Well I'm not really shocked having had many years of experience dealing with car salesman, but what I saw today amazed me. I was chatting to another Defender owner recently and he said he'd seen 3 of them for sale close by and they been in the yards for a while. I thought as the Cook and I have our Puma for sale, we'd better go and have a look at them so off we went.
First yard had a 130 and a 2011 110 for sale at 44K approx. 110 looked reasonable but when I went to open the drivers door the handle nearly fell off. Good start so I shut it and the bottom of the door sort of flapped around as if something had broken inside which holds the door rigid. Front passenger door was the same.
Off we went to see the next offering, a green 110 at 52K.
This had caught my eye on carsales.com and I thought it needed a look to see if I was seeing right..... and yes I was! The bull bar was rusty and bent backwards a bit as if it'd had very hard bang at sometime.
I couldn't believe they would not fix things like the broken door handle or respray a bulbar in an effort to at least look like they had actually been through their so called 90 point check plan.
Plus if the bar was that bad what would the underneath be like?
But I will say this for both of them.... they had had lashings of some shiny stuff lavished all over their interiors and the tyres to make them look nice.
I will admit both had less kays on than our 2010 Puma (35K) but I'd bet anything that the standard of ours everywhere, interior, exterior, mechanically and electrically including servicing at half the recommended intervals plus upgrades is far better than anything available now in WA, especially these 2 vehicles.
But I expect some mug will fall for the usual spiel from the sharks and they'll flog them before I flog ours!
AlanH.