1:09 am, April 29, 2010
OUR quest to turn £0.00 into a Porsche 911 by trading up cars is off to a cracking start thanks to not one, but two very generous dealers!
When we put the call out for help on our website and Twitter for our 911 for 2011 feature we were quickly contacted by two dealers offering to supply cars.
Main dealer group M25 Audi promised to find us a car and our friends at Motorpoint’s Auction4Cars.com also said they could help.
Not wanting to turn down either – that would mean turning down money for BEN, the charity we’re doing all this for – we accepted them both and have been to collect them today.
First stop was the smart M25Audi site at Watford. Group marketing manager Sarah Norton was there to show us our car – an S-reg Audi A3 1.6-litre.
It’s dark blue, has a few dings, a scuff on the side, and looks like it’s had a small shunt, but the retail book value is around £1,500. It’s an amazing start to our quest for a Porsche even if it hasn’t got any service history!
Jade drove the car back to our Gosport HQ this morning, but it wasn’t without dramas. Duncan and I had no less than three worried phonecalls from our her reporting shuddering brakes, a very noisy engine, some knocking and hesitation under acceleration.
I haven’t had a chance to assess it myself yet, but it’s safe to say the Audi might need some work before we sell it. We’re going to have to assess just how much we can do, but more on that when we’ve had a closer look.
TRADE ONLY
Duncan and I then headed on up the M1 to Motorpoint’s Derby site to pick up our second car. The car would have been sold on the group’s trade-only website Auction4Cars.com which the group flogs most of its part exchanges on.
Last year it sold an incredible 17,000 cars taken in part exchange by the group and saved Motorpoint £1m in remarketing!
The group’s press chief Stephen Wright handed over the keys to our VW Golf MK3, 1.8-litre. It’s done 180k, but has MOT until November and we paid for 6 months’ tax.
It’s extremely tidy and we plan to put it on eBay this weekend and turn it into cash fast!
Dunc drove it all the way back from Derby to Gosport and said it runs perfectly – kind of understandable really, it is a Golf after all!
We’ve also got to thank our friends at HPI who HPI Checked both cars for us – they came back clean fortunately which will give us some decent ammunition when it comes to selling them.
But more importantly it also meant we could take advantage of the brilliant 7-day free insurance offer from Aviva which meant we were covered to drive them back. It was all organised in a matter of minutes and every time I use the service I’m always staggered at just what a brilliant idea it is.
If you’re not offering it at your dealership, find out more about it by calling 0845 301 1813.
So our 911 for 2011 is off to a mixed start. We’ve had two very generous donations from two brilliant dealer groups.
One car will take a bit more work to prepare for sale than the other, but at the end of the day they were both FREE and that means one thing: There’s absolutely no way we can’t make a profit on our first cars!
Once I’ve had a chance to drive them both I’ll report back some more details.
James
