On 14 Mar, 23:20, "Dave Plowman (News)" <d...@davenoise.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Dave:

The service book has three stamps, 1st one at the time of delivery,
2nd one at about 16K, an oil service and the third one an inspection1
in 2007 (forgot the month) at 31000 by a BMW specialst dealership (a
well known one over here, I might add). The dealer says they got the
car in November-December 2007 and just hadn't been able to sell it.
They (a non-BMW delarship, although they specialze in sporty vehicles)
have serviced it recently as it has been over a year since the last
service. Having said all this, I am out of this deal as if nothing
else, come me selling the car, no body will touch it with a barge
pole.

Vijay

Those numbers align to the official (RAC?) numbers you reported earlier, if
you accept the error that in August they reported the mileage at 18k instead
of 28k.

The ONLY issue to iron out, if this is true, is why the dealership had the
car sitting on its lot for a year and was never driven. This sounds fishy,
but it is possible.

One theory is that the car was driven, but with the speedo disconnected.

The problem with this theory is that the speed data from the speedo is
required for a host of other systems to function properly. There are a few
systems that one could deal with if they functioned marginally, or not at
all, but there are other systems that if they did not have the speed data
they would not function at all, and these could be problematic in terms of
basic driveability (not to mention the performance issues that one would
never accept).

If one wanted to suffer through the driveability problems that the lack of a
speed sensor might give a Toyota Corolla (for example), then maybe it would
make sense to disconnect the speedo on that car. But if one wanted to drive
an M3, disconnecting the speedo would be the LAST thing one would do because
the drivability issues that would result would defeat the whole purpose of
driving the car in the first place -- one may as well be driving a Corolla
if they were going to drive a BMW with the speed data missing from the
computer inputs. .

I'd tend to go with the assertion by the dealership that they simply
couldn't sell the car, and held it in inventory for a year. This would allow
the numbers on the odometer to fit nicely with the printed record. The
question becomes, how come the car could not be sold in all of that time?
Maybe the dealer paid too much for the car and as a consequence set the
price too high. Maybe the car was wrecked and ended up in a place there the
Title is not branded as a salvage car (total loss), and on a car this new
the damage would have to be significant.

There are some red flags on this deal, but the odometer error is looking
like a keystroke error since the problem numbers came on the same day, and
ther is other data in the hand-written record that tends to show the actual
life of the car.

In article
<f1f94fc0-9a5a-4ffc-89cf-911856f7694c@l39g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,

What does the service book say? I'd expect it needs an annual oil service
regardless of mileage. So if nothing else the 2008 one is missing. Is it a
one owner car? If so the mileage should be reasonably consistent year on
year.  

Sounds iffy to me - that was before the recession took hold.

But not stamped the book?  

Would depend on how long you intend keeping it. Service history becomes
less of an issue, price wise, on an older car.

But since this sort of car has been very hard hit by the recession I'd be
looking for a perfectly straight one - unless the price they're asking
reflects the iffy history. And knowing what that price should be is
difficult since any guides go 'out of date' so quickly in these dreadful
times. Ebay may be the best way to get a rough guide the latest values.

Non-metric units can be present but mustn't be misleading or false.
Some American "1 pint" ice cream tubs had to have new labels because
of that.

Not quite. Prosecutions were for failing to display a metric price and/
or failing to have metric-capable scales. One of the 'metric martyrs'
was prosecuted for overcharging while mixing metric and non-metric
units. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Martyrs

On 17 Mar, 03:29, "Jeff Strickland" <cr...@verizon.net> wrote:

And just to confuse matters that little bit more, US gallon is, I
think, 3.8 ltrs and the UK Imperial gallon more like 4.5 ltrs, making
mpg figures for various cars much different either side of the pond.
(I can never get my head around ltrs/100 km conundrum).

An update; I think Jeff was right. The odometer discrepancy seems to
be a genuine error. The detailed vehicle report checks out as good.
The dealer is very sure that there is no hidden damage as they have
done a thorough inspection and service recently. I called BMW UK this
am (thanks Mark) and the VIN is genuine; the cars manufacturing and
first regisration date matches with the delaer's record.

In the UK, there has been a spate of articles in various car magazines
how these high performance cars haven't sold much this last year and
how many a bargain is there to be had. So I believe the dealer when he
tells me (and shows me on the computer) that they had first advertised
the car for 25K +, having acquired it themselves for 24K+.

So, moral of the story, I am picking it up this Friday!

Thanks for your help everyone.

Vijay

<JS>
Good luck. You're already a BMW owner, so except for the possible
performance differences, your experience should be pretty much the same as
what you're used to.

You can operate the pedals carefully and considerately, or with gusto and
enthusiasm, and see pretty decent gas mileage numbers, or sucky numbers.

</JS>