[Closed] Getting a S/H car independently inspected?

What's the car? In some cases known faults (IE 911 bore scoring) can be fairly hard to inspect..

Do these inspections give any sort of guarantee? If so probably worth doing once you've found something you are serious about. If not just a knowledgeable mate?

No inspection will guarantee their report just like a building survey.

What are you looking at car wise? I'd be inclined to find a car and find a local ish marque specialist

Basically yes, in answer to your question, but you'll be lucky to find someone who won't want the car brought to them. The seller should be expecting that a serious buyer would want to have a pre-purchase inspection carried out, but it will need to be at the buyer's expense and inconvenience. Expect to budget in the region of £400 plus transport (there's the odd one I know of who's based around the London area who's mobile, which helps).

As others have said, marque is important as they all have their quirks, and at that age you'll probably want to strike up a good relationship with a well regarded independent anyway rather than pay main dealer prices for questionably experience (yes, really).

The inspecting garage will have their name and reputation attached to it, so go for someone who has those things, and don't forget they're working for you, not the seller, so in their interests to find things wrong with the car that you can negotiate on and then work with them post-purchase to prioritise and sort as time and budget allow.

Don't look at this as a wasted expense or try to skimp on doing it. It really is the best ££ you can start throwing down the money pit (if you hadn't realised it was one of those and weren't relishing the prospect of something to throw your hard earned at then you're barking up the wrong tree).

I have used this https://www.rac.co.uk/buying-a-car/vehicle-inspections.
Worth every penny if you are spending 5k or more.

It seems there are varying degrees of inspection.

I did this when looking at a secondhand Audi. I simply asked the dealer if I could borrow (test drive) the car for an hour and booked it into my local garage. £59 and hour later I had a long list of reasons not to buy the car (including some seemingly innocuous faults such as a dodgy door handle that would actually cost ££££ to resolve).

Just a thought ...

Cheers all, looking at an early R8 manual.

I wouldn't bother withan RAC inspection, much better to get it checked over by a specialist.
Admittedly 20 years ago, but I had a complex and uncommon car assessed by the RAC (Citroen BX 16v GTi) as I was worried about big bills. It was given a clean bill of health, yet broke down on the journey home from the vendor. Cost £850 to fix RAC washed their hands of it as they said that the engineer had made an inspection in good faith but couldn't be expected to pick up any unusual fault. So not worth the effort

Which part of the country are you mos?

I would view the car first, then if it appears ok to you pay for an independent inspection.

An RAC inspection is not much use for a car like that. I would use an independent specialist like MRC etc (depending where in the country you are).

Cheers all, looking at an early R8 manual.

Open bonnet, look at cracked strut mount, walk away. Inspection over.

You can probably do a lot of the stuff yourself armed with the correct info, e.g. https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-buying-guides/audi-r8-ph-buying-guide/30900

But yeah get a specialist to look at it, after you've inspected it yourself. Nice choice BTW.

You could also try your friendly Audi garage and ask them to see if theres any nasty warranty history

I'm in west yorks but the cars seem to be mostly in the south, they're all loaded down there.