A friend has just bought a very tidy BMW 316 (1.8 petrol) with just over 100k on it. Underneath and most of the car is pristine, with just a small rust hole on the offside front wing where the paint was scraped against a low wall. A stack of servicing receipts from new ( one owner). The guy was offered £595 trade in or a grand off the new car with no trade in! My friend gladly paid £595.:shrug:

In the old days, when "it didn't used to be like this", most problems on a a car could actually be seen during an inspection. These days, most problems that are expensive to fix cannot be seen though a point inspection unless the buyer has the knowledge and vast array of diagnostic equipment to detect such problems.

Do we really want to go back to the days when K-seal and Sawdust (to hide differential whine) were the S/H car dealer's most valuable tools?

Trading constraints are there to protect the 90+% of the population who are not car experts and do not fix cars. Rightly so. There is nothing to stop anyone that has the expertise to enter into a non-standard contract with a seller if that is what they wish.

In my experience of dealing with people, the ones who decry regulation and compliance standards are usually the first to shout when things do not go according to their plan.

In real terms (i.e. inflation adjusted and related to earnings), cars now are far more affordable than in the 1970s and 80s. This is why there are so many more of them!

There are dealers who take in and sell some very nice older modern cars. But the cars cost a reasonable amount because the dealer has paid good money for an outstanding example, taken the risk and sorted everything before putting the car on the market with a warranty. The link below is to one such dealer that I tend to keep an eye on for the car I want - a 2010 CLS in a particular colour and engine combination.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143345343787

The reality is that most members here critique 15+ year old £500 MGR cars in fine detail about their worth. This has nothing to do with trading constraints but the value of a 15 year old car and the risk associated with buying (or selling) one.

Finally, in the old days, a 10 year old car would have been considered ready for scrapping. The OP's car is at least 17 years old based on his post.

An average car needs to do at least 80k miles just to equal the amount of energy it takes to make it.

This is often left out when the ''Greens'' get involved about pollution. The greenest cars are the ones that last 20 or more years with little more than basic maintenance.

Cars are always picked on but in truth there are a lot of worse polluters that rarely get a mention, what about the 3000 Civil airlines in the air at any time in the air burning 10,000 gallons of fuel per minute or all the cruise ships and freighters burning 1000's of gallons of diesel with no filters around the oceans of the world?

A couple of years ago we went to stay with some relies in the US, one night there daughter offered to take us out for a Mexican at there favourite restaurant. They picked us up in the Dodge Pickup ( 5.7 litre ) and we drove for 1.5 hours to a place in the middle of now where, yes the food was good and then they took us back. We had done over 200 miles and probably used 10 gallons of fuel or more. I asked ''do they go there often'' and I was told '' no more than once a week :eek: . I know fuel is cheap over there but if they are burning it at that rate we can sleep easy.

Ms Lucas is the one and only Green party MP in the House of Commons (that alone possibly indicates the support in the country for 'Green' issues). That’s one, out of 650.

You could say her influence and standing in the House as a result is minimal, but in fact she is supported far and wide largely because she champions the cause of women and to rubbish her green credentials could be seen as an ad hominem attack, both on her and women in general. She is therefore sacred and can harangue all and sundry with her pseudo-science prophesies of doom with impunity. Some Joan of Arc.

Ms Lucas has now proposed an all-women party to sort out her parliamentary colleagues’ apparent taste for continued strife. Another Joan complex. That is surely discrimination?

She also ignores the fact that most of this ‘Green’ and pleasant land is given over to agriculture in general and farming in particular. If she actually believes her doctrine that the release of Carbon into the atmosphere causes the catastrophe she is terrified of, does she know just how much is released in the course of ploughing a field? Of digging the earth? In fact it is far more than is saved by wind farms. Personally she is pleasant, funny and bright and good to be with. But heaven save us from these zealots.

Given the endemic problems we have with Campylobacter and Salmonella with our UK chicken fleet, I actually don't mind if their various component parts get a bleachy wash...

And therein lies the problem. What are they covering up?