Sunday 27 March 2016

Are most ex-lease cars clocked?

Steve Jackson, chief car editor at Glass's, ran a spot check of cars being returned at the end of their lease agreements when he was with LeasePlan UK, a company with a fleet of 1.55 million vehicles, mainly supplying corporates.  8 in 10 had been tampered with to show reduced mileage.

Twenty years ago clocking affected 1 in 5 cars. But clocking then almost disappeared, made harder by digital odometers. But there are now "50 to 100" companies offering mileage adjustment. A representative of one such company said there were legitimate reasons for changing a cars mileage, such as faults in dashboard equipment. "Everything we do is legal. We do get inquiries about clocking, but we send them away". Per Mandy Rice Davies, well he would say that wouldn't he? Surely fault fixing on today's reliable cars could not sustain so many companies offering this service?

The reason clocking is so attractive is the mileage limit in personal contract purchases (PCPs), which is how three quarters of cars are now bought from showrooms. The typical excess charge is 9p per mile, so you don't have to be far over to justify spending £80 to clock it back.

So if a high proportion of ex company lease cars are clocked and the incentive is there for private owners also, then buying a second hard car sounds pretty dodgy to me these days. On the numbers above I'm guessing perhaps half of used cars might be clocked!

Service history, I hear you say. Good point. But on some cars now the service history is in the computer - you don't get a page in a book stamped and signed anymore. So can those histories be fudged as well?

Facts and quotes from Sunday Times Magazine 6 March 2016. Opinions in the last 2 paragraphs are mine.

1 comment:

  1. I see this is the front page story on The Sun today ("Clocky Horror Show"). They say you can get a car clocked for £40 and it's not currently illegal......

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