Looking at getting a used citroen c4 grand picasso. On the citroen approved car search there’s loads of cars about 1yr old with mileages all just under 20k.

What would these have been used for, seems a bit high mileage for being used as a demonstrator (19-20k in one year).

Taxis, hire cars.

The last seven cars I’ve bought have been 1 year old & between 16k-20k miles from a main dealer. I think all were ex lease cars with a 2-year manufacturers guarantee. Usually keep for 3 years & then trade in. Apart from service costs I’ve not had any big bills in the 3rd year of ownership. My annual mileage is sub 10k which helps when selling.

Yup, hire cars. 1yr old with that mileage will probably be ex-enterprise hire car.

I very much doubt they are taxis and if they were that has to be clearly declared.

Could be hire cars or may be ex lease. Ask the dealer they will probably tell you the truth. Check the logbook and see who the previous keeper was, then google it to see if it’s lease or hire.

or company lease vehicles. My previous car had been owned by Avis so assume it was an hire car but other than a few small cosmetic issues it was great and only had a couple of minor issues in about 6 years.

Could have been citroen company cars, a friend at ford told me theirs were used up to about 10k & then sold through dealers

I spent a bit of time in Enterprise hire cars.

They all had stickers on the dashboard saying that if the odometer went to 12000(I think) I had to stop by the roadside and call them and they’d bring me another car.

Probably a company car for someone at the dealership, would be likely to have been used for demo purposes too.

I bought my car at 13 months old with 21k on the clock, previous owner was Porsche Leeds (part of the same group as Lincoln Audi), was a salesmans car, dealership had 2 near identical cars in stock.

Yup, definitely 1 careful owner at that age and mileage…..

are they best avoided then if have been lease / hire cars? I know a lot of people dont drive hire cars very sympathetically!

Looking at keeping for a while (ie ten years if we can)

Edit – By the time we add finance charge on for the 2nd hand one (bank loan not car dealer finance) they are only about £2300 cheaper than a new one which we could get on 4yrs 0% finance.

As mentioned, they’ll be hire cars. If you ask the dealer, they may say the car has come from Citreon. If you check the documents though, it’ll say it’s a hire car.

To be honest, everyone says avoid hire cars, but they are probably looked after better than a low mileage example used by an old person to just run to the shops and back.

Investigate as you would any secondhand car.

I think the fear of buying ex hire cars isn’t really justified anymore. The cost of damaging a hire car is so greatthat people take far better car of them these days.

We asked that question when we were buying and were told by the salesman that it was used on a one year business lease. We got the docs and the previous owner was Hertz and they had no way to prove it wasn’t an ex-hire car. OFT got very interested but, in the end, the branch manager offered to take it back or give an extra year of warranty (we kept the car and the extra year of warranty). Car has been fine so far (apart from the fact it hadn’t been serviced when we bought it and had low oil – despite it being a “used approved” car).

If we were buying again, we’d probably do the same as the price was good.

they are only about £2300 cheaper than a new one which we could get on 4yrs 0% finance

That doesn’t sound like a very large discount for such a high mileage.

How much is the new one?

If you work on about 50% depreciation in the first 3 years for a new car, if the new car is £20k, than a 1 year old car would be about £15 – £16k.

Sounds like the new car is a better deal.

If you think it’s an ex-hire car and you’re concerned about it, ask the salesman if you can have a look at the logbook and see who’s listed as the previous owner.
The hire companies don’t tend to use their own names on the logbooks so just Google the company name on the logbook and you’ll soon find out if it’s a hire company or not.

Personally I’d avoid ex-hire cars having seen the way they get driven by some of the staff who collect and deliver them from the airport!

sorry, should have added when i said its only £2300 cheaper than a new one, thats from one of the internet brokers like Broadspeed or Auteoebid not proper citroen prices which would be about £7k more than the 2nd hand one.

We dont have a trade in to worry about so the brand new one with the 4years 0% is tempting.

new citroen rrp £25910, broadspeed £21113, 2nd hand 1yr old 19k miles £18500 + about £1000 quid interest charges on the amoutn we’d need to borrow on the 2nd hand one. New one no finance charges as its 0%

proper citroen prices

You mean list price before discounts?

No-one pays list for a mainstream modern car.

Although you didn’t ask I would would be a 3yr old one for about £10k and save the money.£10k 20,000 miles

Or what about something more interesting BMW Touring

Read the thread title and thought of something like this…

You mean list price before discounts?

No-one pays list for a mainstream modern car.

i know that but my local dealer is terrible, they are part of a group of garages (all diffrent car makes) but theres no competing branches for miles and miles (small rural town) so they sort of have a monopoly and it just becomes tiring trying to haggle with them. Much easier to get an internet price striaght away. I’ll obviously see if they will get close to it but i know they wont, and i hate the haggling thing.

Dealership cars- the staff have to keep the cars under a certain mileage- thats over average for the year so cant be.

Ditto the employee scheme for many marques.

It sounds like a ex-hire as lease cars are never 1yr lengths are they?

Its upto you. I bought an ex-Enterprise hire car years ago (Ford Focus) but it was a very good price (at the time).

motobility schemes aren’t 1yr either.

Hmmmm ex hire car…

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/would-you-date-a-call-girl

When driving a 1.6 Ford Focus hire car in Germany years ago, we discovered that it would do about 115mph in 4th gear and 110mph in 5th. Don’t exactly get an easy life hire cars.

Might be worth looking at ex-motability as well- friend bought a Grand Picasso a while back that had been on this. Low mileage, immaculate and very well priced. Less likely to have been ragged as well, I imagine.

Mrchrispy if the high miler hooker is cheep! Why not