Big Mike OUR MAN ON THE INSIDE SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON THE CAR BUSINESS
Who is Big Mike? Well, that would be telling. What we can say is he’s had more than 40 years in the car trade so has probably forgotten more about it than we’re likely to know. 20 | CarDealerMag.co.uk
COMMENT
Bargain BMW’s sat nav proved as good as fingerprints – and fortunately mine didn’t match
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ike all of you, I guess, I’m finding it pretty hard to find stock at the moment, with the shortage of new cars passing down rather annoyingly to the used car market. But you still get a gem every so often, and I thought I’d bagged one the other week. The car was a 2006 BMW 535d Touring, so getting on a bit (just like me) but with the twin-turbo diesel engine, great spec and in sell-it-tomorrow silver. I unearthed it among the usual sea of rubbish on Facebook Marketplace, priced at £1,595 for a quick sale. With prices the way they are at the moment, I imagined it in my mind with a coat of polish and a generous coating of tyre gloop looking like quite good value on my lot at £3,995, especially as it had less than 100,000 miles on the clock and a chunk of service history. So I took a train over to the Black Country, had a sniff round and bought it. I’ll admit straight away that the seller seemed a bit dodgy and he also had the car ‘in trade’, so wasn’t the official registered keeper. But as I was putting it in trade anyway and I’m not too obsessive about such things, I figured it’d be okay. In many ways, it was. It was a cracking car, no notable damage and in tidy order other than a faint whiff of weed about the interior, which isn’t uncommon in a BMW bought in the West Midlands. But it was something one of those air conditioning bomb things could sort out and leave the car smelling of spearmint gum until the turn of the next century. It cleaned up well, although I did have to buy it a new nearside front tyre as the one on the car had clearly seen a few roundabouts taken with a spot too much vigour. Nothing that Part-Worn Pete down the road couldn’t sort out for forty quid, so by the time it was looking resplendent at the front of my lot I had a nice little margin of over £2,000 to play with. It didn’t take too long for the calls to come in, and one chap said he wanted to come and view straight away. I was at work even though it was nearly home time, so I popped the kettle on and agreed to wait 45 minutes for him to turn up, which he did. Indeed, there were two of them – gentlemen in suits in a nearly-new Vauxhall Insignia, which isn’t my usual customer demographic, in all fairness. I soon found out why when he whipped out his warrant card and I realised he was a detective inspector, but with nothing of my own to hide (well, not these days, anyway) I assumed he might be looking for a car of his own, and in my experience the Old Bill like a big BMW, so when he asked if he could grab the keys and take it for a spin I was happy enough to let him go solo. Not something I’d
There were two of them – gentlemen in suits in a nearly-new Vauxhall Insignia, which isn’t my usual customer demographic.
