3 weeks it completely killed the smell of smoke. It cost a couple of quid and I wondered why the dealer hadn’t done that?
Surely I don’t need a warranty?
Next I phoned my local main dealer and got a quote for the key. I mean if its £30 then I might just buy it and be done. The car was such a deal and like I say, I’m not a petty man.
It’s about £200 for a key. Well, it’s £65 for a key, £20 to cut it, and then... wait for it...about £100 to code it to the car. Add a bit of VAT and there you are.
So I emailed the dealer and requested a key on the warranty. They ignored me. So I chased and within a couple of days they agreed to get me a key.
But the key can only be coded by a Peugeot main dealer, and Evans Halshaw only have a Peugeot dealer in the North East. Their corporate systems have provision for getting parts and warranty work done by other brands within the group, but if they need to get a competitor 300 miles away to do it their systems fall over – no one has a way to pay for it.
Fortunately for them I was going North anyway, so agreed to take it into York. In the meantime I had taken the car out on the Motorway. And at top Motorway speed the car developed a shake.
Shake, rattle and roll
So I took it to one of Evans Halshaw’s Vauxhall dealers nearby. Who told me that the front right wheel was buckled and they tried to improve the shake through tracking adjustments.
But it didn’t improve things, so when I took the car to York I asked them to look and again, and again the response was ‘your wheel is buckled’. Which it was:
So I called Bradford again and said, “Sorry but you are going to have send me a new wheel.”
This took a month and 6 or 8 chase up calls – all the time I was becoming more and more frustrated. And the tyre kept deflating because of the buckle. So claims from the garage that they didn’t know there was a problem were proven false.
When the wheel arrived I took it to a local fitters and the valve promptly broke. I was standing next to the fitter when it happened and he hardly touched it so I didn’t blame him.
The £220 Tyre Valve
A call to Robins & Day – the Peugeot dealer that Peugeot actually own – lead to a quote of £220 for replacing the valve and swapping the tyre to the new wheel. The main dealer believes the valve needs to have a sensor which needs, you guessed it, coding. And apparently it takes 80 minutes. Friends in the trade tell me it takes about 10 minutes.
The tyre valve that we bought for £30
I bought a valve for £30 and had the tyre fitter very carefully put it into the old sensor. Then they charged me just £40 for the tyre swap. A significant saving. And it all works.
Still shaking...
But the new wheel didn’t fix the motorway ride, so back to the tyre fitters and they re-did the tracking. This still didn’t fix things. So I went back again and they re-balanced the rear wheels and hey presto! The car drives like new again – up and down the M1 in glorious smooth refinement.
Our findings...
- I would buy from Evans Halshaw again because their cars are cheap and their warranty – after a bit of nudging and chasing – is well worth having.
- I will never buy long distance again, as it makes it impossible to claim on the warranty and the dealer who sold the car can’t see what you are complaining about.
- I am reluctant to buy a high-end Peugeot (or Renault) because the parts and in particular the ‘coding’ of parts is a complete rip-off.
- All mechanics need managing – never assume they will think a problem through for you. Three garages - two main dealers and a very open and friendly independent - all tried to solve my car’s vibration by adjusting the tracking on the front wheels. Front wheels are tracked to the back wheels, and if the back wheels are out of balance then the car won’t be set-up correctly. Yet it was only the third garage, on their third go at fixing the problem, that considered doing that. Which was stressful and time consuming for me. And it can’t be the first time a car vibration has been due to a rear wheel imbalance.
Words: Matthew Tumbridge