How to buy a car here without losing a Saturday
Most of the time people waste on a car is spent finding out things a dealership already knows. Is it still there. What is actually on it. What the mileage is this week rather than when the advert went up. Whether the colour in the photograph is the colour. Whether anyone will take your old car in against it, and for how much.
We built the T & P MOTORS app so those answers sit in your hand instead of behind a phone call. The stock list on your phone is the same list the sales desk works from. When a car is sold it comes off. When a car lands and is prepared, it goes on, with its photographs, its mileage, its service history as we received it, and a price.
What you are actually looking at
Two kinds of cars come through here. New and nearly new, which are straightforward: the specification is the specification, and the conversation is about which trim and when it can be ready. And used, which are not straightforward at all, because every one of them has had a life. So we write down what we know about that life rather than making you ask.
- What we have on file for the service history, and what is missing from it.
- The condition of the obvious wear items, honestly, including the ones that will need doing in a year.
- What we have done to it in preparation before it goes out of the gate.
- Previous keepers and what the MOT record shows.
A car with a mark on the bumper and a note saying so sells better than a car photographed from the good side. We have stopped pretending otherwise.
The part-exchange conversation
Send us what you are driving — make, model, year, mileage, and a few photographs taken in daylight, including the inside. We come back with a figure and the reasoning behind it: what the trade is paying for that car this month, what it needs doing, what it will take to retail it. If the figure is lower than you hoped, you will at least be able to see why, and you are free to sell it elsewhere and come back with the cash.
The test drive
Book a slot and the car is out front, fuelled, plates on, insured for you to drive, when you arrive. Take it on a road you know. Take it on a hill. Bring the child seat and try fitting it. Nobody follows you around the car park with a clipboard, and nobody tells you the deal is only good today, because that has never been true here.
When you are ready, it is paperwork, a handover and keys. When you are not ready, it is nothing — we will not ring you every Tuesday for a month.