Thread: How many Kms should a "new" car have?

Originally Posted by vnx205

Back in the 1970s it wasn't unusual for new cars to be driven from the depot in Sydney to the dealer in small country towns. They weren't delivered by truck.

So if you bought a new car in Narrabri, it would have over 500km on it. I delivered one as a favour for a car dealer that I knew quite well. So it arrived in the showroom with over 500km on it.

However, that was 40 years ago. I guess things have changed since then.

My old man used to do that for a dealer years ago.


On some ford vehicles the odo can be re set to zero so long as its not over a couple of hundred k and it can only be done once I'm sure other manufactures do it as well

New means new! We bought the wife's VW Golf GTD new... On the dock warf it had half a km on it. It was collected by truck, then it was P.D'd and then driven 2kms to the accessories workshop (which we were told would happen), and true to their word, my wife collected it with 2.5kms on the clock. Sadly 9 months later it now has 40000kms on it!!! But that's why we bought it. If you buy a box of tea bags from Coles, do you accept it with an open packet and 3 tea bags missing??? No.. You buy a plane ticket to the UK and they drop you in Paris... Do you accept it?? No, so why accept a car with more than 3 or 4 kms... It gets P.D'd, and test driven and delivered. Demo vehicles are just that. People take them out to see how well they go/stop/handle/accelerate etc etc... The Golf we demo'd had 200kms on it and we really did 'test' it. It was awesome too! I'd be cracking the s***s at the dealer, wanting your first service done for free, and when they say yes to that put a dab of white out on each level plug (diffs, swivels, gearbox etc) to make sure it gets done. Just my opinion. Good luck!

I used to average about 6km road testing new cars. You could go out a bit from that though if you had to track down knocks, rattles and other fault finding so sometimes if a car has a few more clicks than expected it could be just the pre delivery bloke doing his job (or shooting out to get his lunch ).

Originally Posted by vnx205

Back in the 1970s it wasn't unusual for new cars to be driven from the depot in Sydney to the dealer in small country towns. They weren't delivered by truck.

So if you bought a new car in Narrabri, it would have over 500km on it. I delivered one as a favour for a car dealer that I knew quite well. So it arrived in the showroom with over 500km on it.

However, that was 40 years ago. I guess things have changed since then.

Refer to post #7 on page 1. When I worked at GM-H Pagewood it was common practice for many country dealers to have someone collect cars from the plant and drive them to the dealership. All cars to one of the Newcastle dealers were driven. Sometimes a dealer from Brisbane zone would come to Pagewood to collect a car that was not available in Acacia Ridge stock. I have no knowledge of whether or not the speedos were disconnected. I tend to think it was accepted that vehicles would have delivery miles on them. When Leyland trucks were assembled in Footscray, our Brisbane stock was always driven up so they had about 1000 miles on. Later, at White Motor, new trucks for Sydney were normally driven and sometime trucks for Melbourne and South Australia were driven.

I remember one Darling Downs shire council cracking up about the delivery miles on a truck, and demanding new tyres be supplied and the warranty papers being noted that warranty commenced from xxxx miles. Next time we were a wake up to this and had the speedo wound back to zero so only about 100 miles were on it at handover at the shire workshops.

Originally Posted by JamesB71

In the end it had 81, 40 of which he couldn't explain. He also couldn't explain the mud underneath or the damage to the front protection bar.

A couple of KMs I could let slide, but not obvious damage.
Not good enough.

Sorry if you are getting a demo you pay demo price. (to me a demo is when a car has been used as a demonstrator irrespective of whether it has been registered).

If you get a new car that has only been driven as part of the delivery process then you pay for a new car.

Back in the 70s I ordered a new car (also from a Newcastle dealer) that had a 3 month wait for delivery. I was given a trade in price and agreed on the price at the actual delivery time based on an estimation of final mileage. My new car arrived and was registered in my name with personalised plates. When I went to pay for the car I noticed they had reduced my trade-in price by $1000 - when I queried this they said the trade was 3 months older and more kms (but the actual kms was less than was agreed) - the dealer was just trying to screw me over.

To the dealers surprise I just got up and went to leave and he asked about the new car - already registered in my name. I indicated wasn't my car and continued to leave.

In the end I got my car for the originally agreed changeover price but only when they realised I was prepared to walk away form the deal.

So if the dealer insists on selling this demo as a new car and you haven't paid walk away - I am sure that as soon as consumer affairs gets involved and with the evidence you have you would get your deposit back.

Garry

Garry, I think from the experience of years in the trade that you would be hard pushed to find a dealer who wouldn't sell a car as "new" if it had been in stock, never sold at retail, never registered, no matter how many miles it had done on test drives or delivery or its production date. The trade's attitude is that the vehicle is new until is handed to a retail customer or registered for dealership use. In the case where Annand & Thompson were sued for selling three year old cars as new, the Qld. Supreme Court took this attitude into account and agreed with the dealer that they had sold new cars. I do think it a bit hot that the dealer is trying to deliver a vehicle with damage though. One would think repairs would be done and the vehicle thoroughly detailed.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

Garry, I think from the experience of years in the trade that you would be hard pushed to find a dealer who wouldn't sell a car as "new" if it had been in stock, never sold at retail, never registered, no matter how many miles it had done on test drives or delivery or its production date. The trade's attitude is that the vehicle is new until is handed to a retail customer or registered for dealership use. In the case where Annand & Thompson were sued for selling three year old cars as new, the Qld. Supreme Court took this attitude into account and agreed with the dealer that they had sold new cars. I do think it a bit hot that the dealer is trying to deliver a vehicle with damage though. One would think repairs would be done and the vehicle thoroughly detailed.

That may be the case from the dealers perspective buy not from mine as the buyer. In my case sale would not be proceeding.

The Annand etc case is not all that relevant as we are talking about demonstrators being sold as new and not cars that have been sitting around for a couple of years.

Garry