My 21 y/o daughter purchased a 66 Plate Corsa from a dealer back in May 2019. It needed a new head gasket in early 2020 which she paid for, then the water pump failed earlier this year and now the head gasket has gone again needing another £850 or work.

She owes £7,800 on a car worth £6k at best and needs a serivce as well as the head gasket done, so grand’s worth of work.

Does anyone know if the finance company bear any liability or clout to get this fixed?

Was there any guarantee/warranty with the previous head gasket job ? Typically 12 months so that may have now expired.
I’d certainly be talking to the garage that did the original job, see if they can throw any good will at it

Can’t imagine the finance Co has any liability at all and the only clout will be extracting the money owed from your daughter surely 🤔

Does anyone know if the finance company bear any liability or clout to get this fixed?

By all means, double check this as I left the finance world more than 10 years ago, but a bit like credit card purchases, the finance company effectively provide the car to your daughter until it’s paid for. That’s why finance companies will only finance cars from ‘reputable dealers’.

That said, it doesn’t mean they are any more liable for faults than the dealership would be.

Based on your post, I don’t think they’ll be much help, hindsight is great, but if the head gasket failed within 12 months of buying it, that was the time to go back to the dealer to complain and if they blanked you, got the finance co involved, now 2.5 years after purchase there’s no liability for them really.

It sounds to me there’s a fundamental problem with it, a 5 year old car really shouldn’t need a head gasket, that said, if the water pump has failed (which on some cars should be replaced at certain internals, usually at the same time as the timing belt) it could cause a head gasket failure due to over-heating.

I think your daughter best bet to get out of it is to VT, or Voluntary Terminate, in order to do that she needs to have paid 50% of the total finance cost of the vehicle. Her finance documents should tell her how much she will have needed to pay to reach that point, that figure includes any deposit she paid, and importantly any final payment.

If she’s able to VT, she should take the time to consider the pitfalls of that, it’s a very grey area.

I think your daughter best bet to get out of it is to VT

That will only work on PCP though wont it? From the OP it sounds like this is HP, although I could be wrong

Unfortunately I think the daughter is about to learn a shitty lesson about cars. Did the car come from a Vauxhall dealer? If so, calling their customer service people (as well as the finance company, nothing to loose there) might be worth a try. Wouldn’t hold out much hope for anything though

That will only work on PCP though wont it? From the OP it sounds like this is HP, although I could be wrong

No, it should apply to any regulated finance agreement secured on the vehicle. HP makes it easier because without a large final payment the point that you can HP is far earlier.

However, some smaller dealers, and the shit ones, aren’t able to get finance cos to work with them because the cars they sell are too old, or they’ve got a dodgy past or something, so they only offer sub-prime unsecured personal loans, but you’d typically see that from a guy selling ‘bangers’ for £2k-£3k from a lot on the roadside somewhere.

No, it should apply to any regulated finance agreement secured on the vehicle. HP makes it easier because without a large final payment the point that you can HP is far earlier.

Good to know thanks.

but you’d typically see that from a guy selling ‘bangers’ for £2k-£3k from a lot on the roadside somewhere.

It’s a lot more common than that I believe, I’ve done it myself from a main dealer. I also used to work for Barclaycard Motor Loans (as they were at the time). Had constant stream of applications coming through from dealers for all sorts of values

Assume she still needs a car so I would say to get the headgasket done (properly) and run it into the ground. Tough lesson and not your daughters fault. Now is a bad time to be buying another car.

Head gasket and water pump I’m sure connected. Was the work done at the same place? Dealer or independent? Trusted local engine shop or company picked out of google?

* Bookmarked to see if this progresses like a previous post on car leasing by the OP *