It is easy to dismiss a manufacturer’s used approved scheme as praying on the consumer’s fear of being ripped off by a private seller or dodgy independent garage.
A common criticism of used approved schemes is that you end up paying inflated car prices (because they are only available at main dealers) to get little more than some breakdown and warranty cover.
But to assess Toyota’s scheme based solely on added value items is to miss the point. Toyota’s warranty and breakdown cover is not extraordinary.
What is extraordinary, is the pride that the staff take in achieving high car preparation standards. A recent trip to Toyota’s factory at Royal Portbury Dock allowed me to see ‘the Toyota Way’ in action.
From the moment you drive up to the gatehouse it is clear that normal rules do not apply.
Hundreds of cars are moved around in orderly packs, never breaking a speed limit or crossing a line they are not supposed to. In nearly 20 years there have only been two accidents at this centre.
Outside the workshop are lines of used cars waiting for some TLC the Toyota way. I wandered around a few to see what horrors were about to be repaired so that the car could be sold.
I couldn’t believe what I saw. Had I taken a normal car dealer around with me he would have been horrified.
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There was basically nothing wrong with most of these cars. A quick wax and some big brightly coloured numbers in the window is arguably all they needed. But consultation with the worksheets revealed that the red Aygo had a 4mm diameter chip in the roof paint.
The white Corolla had not one, but three equally miniscule bodywork complaints, including a dent you could only feel as it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.
The stains of hard work
Walking around the workshops, there was no feeling of it being high-tech or spotless in the Formula One lab sense. Nor did it feel anything like a garage. Instead, there was the best equipment being fully used for its intended purpose. No mess, but the stains of lots of hard work. There was nothing for show, nothing pretentious. Just lots of people quietly concentrating on their work. In a way it felt like the people there traded having a laugh at work for taking pride in what they do.
Discussing the processes the cars go through and how Toyota decide where to draw the line was telling. Vehicle Refurbishment manager, Martyn Baker, explained that the objective was to give each car the same standard of repair as a new car.
He revealed that there is flexibility within the Toyota systems on how to get cars to the best standard. A driving factor for the team at Portbury is the standards set in Japan. They don’t want to let Toyota down, so strive to make used cars as good.
The interior and exterior are all scrutinised inside a building with consistent lighting. Then the car is sent to different parts of the factory for the required work. A common frustration amongst used car buyers that contact us is missing handbooks. But this is one of the first things Toyota check and replace.
Body filler is a last resort and hardly ever used. Metal repairs are the preference and the Toyota way means that they are not trying to make something just look nice. They want to repair something to last too.
So whilst tiny paint chips may be touched up as they would at a normal dealer, several chips or anything bigger than a couple of millimetres seems to be highlighted for a full paint repair.
A silver Corolla making its way around the centre on my visit had some very minor shopping trolley dents in a door. In order to repair this to the Toyota standard, that door had to be painted and the panels either side painted too so that everything blended together.
Looking at the dents about to have a couple of hundred pounds of repair work, I could almost hear other dealers selling the car without repair, “Well it is a used car - there will be the odd knock.”
But it’s not the Toyota way. Inside the cars, it is the same story. A good valet is about as much as I expect. Toyota will repair scratches in plastic trim with gels or plastic paint.
Whilst not every Toyota used approved car on the market goes via Portbury for refurbishment, the technicians in Toyota dealers are all trained in same way at Toyota’s Nottingham training centre. Just as the culture for quality cascades down to the Portbury factory from Japan, it hopefully cascades down from Portbury into every dealership.
If you want to buy a one-year-old Toyota, you won’t find many outside the main dealer network, so you can be pretty confident that it has been prepared to a standard that brings real credibility to the phrase, ‘as good as new.’
If the first owner in the log book was ‘Toyota (GB)’ then you can be certain that you have one of the best prepared used cars on the market.
If you are looking for a two or three year old car, you will find some in other garages, supermarkets and even the odd auction. But if you buy from those sources you don’t get the same provenance or car condition.
So check your local Toyota dealer's cars of similar specification and price. Don’t dismiss them until you have been for a test drive and seen the quality.
Other benefits include:
- Toyota Approved Warranty
- RAC roadside assistance
- Vehicle mileage check
- 12 month Toyota club membership
- Vehicle exchange plan
Toyota’s dealer network advertises most of its stock on a central website, with cars ranging from 6 years old at £4,995 to £39,000 for a 6 month old Land Cruiser.Visit Toyota for more information and to visit the site.